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Book. 



THE CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



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THE 

CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 

g>electeti ^oems 

BY 

BRYANT, POE, EMERSON, LONGFELLOW 

WHITTIER, HOLMES, LOWELL 

WHITMAN AND LANIER 

EDITED, WITH NOTES, REFERENCE LISTS 
AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

BY 

CURTIS HIDDEN PAGE, Ph. D. 

Columbia University 




BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

C&e EtoersiUe fjresa, Camiritog;e 

1905 



THE LfBRARY OF 'i 
CONGRESS. 

Two OoBl» Received I 

OCT 23 5 905 

Ctepyneht Entrv 

0LA8S <X Ms, Hwf 



V 






COPYRIGHT 1905 BY CURTIS HIDDEN PAGE 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



COPYRIGHT NOTICE 

All rights on poems in this work are reserved by the holders of the copyright. The 
uulishers and others named in the subjoined list are the proprietors, either in their own 
right or as agents for the authors, of the works enumerated, and of which the ownership 
is thus specifically noted and hereby acknowledged. 

Publishers of » THE CHIEF AMERICAN POETS." 

October, 1905. 



Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., New York. — The Poetical Works of William Cullen 
Bryant. 

Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston. — The Poetical Works of Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, 
John Greenleaf Whittier. 

Messrs. Charles Sceibner's Sons, New York. — Poems of Sidney Lanier. 

Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston. — Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman. 



PREFACE 

This volume is in no sense an anthology. Mr. Stednian has collected, with complete 
knowledge of the field, and with all but unerring taste and judgment, the choicest ' flow- 
ers ' of our American verse from more than six hundred poets. His American Anthology 
must remain for many years without a rival. 

' Yet still the man is greater than his song.' Many true lovers of literature care more 
for a few poets than for many poems, and would prefer to have always by them the best 
work of our few chief poets, rather than the few best poems of our many minor singers. 
The present volume, like my British Poets of the Nineteenth Century, attempts to give, for 
each one of the authors included, all the material needed to show his development and 
his achievement, and to give a first knowledge of him as man and poet. 

The selection has been made full and comprehensive. No poem has been omitted merely 
on account of its length, and every poem, even the longest, is given in full, with two 
exceptions only: Whitman's 'Song of Myself,' and Lowell's 'Fable for Critics.' The 
poems of each author are arranged in chronological order, and dated. Wherever possible, 
both the date of writing and that of first publication have been given. 

The brief ' Biographical Sketches ' at the end of the volume are designed only to give 
an easily accessible summary of the author's life, especially as related to his poetical 
work. They make no pretence of absolute completeness, or of presenting new facts based 
on original investigation ; nor do they attempt any critical estimate of the poet's work, 
except in a paragraph or two of brief summary at the end of each. 

In the reference lists, however, I have tried to furnish full material for a complete 
and thorough study of each author. Under the heading Editions in each list are named 
(1) the standard library editions of the author's complete works ; (2) the best library 
editions of his poetical works alone ; (3) the best one-volume editions of his poems; 
and (4) in some cases, the best books of selections from his work. Under the heading 
Biography and Reminiscences are named in the first paragraph the most important 
biographies of the poet, and in the second paragraph other books or essays dealing chiefly 
with his life and personality. There follow sections devoted to Criticism and to Tributes 
in Verse. In this mass of material, I have indicated throughout the books, essays, or edi- 
tions which seemed to me of most importance, and have added a brief word of comment 
where it seemed desirable. I have not tried to give in these reference lists a complete 
bibliography of all that has been written on each author, and have omitted many titles 
which seemed to be of little or no importance. But I have wished to name everything 
that could be of value, and preferred to err on the side of inclusion rather than of omis- 
sion. It is probable, however, that some essential references may have been overlooked, 
and it is hardly possible that in giving so many titles and dates, all errors should have 
been avoided. I shall be grateful for any corrections or important additions. 

In the notes, I have planned to give only essential facts about the origin or circum- 
stances of composition of each poem, and to show its connection with the author's life, or 
with his other works. Critical comment has been excluded, except, in a few cases, that 
of the author himself or of contemporary poets. In the case of two poets, Emerson and 
Whitman, it has seemed worth while to give from their prose a good many passages which 
illustrate the ideas of the poems, while the poems illuminate the ideas of the prose. 



vi PREFACE 

The dates in italic figures, at the left, give the date of writing; those in Roman, at the 
right, the date of publication. To make these dates as accurate as possible has involved, 
in most cases, not only a thorough study of the biographies of the poets, but also a great 
deal of research among the files of periodicals to which they may have contributed. In a 
few cases, where I have felt that a poem had perhaps been published in a periodical before 
the year of its appearance in a volume, but have not been able to trace it, I have indicated 
this by placing in parentheses the date of first publication in book form. 

In making the selections I have tried to follow not so much my individual taste as the 
consensus of opinion, now pretty well formed, as to which poems of our elder authors are 
the best and most representative. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the ready generosity 
with which so many critics and teachers have given me the help of their advice and have 
put their special knowledge at my service. I have to thank, in the first place, Professor 
Charles F. Richardson of Dartmouth, and Professors W. P. Trent and Brander Matthews 
of Columbia, — three of the chief historians of American literature ; and next Professor 
George R. Carpenter of Columbia, who has written the best biographies we have of more 
than one of our chief poets. The present volume was first thought of as a companion to Pro- 
fessor Carpenter's A merican Prose; and while I have departed considerably from the plan 
and method of that book, I have had throughout Professor Carpenter's generous approval 
and cooperation. I am also under special obligation to Mr. W. R. Thayer, to whose sure 
taste and thorough knowledge of our poets I have often appealed; to Mr. Ferris Greenslet, 
who has helped me with the selections and the reference-list for Lowell; and to Mr. 
Laurens Maynard, who has put at my service his remarkable collection of Whitman books, 
and given freely of his time and knowledge in helping me to trace each poem of Whit- 
man to its earliest publication, and to compare its text with that of the original edition. 

I gladly take this opportunity to thank also Professor Charles W. Kent, of the Uni- 
versity of Virginia, whose edition of Poe's poems in the Virginia Edition of the Complete 
Works is invaluable, and who has also generously given his personal help; Professor 
Edwin Mims, of Trinity College.; Professors W. L. Phelps, F. C. Prescott, A. H. Quinn, 
Henry N. Snyder, Charles L. Young, W. C. Thayer, G. Herbert Clarke, Richard Jones, 
J. H. Chamberlin, William B. Cairns, A. B. Milford, Frank C. Lockwood, Arthur P. 
Hall, Enoch Perrine, Vernon P. Squires, and Benjamin Sledd; Mr. Clyde Furst, of 
Columbia; Miss Jeannette Marks, of Mount Holyoke; Miss Lucy Tappan, the author of 
an excellent manual, Topical Notes on American Authors; and others who have kindly 
made suggestions or gone over my lists of selections. I wish also to thank the authorities 
of the Columbia, Harvard, and Cornell libraries, especially Mr. T. J. Kiernan, who have 
shown me many courtesies ; and others without whose help the volume could not have been 
begun or completed. 

For the use of copyrighted material, I am under obligation to Dr. Edward W. Emerson ; 
Messrs. D. Appleton & Co.; Messrs. Harper & Bros.; Mrs. Sidney Lanier, and Messrs. 
Charles Scribner'sSons; Mr. Horace Traubel and Mr. Thomas B. Harned, the literary 
executors of Whitman, and Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co., his authorized publishers ; and 
of course, most of all, to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., without whose cooperation no 
book of selections from the chief American poets could be undertaken. 

CURTIS HIDDEN PAGE. 

Columbia University, New York City. 
October 1, 1905. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 



BRYANT 

Thanatopsis 

The Yellow Violet 

Inscription for the Entrance to 

Wood ... 

To a Waterfowl ,'.... 

Green River 

A Winter Piece 

Hymn to Death 

'O fairest of the rural maids' 

Monument Mountain 

Autumn Woods 

A Forest Hymn 

June 

October 

The Past . 

The Evening Wind 

To the Fringed Gentian 

Hymn of the City 

Song of Marion's Men 

The Praikles 

The Battle-Field 

The Antiquity of Freedom . 

' O mother of a mighty race ' 

The Planting of the Apple-Tree 

Robert of Lincoln 

Our Country's Call 

The Little People of the Snow 

The Poet 

My Autumn Walk 

The Death of Lincoln . 

A Lifetime 

The Flood of Years 



page 

1 



5 

7 
9 

9 
11 
12 
11 
14 
15 
15 
16 
17 
17 
18 
20 
20 
21 
22 
23 
24 
24 
29 
30 
31 
31 
33 



POE 

Tamerlane 36 

To ('I SAW thee on thy 

brldal day') . . . .39 

Song from Al Aaraaf ... 39 

Romance 40 

Sonnet — To Science .... 40 

To ('The bowers whereat, in 

DREAMS, I SEE') . . . .41 

To ('I HEED NOT THAT MY EARTHLY 

LOT') . . • . . . . 41 

A Dream within a Dream . . .41 
To Helen 41 

ISRAFEL 41 

The City in the Sea .... 42 
The Sleeper 43 



page 

Lenore ... r ... 43 

The Valley of Unrest .... 44 

The Coliseum 45 

Hymn 45 

To One in Paradise .... 45 

To F 46 

To F s S. d ... 46 

Sonnet to Zante 46 

The Haunted Palace .... 46 

Sonnet — Silence 47 

The Conqueror Worm ... 47 

Dream-Land 48 

The Raven 48 

Eulalie — A Song . . . . . 51 

Ulalume . . . . • . . 51 

To Helen 52 

The Bells 53 

To my Mother 55 

For Annie ...... 55 

Annabel Lee 56 

Eldorado 57 



EMERSON 

Good-bye 58 

Thought 58 

The River 58 

Lines to Ellen 59 

To Ellen at the South . . .59 

To Ellen 59 

Thine Eyes still shlned . . .60 

Written in Naples .... 60 

Written at Rome 60 

Webster 61 

Tjble~Rho_dora 61 

Each and All 61 

The Apology 62 

Concord Hymn 63 

The Humble-Bee 63 

Uriel 64 

The Problem ' 64 

Written in a Volume of Goethe . 65 

Woodnotes I 66 

Woodnotes II 67 

The Sphinx 71 

The Snow-Storm 72 

Fable 73 

The Informing Spirit ... 73 

Friendship 73 

Forbearance . . . . . 73 

Holidays 73 



1 The poems of each author are arranged in chronological order. Exact dates will be found at the end of 
each poem. 



VUl 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 





74 




119 




76 


The Old Clock on the Stairs 


. 120 




77 


The Arrow and the Song 


120 




77 








77 




121 




SO 


Wanderer's Night-Songs 


. 149 


Ode, inscribed to W. H. Channing . 


80 




149 




81 




. 149 




82 




150 




83 




. 150 




84 


The Building of the Ship 


151 




85 


The Ladder of St. Augustine 


. 155 


The Day's Ration .... 


85 


Daylight and Moonlight . 


156 




86 


The Warden of the Cinque Ports 


. 156 




86 


The Two Angels 


157 




87 


The Song of Hiawatha . 


. 158 




87 




210 




87 


The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz 


. 211 




88 




212 


Ode, sung in the Town Hall, Concord, 






m 


July 4, 1857 .... 


88 


The Courtship of Miles Standish . 


213 




89 


The Children's Hour . 


. 232 




90 


Paul Revere's Ride .... 


233 


Fragments on Nature and Life 


90 




235 


Fragments on the Poet and the 




The Birds of Killlngworth . 


235 




92 




. 239 


Quatrains and Translations . 


94 




239 


The Bohemian Hymn . . . 


9fi 




240 


Pan . 


96 


Killed at the Ford .... 


241 




96 




?4? 




96 


Finale of Christus .... 


242 




96 


The Hanging of the Crane 


. 243 


96 




245 




98 




945 








246 




100 








101 


The Sound of the Sea 


246 






Three Friends of Mine 


. 246 






MORITURI SALUTAMUS .... 


248 


LONGFELLOW 




The Herons of Elmwood 


. 251. 






In the Churchyard at Tarrytown 


252 


The Spirit of Poetry . . . . 


102 




252 


Burial of the Minnislnk . 


103 




252 


The Return of Spring . 


103 




253 




104 


Victor and Vanquished 


253 




104 


The Three Silences of Mollvos 


. 253 


The Light of Stars .... 


104 




253 


Hymn to the Night . 


105 


A Ballad of the French Fleet . 


254 


Footsteps of Angels .... 


105 


Song : ' Stay, stay at Home, my heart 




The Beleaguered City . 


106 




255 


The Wreck of the Hesperus . 


107 


From my Arm-Chair 


. 255 


The Village Blacksmith 


108 




256 


The Skeleton in Armor . 


108 


The Tide rises, the Tede falls 


256 


Serenade (from the Spanish Stu 






256 




111 


The Cross of Snow 


. 257 




111 




257 




111 


L'Envoi: The Poet and his Songs 


257 




112 




257 




112 


The Bells of San Blas 


258 




113 






The Slave's Dream 


113 






The Arsenal at Springfield . 


114 


whittier 






115 








116 


The Vaudois Teacher . 


259 




116 


To William Lloyd Garrison . 


260 


The Belfry of Bruges : Carillon . 


118 


Randolph of Roanoke . 


260 




118 




262 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



IX 



The Farewell op a Virginia Slave 




Conductor Bradley . 


340 




. 263 








264 


The Prayer of Agassiz 


342 




. 265 




. 343 




266 


Sunset on the Bearcamp . 


344 


Cassandra Southwick 


. 267 




. 345 


Massachusetts to Virginia 


270 


Centennial Hymn 


346 


The Christian Slave 


. 272 








273 




346 




. 275 




. 347 




275 


The Trailing Arbutus 


347 




. 275 






The Angels of Buena Vista . 


277 




348 




. 278 








280 

. 280 


Storm on Lake Asquam 
The Poet and the Children 


349 




. 350 




281 








. 281 






'Songs of Labor, Dedication . 


282 
. 282 




351 
. 352 




283 


The Bartholdi Statue 


352 




283 


To E. C. S 


. 352 




284 


The Last Eve of Summer . 


353 




285 


James Russell Lowell . 


. 353 


First-Day Thoughts .... 


285 


To Oliver Wendell Holmes . 


353 


The Poor Voter on Election Day 


285 






Summer by the Lakeside . 


286 








287 


HOLMES 




The Rendition .... 


289 






290 


Old Ironsides ..... 


. 355 




291 


The Ballad of the Oysterman 


355 




291 


The Height of the Ridiculous . 


. 356 


The Last Walk in Autumn . . 


292 




356 


Skipper Ireson's Ride . 


296 






The Garrison op Cape Ann 


297 




357 


The Pipes at Lucknow . 


299 




. 358 


^TffiT.TrTNG THF, B FFS .... 


300 




358 




301 




. 359 




301 


On Lendtng a Punch-Bowl 


359 


Brown of Ossawatomie . 


302 


The Stethoscope Song . 


. 360 




303 


The Statesman's Secret . 


362 


To William H. Seward . 


303 


After a Lecture on Wordsworth 


. 363 




304 


After a Lecture on Shelley . 


364 


Amy Wentworth .... 


304 


The Hudson 


. 365 




305 


To an English Friend .... 


365 




306 


The Old Man Dreams . 


. 366 


Andrew Rykman's Prayer 


307 


Birthday of Daniel Webster . 


366 


Babbara Frietchie 

The Wreck of Rivermouth 


309 


For the Meeting of the Burns Clui 


i . 367 


310 


Latter-Da y Warnings 


368 




311 


The Chambered Nautilus 


. 368 


Bryant on his Birthday . 


312 


The Living Temple .... 


369 




312 


Tidta Deacon's Masterpiece, or, The 




313 


Wonderful ' Oke-Hoss Shay ' 


. 369 


The Eternal Goodness . 


314 


Contentment 


371 


Snowbound"" 


315 


Parson Turell's Legacy 


. 372 


Abraham Davenport 


323 




373 


The Dead Ship of Harpswell . 


324 


For the Burns Centennial Celebra- 




325 




. 374 


The Worship of Nature . 


327 




374 




. 327 


At a Meeting of Friends . 


. 375 


Among the Hills 


330 


The Two Streams .... 


376 






Under the Violets 


. 377 




337 




377 




. 337 








338 


Prologue to ' Songs in Many Keys ' . 


378 


The Sisters 


. 339 


Brother Jonathan's Lament fob 






340 


Sister Caroline 


. 378 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Pasting Hymn 

Union and Liberty . 

J. D. K. . 

To my Readers 

Voyage of the Good Ship Union 

Bryant's Seventieth Birthday . . 

My Annual 

All Here 

Bill and Joe 

Nearing the Snow-Line 

Dorothy Q 

Epilogue to the Breakfast-Table 
Series 

Programme 

Grandmother's Story of Bunker- 
Hill Battle .... 

How the Old House won the Bet 

For Whittier's Seventieth Birthday 

Veritas .... 

The Silent Melody 

The Iron Gate 

The Shadows .... 

At the Saturday Club 

The Girdle of Friendship 

To James Russell Lowell 

The Lyre of Anacreon 

After the Curfew 

La Maison d'Or . 

Too Young for Love 

The Broomstick Train; or, 

TURN OF THE WlTCHES 

Invita Minerva 

James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891 
In Memory of John Greenleaf Whit- 
tier 



THE 



Re- 



379 
379 
380 
380 
381 
382 
383 
384 
385 
386 
386 

387 
388 

3S9 
392 
394 
396 
396 
397 
398 
399 
402 
402 
403 
404 
404 
404 

405 
407 
407 

408 



LOWELL 

'For THIS TRUE NOBLENESS I SEEK in 

VAIN ' 410 

My Love 410 

' My Love, I have no fear that thou 

shouldst die ' .... 411 

' i ask not for those thoughts, that 

sudden leap ' 411 

' Great Truths are portions of the 

soul of man ' . 411 

To the Spirit of Keats . . . 411 

' Our love is not a fading earthly 

FLOWER ' . . ... . . 412 

' Beloved, in the noisy city here ' 412 
Song : ' moonlight deep and ten- 
der ' 412 

The Shepherd of. King Admetus . 412 
An Incedent in a Railroad Car . . 413 
Stanzas on Freedom .... 414 

Wendell Phillips 414 

Rhoecus 415 

To the Dandelion 417 

Columbus 418 

The Present Crisis .... 421 

A Contrast 423 

An Indian-Summer Reverie . . . 424 

Hebe 428 

The Changeling 429 

She came and went .... 429 



' I thought our love at full, but I 

DID err' 430 

The Biglow Papers, First Series: 
A Letter from Mr. Ezekiel Big- 
low of Jaalam to the Hon. 
Joseph T. Buckingham . . 430 
What Mr. Robinson thinks . . 433 
The Pious Editor's Creed . . 435 
A Second Letter from B. Sawin, 

Esq 436 

From ' A Fable for Critics ' . . 440 
The Vision of Sir Launfal . . . 453 
Beaver Brook 458 

BlBLIOLATRES 458 

The First Snow-Fall .... 459 
The Singing Leaves .... 459 
Without and Within .... 461 
Auf Wiedersehen . . . . • 461 

Palinode 462 

The Wind-Harp 462 

After the Burial .... 463 
L'Envoi : To the Muse . . . .463 

Masaccio 465 

The Origin of Didactic Poetry . . 465 

The Dead House 466 

At the Burns Centennial . . . 467 
The Washers of the Shroud . . 469 
The Biglow Papers, Second Series: 

The Courtin' 472 

Mason and Slidell . . . 473 
Jonathan to John . . . 478 
Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line 480 
Latest Views of Mr. Biglow 484 
Mr. Hosea Biglow to the Editor 
of the Atlantic Monthly 486 
On Board the '76 .... 489 
Ode recited at the Harvard Com- 
memoration 490 

The Miner 496 

To H. W. L 496 

The Nightingale in the Study . 497 

An Ember Picture 498 

In the Twilight 498 

For an Autograph 499 

The Foot-Path 499 

Aladdin 500 

To Charles Eliot Norton . . 500 

Agassiz 501 

Sonnet — Scottish Border . . 508 
Three Memorial Poems : 

Ode read at the One Hundredth 

Anniversary of the Fight at 

Concord Bridge .... 509 

Under the Old Elm . . . 512 

An Ode for the Fourth of July 518 

Death of Queen Mercedes . . . 522 

Phcebe 522 

To Whittier, on his Seventy-fifth 

Birthday 523 

To Holmes, on his Seventy-fifth 

Birthday . . . . . 523 
International Copyright . . . 524 
Sixty-eighth Birthday . . . 524 
Inscription proposed for a Soldiers' 

and Sailors' Monument . . 524 

Endymion 524 

Auspex 527 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



XI 



The Pregnant Comment 


528 


To A CERTAIN CIVILIAN . 


579 




528 




580 




528 


Others may praise what they like 


580 




528 


Thick-sprinkled Bunting . 


580 


The Nobler Lover . 


528 


Bathed in war's perfume 


581 


4 Franciscus de Verulamio sic cogita- 




O Captain ! my Captain I . . . 


581 




529 


When lilacs last in the door-yard 


In a Copy op Omar Khayyam 


529 




581 


Turner's Old Temeraire . 


530 


Hush'd be the camps to-day 


585 


On a Bust of General Grant 


530 




586 








586 






AS I LAY WITH MY HEAD IN YOUR LAP 




WHITMAN 






586 






Aboard at a ship's helm . 


586 


There was a child went forth . 


532 




587 


From the 'Song of Myself' 


533 




587 


Song of the Open Road 


547 




587 




552 


Whispers of Heavenly Death 


588 




553 


The Singer in the Prison . 


588 


Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 


553 


Ethiopia saluting the Colors . 


589 


Out of the cradle endlessly rocking 


557 




589 


Facing west from California's 




The Base of all Metaphysics . 


589 




560 


On the Beach at Night 


590 


I hear America singing 


560 


A noiseless patient spider 


590 




560 




590 




560 


Darest thou now Soul . . . 


595 


For you Democracy 


561 


The last Invocation 


595 


Recorders ages hence . 


561 




596 


When I heard at the close of the 




O Star of France .... 


596 




562 


The mystic Trumpeter 


596 


I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing 


562 


Virginia — The West .... 


598 


I HEAR IT WAS CHARGED AGAINST ME . 


562 


Thou Mother with thy equal brood 


598 


THE PRAIRIE-GRASS DIVIDING 


563 


Prayer of Columbus 


601 


When I peruse the conquer'd fame 


563 


Come, said my Soul .... 


602 


I dream'd in a dream . 


563 


When the full-grown poet came 


603 


Full of life now .... 


564 


To the Man-of-War-Bird . 


603 


To One shortly to die 


564 




603 


Night on the Prairies 


564 


To a Locomotive in Winter 


604 




565 


After an Interval .... 


604 




565 


To Foreign Lands .... 


604 




567 


What best I see in thee 


605 


A Broadway Pageant 


567 


Spirit that form'd this scene 


605 


Pioneers ! Pioneers ! . 


569 


Youth, Day, Old Age and Night 


606 


From Paumanok starting i fly like 




A clear Midnight .... 


606 




571 


With husky-haughty lips, Sea 


606 


Eighteen Sixty-One . 


571 


Of that blithe throat of thine . 


606 


Beat ! beat ! drums ! . 


572 


As the Greek's signal flame 


607 


Cavalry crossing a Ford 


572 


To THOSE WHO 'VE FAIL'D . 


607 


Bivouac on a Mountain Side . 


572 


A Carol closing Sixty-nine 


607 


By the bivouac's fitful flame . 


572 


The First Dandelion .... 


607 


I saw old General at bay 


573 


The Voice of the Rain 


607 


Vigil strange I kept on the field 




A Prairie Sunset .... 


608 


ONE NIGHT 


573 


Thanks in Old Age .... 


608 


Come up from the fields, father . 


573 




608 


A sight in camp in the daybreak 




Old Age's Ship and crafty Death's 


608 


GRAY AND DIM . . 


574 




608 


As toilsome I wander'd Virginia's 




L. of G.'s Purport .... 


609 




574 




609 


The Wound-Dresser . 


575 


Good-bye my Fancy ! . 


609 


Give me the splendid silent sun . 


577 




609 


Long, too long America 


578 






Over the carnage rose prophetic a 










578 


LANIER 




Out of the rolling ocean the crowd 


578 






When I heard the learn'd astrono- 




The Dying Words of Stonewall Jack- 






579 




611 


Shut not your doors .... 


579 




611 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Song for 'The Jacquerie' . . 611 

My Springs .612 

The Symphony 612 

Evening Song .. . • . , . 616 
The Waving op the Corn . .617 

Sonnets on Columbus. From the 

'Psalm of the West' . . . 617 

To Beethoven 619 

The Mocking Bird . . . . . 620 

Tampa Robins 620 

From the Flats 621 

The Stirrup-Cup 621 

Song of the Chattahoochee . . 621 
The Marshes of Glynn . . . 622 
The Revenge of Hamish . . . 623 
How Love looked for Hell . . 626 
To Bayard Taylor . . . .627 
Marsh Song — At Sunset . . . 628 
Sunrise 629 

LIST OF REFERENCES 

Bryant 635 

Poe 636 

Emerson 638 



Longfellow 641 

Whittier 643 

Holmes 645 

Lowell 646 

Whitman 647 

Lanier 650 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

Bryant 655 

Poe . . 658 

Emerson 663 

Longfellow 667 

Whittier 674 

Holmes 677 

Lowell 679 

Whitman 685 

Lanier 691 

INDEXES 

Index of Poets 698 

Index of First Lines .... 699 
Index of Titles 706 



THE CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Are but the solemn decorations all 

Of the great tomb of man. The golden 

sun, 
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, 
Are shining on the sad abodes of death, 
Through the still lapse of ages. All that 

tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom. — Take the 

wings 5 o 

Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, 
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no 

sound, 
Save his own dashings — yet the dead are 

there : 
And millions in those solitudes, since first 
The flight of years began, have laid them 

down 
In their last sleep — the dead reign there 

alone. 
So shalt thou rest, and what if thou with- 
draw 
In silence from the living, and no friend 
Take note of thy departure ? All that 

breathe 60 

Will share thy destiny. The gay will 

laugh 
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of 

care 
Plod on, and each one as before will chase 
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall 

leave 
Their mirth and their employments, and 

shall come 
And make their bed with thee. As the long 

train 
Of ages glide away, the sons of men, 
The youth in life's green spring, and he who 

goes 
In the full strength of years, matron and 

maid, 
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed 

man — 70 

Shall one by one he gathered to thy side, 
By those, who in their turn shall follow 

them. 

So live, that when thy summons comes 

to join 
The innumerable caravan, which moves 
To that mysterious realm, where each shall 

take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 



Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and 

soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy 

grave, 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his 

couch 80 

About him, and lies down to pleasant 

dreams. 
1811 ? 1817. 1 



THE YELLOW VIOLET 

When beechen buds begin to swell, 

And woods the blue-bird's warble know, 

The yellow violet's modest bell 

Peeps from the last year's leaves be- 
low. 

Ere russet fields their green resume, 
Sweet flower, I love, hi forest bare, 

To meet thee, when thy faint perfume 
Alone is in the virgin air. 

Of all her train, the hands of Spring 

First plant thee in the watery mould, 10 

And I have seen thee blossoming 
Beside the snow-bank's edges cold. 

Thy parent sun, who bade thee view 
Pale skies, and chilling moisture sip, 

Has bathed thee in his own bright hue, 
And streaked with jet thy glowing lip. 

Yet slight thy form, and low thy seat, 
And earthward bent thy gentle eye, 

Unapt the passing view to meet, 

When loftier flowers are flaunting nigh. 20 

Oft, in the sunless April day, 

Thy early smile has stayed my walk; 

But midst the gorgeous blooms of May, 
I passed thee on thy humble stalk. 

1 Figures at the left, in italics, give the date of writ- 
ing ; those at the right, in roman, the date of publica- 
tion. For Bryant's poems the dates are taken from 
Godwin's standard edition of the Poetical Works. 

Mr. Godwin states in his note to ' Thanatopsis ' that 
the poem was written in the summer of 1811, which 
would make Bryant only sixteen years old at the time, 
not seventeen, as Mi - . Godwin himself elsewhere says. 
Bryant's own account of the matter is given in a letter 
of 1855, which Mr. Godwin quotes : ' I cannot give 
you any information of the occasion which suggested 
to my mind the idea of my poem " Thanatopsis." It was 
written when I was seventeen or eighteen years old — I 
have not now at hand the memorandums [sic] which 
would enable me to be precise — and I believe it was 
composed in my solitary rambles in the woods.' 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



So they, who climb to wealth, forget 
The friends in darker fortunes tried. 

I copied them — but I regret 

That I should ape the ways of pride. 

And when again the genial hour 

Awakes the painted tribes of light, 30 

I '11 not o'erlook the modest flower 
That made the woods of April bright. 

1814. , 1821. 



INSCRIPTION FOR THE EN- 
TRANCE TO A WOOD 

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth 

which needs 
No school of long experience, that the world 
Is full of guilt and misery, and hast seen 
Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares, 
To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood 
And view the haunts of Nature. The calm 

shade 
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet 

breeze 
That makes the green leaves dance, shall 

waft a balm 
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing 

here 
Of all that pained thee in the haunts of 

men, 10 

And made thee loathe thy life. The primal 

curse 
Fell, it is true, upon the unsinning earth, 
But not in vengeance. God hath yoked to 

guilt 
Her pale tormentor, misery. Hence, these 

shades 
Are still the abodes of gladness; the thick 

roof 
Of green and stirring branches is alive 
And musical with birds, that sing and sport 
In wantonness of spirit; while below 
The squirrel, with raised paws and form 

erect, 
Chirps merrily. Throngs of insects in the 

shade 20 

Try their thin wings and dance in the warm 

beam 
That waked them into life. Even the green 

trees 
Partake the deep contentment; as they bend 
To the soft winds, the sun from the blue 

sky 
Looks in and sheds a blessing on the scene. 



Scarce less the cleft-born wild-flower seems 

to enjoy 
Existence, than the winged plunderer 
That sucks its sweets. The mossy rocks 

themselves, 
And the old and ponderous trunks of pros- 
trate trees 
That lead from knoll to knoll a causey 

rude 30 

Or bridge the sunken brook, and their dark 

roots, 
With all their earth upon them, twisting 

high, 
Breathe fixed tranquillity. The rivulet 
Sends forth glad sounds, and tripping o'er 

its bed 
Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks, 
Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice 
In its own being. Softly tread the marge, 
Lest from her midway perch thou scare the 

wren 
That dips her bill in water. 1 The cool wind, 
That stirs the stream in play, shall come to 

thee, 40 

Like one that loves thee nor will let thee 

pass 
Ungreeted, and shall give its light embrace. 
1815. 1817. 



TO A WATERFOWL 2 

Whither, midst falling dew, 
While glow the heavens with the last steps 

of day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou 
pursue 
Thy solitary way ? 

Vainly the fowler's eye 
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee 

wrong, 
As, darkly seen against the crimson sky, 

Thy figure floats along. 

Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, 10 

1 The poem, as first published in the North Ameri- 
can Review for September, 1S17, under the title ' A 
Fragment,' ended at this point. The last lines were 
added in the first edition of the Poems, in 1821. 

2 On the origin of this poem, see Godwin's Life of 
Bryant, vol. i, pp. 143, 144. Hartley Coleridge once 
called it ' the best short poem in the English lan- 
guage ; ' and Matthew Arnold was inclined to agree 
with his judgment. See an account of the incident in 
Bigelow's Life of Bryant, note to pp. 42, 43. 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 
On the chafed ocean-side ? 

There is a Power whose care 
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast — 
The desert and illimitable air — 

Lone wandering, but not lost. 

All day thy wings have fanned, 
At that far height, the cold, thin atmos- 
phere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 

Though the dark night is near. 20 

And soon that toil shall end; 
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and 

rest, 
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall 
bend, 
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. 

Thou 'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my 

heart 
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, 

And shall not soon depart. 

He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides throtigh the boundless sky thy cer- 
tain flight, 30 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 

Will lead my steps aright. 
1815. 1818. 



GREEN RIVER 1 

When breezes are soft and skies are fair, 
I steal an hour from study and care, 
And hie me away to the woodland scene, 
Where wanders the stream with waters of 

green, 
As if the bright fringe of herbs on its 

brink 
Had given their stain to the waves they 

drink; 
And they, whose meadows it murmurs 

through, 
Have named the stream from its own fair 

hue. 

Yet pure its waters — its shallows are 

bright , 9 

With colored pebbles and sparkles of light, 

1 This was Bryant's favorite among his early poems. 



And clear the depths where its eddies play* 

And dimples deepen and whirl away, 

And the plane-tree's speckled arms o'er- 

shoot 
The swifter current that mines its root, 
Through whose shifting leaves, as you walk 

the hill, 
The quivering glimmer of sun and rill 
With a sudden flash on the eye is thrown, 
Like the ray that streams from the dia- 
mond-stone. 
Oh, loveliest there the spring days come, 
With blossoms, and birds, and wild-bees' 
hum; 20 

The flowers of summer are fairest there, 
And freshest the breath of the summer 

air; 
And sweetest the golden autumn day 
In silence and sunshine glides away. 

Yet, fair as thou art, thou shunnest to 
glide, 
Beautiful stream ! by the village side; 
But windest away from haimts of men, 
To quiet valley and shaded glen; 
And forest, and meadow, and slope of hill, 
Around thee, are lonely, lovely, and still, 30 
Lonely — save when, by thy rippling tides, 
From thicket to thicket the angler glides; 
Or the simpler comes, with basket and 

book, 
For herbs of power on thy banks to look; 
Or haply, some idle dreamer, like me, 
To wander, and muse, and gaze on thee, 
Still — save the chirp of birds that feed 
On the river cherry and seedy reed, 
And thy own wild music gushing out 
With mellow murmur of fairy shout, 40 
From dawn to the blush of another day, 
Like traveller singing along his way. 

That fairy music I never hear, 
Nor gaze on those waters so green and 

clear, 
And mark them winding away from sight, 
Darkened with shade or flashing with light, 
While o'er them the vine to its thicket 

clings, 
And the zephyr stoops to freshen his wings, 
But I wish that fate had left me free 
To wander these quiet haunts with thee, 50 
Till the eating cares of earth should de- 
part, 
And the peace of the scene pass into my 
heart; 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



And I envy thy stream, as it glides along 
Through its beautiful banks in a trance of 
song. 

Though forced to drudge for the dregs 
of men, 
And scrawl strange words with the bar- 
barous pen, 
And mingle among the jostling crowd, 
Where the sons of strife are subtle and 

loud — 
I often come to this quiet place, 
To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, 60 
And gaze upon thee in silent dream, 
For in thy lonely and lovely stream 
An image of that calm life appears 
That won my heart in my greener years. 
1819. ■ 1820. 



A WINTER PIECE 

The time has been tbat these wild soli- 
tudes, 
Yet beautiful as wild, were trod by me 
Of tener than now ; and when the ills of life 
Had chafed my spirit — when the unsteady 

pulse 
Beat with strange flutterings — I would 

wander forth 
And seek the woods. The sunshine on my 

path 
Was to me as a friend. The swelling hills, 
The quiet dells retiring far between, 
With gentle invitation to explore 
Their windings, were a calm society 10 

That talked with me and soothed me. Then 

the chant 
Of birds, and chime of brooks, and soft 

caress 
Of the fresh sylvan air, made me forget 
The thoughts that broke my peace, and I 

began 
To gather simples by the fountain's brink, 
And lose myself in day-dreams. While I 

stood 
In Nature's loneliness, I was with one 
With whom I early grew familiar, one 
Who never had a frown for me, whose 

voice 
Never rebuked me for the hours I stole 20 
From cares I loved not, but of which the 

world 
Deems highest, to converse with her. When 

shrieked _, 



The bleak November winds, and smote the 

woods, 
And the brown fields were herbless, and 

the shades, 
That met above the merry rivulet, 
Were spoiled, I sought, I loved them still; 

they seemed 
Like old companions in adversity. 
Still there was beauty in my walks; the 

brook, 
Bordered with sparkling frost-work, was 

as gay 
As with its fringe of summer flowers. 

-A.iar, 20 

The village with its spires, the path of 

streams 
And dim receding valleys, hid before 
By interposing trees, lay visible 
Through the bare grove, and my familiar 

haunts 
Seemed new to me. Nor was I slow to 

come 
Among them, when the clouds, from their 

still skirts, 
Had shaken down on earth the feathery 

snow, 
And all was white. The pure keen air 

abroad, 
Albeit it breathed no scent of herb, nor 

heard 
Love-call of bird nor merry hum of bee, 40 
Was not the air of death. Bright mosses 

crept 
Over the spotted trunks, and the close buds, 
That lay along the boughs, instinct with 

life, 
Patient, and waiting the soft breath of 

Spring, 
Feared not the piercing spirit of the North. 
The snow-bird twittered on the beechen 

bough, 
And 'neath the hemlock, whose thick 

branches bent 
Beneath its bright cold burden, and kept 

dry 
A circle, on the earth, of withered leaves, 
The partridge found a shelter. Through 

the snow 50 

The rabbit sprang away. The lighter track 
Of fox, and the raccoon's broad path, were 

there, 
Crossing each other. From his hollow 

tree 
The squirrel was abroad, gathering the 

nuts 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Just fallen, that asked the winter cold and 

sway 
Of winter blast, to shake them from their 

hold. 

But Winter has yet brighter scenes — he 

boasts 
Splendors beyond what gorgeous Summer 

knows; 
Or Autumn with his many fruits, and woods 
All flushed with many hues. Come when 

the rains 60 

Have glazed the snow and clothed the trees 

with ice, 
While the slant sun of February pours 
Into the bowers a flood of light. Approach ! 
The incrusted surface shall upbear thy steps, 
And the broad arching portals of the grove 
Welcome thy entering. Look ! the massy 

trunks 
Are cased in the pure crystal; each light 

spray, 
Nodding and tinkling in the breath of 

heaven, 
Is studded with its trembling water-drops, 
That glimmer with an amethystine light. 
But round the parent-stem the long low 

boughs 71 

Bend, in a glittering ring, and arbors hide 
The glassy floor. Oh ! you might deem 

the spot 
The spacious cavern of some virgin mine, 
Deep in the womb of earth — where the 

gems grow, 
And diamonds put forth radiant rods and 

bud 
With amethyst and topaz — and the place 
Lit up, most royally, with the pure beam 
That dwells in them. Or haply the vast hall 
Of fairy palace, that outlasts the night, 80 
And fades not in the glory of the sun; — 
Where crystal columns send forth slender 

shafts 
And crossing arches ; and fantastic aisles 
Wind from the sight in brightness, and are 

lost 
Among the crowded pillars. Raise thine 

eye; 
Thou seest no cavern roof, no palace vault; 
There the blue sky and the white drifting 

cloud 
Look in. Again the wildered fancy dreams 
Of spouting fountains, frozen as they rose, 
And fixed, with all their branching jets, in 

air, qo 



And all their sluices sealed. All, all is light; 
Light without shade. But all shall pass 

away 
With the next sun. From numberless vast 

trunks 
Loosened, the crashing ice shall make a 

sound 
Like the far roar of rivers, and the eve 
Shall close o'er the brown woods as it was 

wont. 

And it is pleasant, when the noisy streams 
Are just set free, and milder*suns melt off 
The plashy snow, save only the firm drift 
In the deep glen or the close shade of 

pines — 100 

'Tis pleasant to behold the wreaths of 

smoke 
Roll up among the maples of the hill, 
Where the shrill sound of youthful voices 

wakes 
The shriller echo, as the clear pure lymph, 
That from the wounded trees, in twinkling 

drops, 
Falls, mid the golden brightness of the morn, 
Is gathered in with brimming pails, and 

oft, 
Wielded by sturdy hands, the stroke of 

axe 
Makes the woods rmg. Along the quiet 

air, 
Come and float calmly off the soft light 

Clouds, no 

Such as you see hi summer, and the winds 
Scarce stir the branches. Lodged in sunny 

cleft, 
Where the cold breezes come not, blooms 

alone 
The little wind-flower, whose just opened 

eye 
Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at — 
Startling the loiterer in the naked groves 
With unexpected beauty, for the time 
Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar. 
And ere it comes, the encountering winds 

shall oft 
Muster their wrath again, and rapid clouds 
Shade heaven, and bounding on the frozen 

earth 121 

Shall fall their volleyed stores, rounded like 

hail 
And white like snow, and the loud North 

again 
Shall buffet the vexed forest in his rage. 
1820. 1821. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



• HYMN TO DEATH ,„ 

Oh ! could I hope the wise and pure in 

heart 
Might hear my song without a frown, nor 

deem 
My voice unworthy of the theme it tries, — 
I would take up the hymn to Death, and 

say 
To the grim power, The world hath slan- 
dered thee 
And mocked thee. On thy dim and shad- 
owy brow 
They place an iron crown, and call thee king 
Of terrors, and the spoiler of the world, 
Deadly assassin, that strik'st down the fair, 
The loved, the good — that breathest on the 

lights io 

Of virtue set along the vale of life, 
And they go out in darkness. I am come, 
Not with reproaches, not with cries and 

prayers, 
Such as have stormed thy stern, insensible 

ear 
From the beginning; I am come to speak 
Thy praises. True it is, that I have wept 
Thy conquests, and may weep them yet 

again, 
And thou from some I love wilt take a life 
Dear to me as my own. Yet while the spell 
,1s on my spirit, and I talk with thee 20 
In sight of all thy trophies, face to face, 
Meet is it that my voice should utter forth 
Thy nobler triumphs ; I will teach the world 
To thank thee. Who are thine accusers ? 

— Who? 
The living ! — they who never felt thy 

power, 
And know thee not. The curses of the 

wretch 
Whose crimes are ripe, his sufferings when 

thy hand 
Is on him, and the hour he dreads is come, 
Are writ among thy praises. But the good — 
Does he whom thy kind hand dismissed to 

peace, 30 

Upbraid the gentle violence that took off 
His fetters, and unbarred his prison-cell ? 

Raise then the hymn to Death. Deliv- 
erer ! 
/ God hath anointed thee to free the op- 
pressed 
And crush the oppressor. When the armed 
chief, 



The conqueror of nations, walks the world, 
And it is changed beneath his feet, and all 
Its kingdoms melt into one mighty realm — 
Thou, while his head is loftiest and his heart 
Blasphemes, imagining his own right hand 40 
Almighty, thou dost set thy sudden grasp 
Upon him, and the links of that strong chain 
Which bound mankind are crumbled; thou 

dost break 
Sceptre and crown, and beat his throne to 

dust. 
Then the earth shouts with gladness, and 

her tribes 
Gather within their ancient bounds again. 
Else had the mighty of the olden time, 
Nimrod, Sesostris, or the youth who feigned 
His birth from Libyan Ammon, smitten yet 
The nations with a rod of iron, and driven 
Their chariot o'er our necks. Thou dost 

avenge, 5! 

In thy good time, the wrongs of those who 

know 
No other friend. Nor dost thou interpose 
Only to lay the sufferer asleep, 
Where he who made him wretched troubles 

not 
His rest — thou dost strike down his tyrant 

too. 
Oh, there is joy when hands that held the 

scourge 
Drop lifeless, and the pitiless heart is cold. 
Thou too dost purge from earth its horrible 
And old idolatries ; — from the proud fanes 
Each to his grave their priests go out, till 

none 61 

Is left to teach their worship ; then the fires 
Of sacrifice are chilled, and the green moss 
O'ercreeps their altars; the fallen images 
Cumber the weedy courts, and for loud 

hymns, 
Chanted by kneeling multitudes, the wind 
Shrieks in the solitary aisles. When he 
Who gives his life to guilt, and laughs at all 
The laws that God or man has made, and 

round 
Hedges his seat with power, and shines in 

wealth, — 70 

Lifts up his atheist front to scoff at Hea- 
ven, 
And celebrates his shame in open day, 
Thou, in the pride of all his crimes, cutt'st 

off 
The horrible example. Touched by thine, 
The extortioner's hard hand foregoes the 

gold 



8 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Wrung from the o'er-worn poor. The per- 
jurer, 
Whose tongue was lithe, e'en now, and vol- 
uble 
Against his neighbor's life, and he who 

laughed 
And leaped for joy to see a spotless fame 
Blasted before his own foul calumnies, 80 
Are smit with deadly silence. He, who 

sold 
His conscience to preserve a worthless life, 
Even while he hugs himself on his escape, 
Trembles, as, doubly terrible, at length, 
Thy steps o'ertake him, and there is no time 
For parley, nor will bribes unclench thy 

grasp. 
Oft, too, dost thou reform thy victim, long 
Ere his last hour. And when the reveller, 
Mad in the chase of pleasure, stretches on, 
And strains each nerve, and clears the path 
of life 90 

Like wind, thou point'st him to the dread- 
ful goal, 
And shak'st thy hour-glass in his reeling 

eye, 
And check'st him in mid course. Thy 

skeleton hand 
Shows to the faint of spirit the right path, 
And he is warned, and fears to step aside. 
Thou sett'st between the ruffian and his 

crime 
Thy ghastly countenance, and his slack 

hand 
Drops the drawn knife. But, oh, most 

fearfully 
Dost thou show forth Heaven's justice, 

when thy shafts 
Drink up the ebbing spirit — then the hard 
Of heart and violent of hand restores 101 
The treasure to the friendless wretch he 

wronged. 
Then from the writhing bosom thou dost 

pluck 
The guilty secret; lips, for ages sealed, 
Are faithless to their dreadful trust at 

length, 
And give it up; the felon's latest breath 
Absolves the innocent man who bears his 

crime; 
The slanderer, horror-smitten, and in tears, 
Recalls the deadly obloquy he forged 
To work his brother's ruin. Thou dost 
make 1 10 

Thy penitent victim utter to the air 
The dark conspiracy that strikes at life, 



And aims to whelm the laws; ere yet the 

hour 
Is come, and the dread sign of murder 

given. 

Thus, from the first of time, hast thou 

been found 
On virtue's side; the wicked, but for thee, 
Had been too strong for the good; the great 

of earth 
Had crushed the weak for ever. Schooled 

in guile 
For ages, while each passing year had 

brought uq 

Its baneful lesson, they had filled the world 
With their abominations ; while its tribes, 
Trodden to earth, imbruted, and despoiled, 
Had knelt to them in worship; sacrifice 
Had smoked on many an altar, temple- 
roofs 
Had echoed with the blasphemous prayer 

and hymn: 
But thou, the great reformer of the world, 
Tak'st off the sons of violence and fraud 
In their green pupilage, their lore half 

learned — 
Ere guilt had quite o'errun the simple 

heart 
God gave them at their birth, and blotted 

OUt 130 

His image. Thou dost mark them flushed 

with hope, 
As on the threshold of their vast ^designs 
Doubtful and loose they stand, and strik'st 

them down. 1 

Alas ! I little thought that the stern 

power, 
Whose fearful praise I sang, would try me 

thus 
Before the strain was ended. It must 

cease — 
For he is hi his grave who taught my youth 
The art of verse, and in the bud of life 
Offered me to the Muses. Oh, cut off 139 
Untimely ! when thy reason in its strength, 
Ripened by years of toil and studious search, 
And watch of Nature's silent lessons, taught 
Thy hand to practise best the lenient art 
To which thou gavest thy laborious days, 
And, last, thy life. And, therefore, when 

the earth 

1 The poem was at first left unfinished, at this point. 
Its concluding lines were added after the death of 
Bryant's father, in 1820, at the age of fifty-three. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



Received thee, tears were in unyielding 

eyes 
And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed 

thy skill 
Delayed their death-hour, shuddered and 

turned pale 
When thou wert gone. This faltering 

verse, which thou 
Shalt not, as wont, o'erlook, is all I have 
To offer at thy grave — this — and the 

hope 151 

To copy thy example, and to leave 
A name of which the wretched shall not 

think 
As of an enemy's, whom they forgive 
As all forgive the dead. Rest, therefore, 

thou 
Whose early guidance trained my infant 

steps — 
Rest, in the bosom of God, till the brief 

sleep 
Of death is over, and a happier life 
Shall dawn to waken thine insensible dust. 

Now thou art not — and yet the men 

whose guilt 160 

Has wearied Heaven for vengeance — he 

who bears 
False witness — he who takes the orphan's 

bread, 
And robs the widow — he who spreads 

abroad 
Polluted hands in mockery of prayer, 
Are left to cumber earth. Shuddering I 

look 
On what is written, yet I blot not out 
The desultory numbers; let them stand, 
The record of an idle revery. 
1820. 1825. 



<0 FAIREST OF THE RURAL 

MAIDS' 1 

O FAIREST of the rural maids ! 
Thy birth was in the forest shades; 
Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky, 
Were all that met thine infant eye. 

Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child, 
Were ever in the sylvan wild; 
And all the beauty of the place 
Is in thy heart and on thy face. 

1 ' O Fairest^of the Rural Maids ' will strike every 
poet as the truest poem written by Bryant. (Pob.) 



The twilight of the trees and rocks 
Is in the light shade of thy locks ; 
Thy step is as the wind, that weaves 
Its playful way among the leaves. 

Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene 
And silent waters heaven is seen; 
Their lashes are the herbs that look 
On their young figures in the brook. 

The forest depths, by foot unpressed, 
Are not more sinless than thy breast; 
The holy peace, that fills the air 
Of those calm solitudes, ii there. 
1820. 1832. 



MONUMENT MOUNTAIN 2 

Thou who wouldst see the lovely and the 

wild 
Mingled in harmony on Nature's face, 
Ascend our rocky mountains. Let thy foot 
Fail not with weariness, for on their tops 
The beauty and the majesty of earth, 
Spread wide beneath, shall make thee to 

forget 
The steep and toilsome way. There, as 

thou stand'st, 
The haunts of men below thee, and around 
The mountain-summits, thy expanding 

heart 9 

Shall feel a kindred with that loftier world 
To which thou art translated, and partake 
The enlargement of thy vision. Thou shalt 

look 



2 The mountain called by this name is a remarkable 
precipice in Great Barrington, overlooking the rich and 
picturesque valley of the Housatonic, in the western part 
of Massachusetts. At the southern extremity is, or was 
a few years since, a conical pile of small stones, erected, 
according to the tradition of the surrounding country, 
by the Indians, in memory of a woman of the Stock- 
bridge tribe who killed herself by leaping from the edge 
of the precipice. Until within a few years past, small 
parties of that tribe used to arrive from their settle- 
ment in the western part of the State of New York, on 
visits to Stockbridge, the place of their nativity and 
former residence. A young woman belonging to one 
of these parties related, to a friend of the author, the 
story on which the poem of ' Monument Mountain ' is 
founded. An Indian girl had formed an attachment 
for her cousin, which, according to the customs of the 
tribe, was unlawful. She was, in consequence, seized 
with a deep melancholy, and resolved to destroy her- 
self. In company with a female friend, she repaired 
to the mountain, decked out for the occasion in all her 
ornaments, and, after passing the day on the summit in 
singing with her companion the traditional songs of 
her nation, she threw herself headlong from the rock, 
and was killed. (Bbyant.) 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Upon the green and rolling forest-tops, 
And down into the secrets of the glens, 
And streams that with their bordering 

thickets strive 
To hide their windings. Thou shalt gaze, 

at once, 
Here on white villages, and tilth, and herds, 
And swarming roads, and there on soli- 
tudes 
That only hear the torrent, and the wind, 
And eagle's shriek. There is a precipice 20 
That seems a fragment of some mighty 

wall, 
Built by the hand that fashioned the old 

world, 
To separate its nations, and thrown down 
When the flood drowned them. To the 

north, a path 
Conducts you up the narrow battlement. 
Steep is the western side, shaggy and 

wild 
With mossy trees, and pinnacles of flint, 
And many a hanging crag. But, to the 

east, 
Sheer to the vale go down the bare old 

cliffs — 
Huge pillars, that in middle heaven up- 
bear 30 
Their weather-beaten capitals, here dark 
With moss, the growth of centuries, and 

there 
Of chalky whiteness where the thunder- 
bolt 
Has splintered them. It is a fearful thing 
To stand upon the beetling verge, and see 
Where storm and lightning, from that huge 

gray wall, 
Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at 

the base 
Dashed them in fragments, and to lay thine 

ear 
Over the dizzy depth, and hear the sound 
Of winds, that struggle with the woods be- 
low, 40 
Come up like ocean murmurs. But the 

scene 
Is lovely round; a beautiful river there 
Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads, 
The paradise he made unto himself, 
Mining the soil for ages. On each side 
The fields swell upward to the hills; be- 
yond, 
Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise 
The mountain-columns with which earth 
props heaven. 



There is a tale about these reverend 

rocks, 
A sad tradition of unhappy love, 50 

And sorrows borne and ended, long ago, 
When over these fair vales the savage 

sought 
His game in the thick woods. There was 

a maid, 
The fairest of the Indian maids, bright- 
eyed, 
With wealth of raven tresses, a light form, 
And a gay heart. About her cabin-door 
The wide old woods resounded with her 

song 
And fairy laughter all the summer day. 
She loved her cousin; such a love was 

deemed, 
By the morality of those stern tribes, 60 
Incestuous, and she struggled hard and 

long 
Against her love, and reasoned with her 

heart, 
As simple Indian maiden might. In vain. 
Then her eye lost its lustre, and her step 
Its lightness, and the gray-haired men that 

passed 
Her dwelling, wondered that they heard no 

more 
The accustomed song and laugh of her, 

whose looks 
Were like the cheerful smile of Spring, 

they said, 
Upon the Whiter of their age. She went 
To weep where no eye saw, and was not 

found 70 

Where all the merry girls were met to 

dance, 
And all the hunters of the tribe were out; 
Nor when they gathered from the rustling 

husk 
The shining ear; nor when, by- the river's 

side, 
They pulled the grape and startled the 

wild shades 
With sounds of mirth. The keen-eyed 

Indian dames 
Would whisper to each other, as they saw 
Her wasting form, and say, The girl will 

die. 

One day into the bosom of a friend, 
A playmate of her young and innocent 

years, 80 

She poured her griefs. ' Thou know'st, and 

thou alone,' 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



She said, • for I have told thee, all rny love, 
And guilt, and sorrow. I am sick of life. 
All night I weep in darkness, and the morn 
Glares on me, as upon a thing accursed, 
That has no business on the earth. I hate 
The pastimes and the pleasant toils that 

once 
I loved; the cheerful voices of my friends 
Sound in my ear like mockings, and, at 

night, 
In dreams, my mother, from the land of 

souls, 90 

Calls me and chides me. All that look on 

me 
Do seem to know my shame ; I cannot bear 
Their eyes; I cannot from my heart root 

out 
The love that wrings it so, and I must die.' 

It was a summer morning, and they 

went 
To this old precipice. About the cliffs 
Lay garlands, ears of maize, and shaggy 

skms 
Of wolf and bear, the offerings of the tribe 
Here made to the Great Spirit, for they 

deemed, 
Like worshippers of the elder time, that 

God 100 

Doth walk on the high places and affect 
The earth-o'erlooking mountains. She had 

on 
The ornaments with which her father loved 
To deck the beauty of his bright-eyed girl, 
And bade her wear when stranger warriors 

came 
To be his guests. Here the friends sat 

them down, 
And sang, all day, old songs of love and 

death, 
And decked the poor wan victim's hair with 

flowers, 
And prayed that safe and swift might be 

her way 
To the calm world of sunshine, where no 

grief no 

Makes the heart heavy and the eyelids red. 
Beautiful lay the region of her tribe 
Below her — waters resting in the embrace 
Of the wide forest, and maize-planted 

glades 
Opening amid the leafy wilderness. 
She gazed upon it long, and at the sight 
Of her own village peeping through the 

trees, 



And her own dwelling, and the cabin roof 
Of him she loved with an unlawful love, 
And came to die for, a warm gush of tears 
Ran from her eyes. But when the sun 

grew low 121 

And the hill shadows long, she threw herself 
From the steep rock and perished. There 

was scooped, 
Upon the mountain's southern slope, a 

grave; 
And there they laid her, in the very garb 
With which the maiden decked herself for 

death, 
With the same withering wild-flowers in 

her hair, 
And o'er the mould that covered her, the 

tribe 
Built up a simple monument, a cone 
Of small loose stones. Thenceforward all 

who passed, 130 

Hunter, and dame, and virgin, laid a stone 
In silence on the pile. It stands there yet. 
And Indians from the distant West, who 

come 
To visit where their fathers' bones are laid, 
Yet tell the sorrowful tale, and to this day 
The mountain where the hapless maiden 

died 
Is called the Mountain of the Monument. 



1824. 



1824. 



AUTUMN WOODS 

Ere, in the northern gale, 
The summer tresses of the trees are gone, 
The woods of Autumn, all around our vale, 

Have put their glory on. 

The mountains that infold, 
In their wide sweep, the colored landscape 

round, 
Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and 
gold, 
That guard the enchanted ground. 

I roam the woods that crown 
The uplands, where the mingled splendors 
glow, 10 

Where the gay company of trees look down 

On the green fields below. 

My steps are not alone 
In these bright walks; the sweet south- 
west, at play, 



12 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Flies, rustling, where the painted leaves 
are strown 
Along the winding way. 

And far in heaven, the while, 
The sun, that sends that gale to wander 

here, 
Pours out on the fair earth his quiet 
smile — 
The sweetest of the year. 20 

Where now the solemn shade, 
Verdure and gloom where many branches 

meet; 
So grateful, when the noon of summer 
made 
The valleys sick with heat ? 

Let in through all the trees 
Come the strange rays; the forest depths 

are bright; 
Their sunny colored foliage, in the breeze, 

Twinkles, like beams of light. 

The rivulet, late unseen, 
Where bickering through the shrubs its 
waters run, 30 

Shines with the image of its golden 
screen, 
And glimmerings of the sun. 

But 'neath yon crimson tree, 
Lover to listening maid might breathe his 

flame, 
Nor mark, within its roseate canopy, 

Her blush of maiden shame. 

Oh, Autumn ! why so soon 
Depart the hues that make thy forests 

glad, 
Thy gentle wind and thy fair sunny noon, 

And leave thee wild and sad ! 40 

Ah ! 't were a lot too blest 
Forever in thy colored shades to stray; 
Amid the kisses of the soft southwest 

To roam and dream for aye ; 

And leave the vain low strife 
That makes men mad — the tug for wealth 

and power — 
The passions and the cares that wither 
life, 
And waste its little hour. 
1824. 1824. 



A FOREST HYMN* 

The groves were God's first temples. 

Ere man learned 
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, 
And spread the roof above them — ere he 

framed 
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back 
The sound of anthems; in the darkling 

wood, 
Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down, 
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 
And supplication. For his simple heart 
Might not resist the sacred influences 
Which, from the stilly twilight of the 

place, 10 

And from the gray old trunks that high in 

heaven 
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the 

sound 
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once 
All their green tops, stole over him, and 

bowed 
His spirit with the thought of boundless 

power 
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why 
Should we, in the world's riper years, neg- 
lect 
God's ancient sanctuaries,, and adore 
Only among the crowd, and under roofs 
That our frail hands have raised ? Let me, 

at least, 20 

Here, in the shadow of this aged wood, 
Offer one hymn — thrice happy, if it find 
Acceptance in his ear. 

Father, thy hand 
Hath reared these venerable columns, Thou 
Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst 

look down 
Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose 
All these fair ranks of trees, They, in thy 

sun, 
Budded, and shook their green leaves in 

thy breeze, 
And shot toward heaven. The century- 
living crow, 
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old 

and died 30 

Among their branches, till, at last, they 

stood, 
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and 

dark, 
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold 
1 See Godwin's Life of Bryant, vol. i, p. 214. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



J 3 



Communion with his Maker. These dim 

vaults, 
These winding aisles, of human pomp or 

pride 
Report not. No fantastic carvings show 
The boast of our vain race to change the 

form 
Of thy fair works. But Thou art here — 

Thou fill'st 
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds 
That run along the summit of these trees 
In music; Thou art in the cooler breath 41 
That from the inmost darkness of the place 
Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the 

ground, 
The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with 

Thee. 
Here is continual worship; — Nature, here, 
In the tranquillity that Thou dost love, 
Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around, 
From perch to perch, the solitary bird 
Passes ; and yon clear spring, that, midst its 

herbs, 
Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the 

roots 50 

Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale 
Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left 
Thyself without a witness, in the shades, 
Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and 

grace 
Are here to speak of Thee. This mighty 

oak — 
By whose immovable stem I stand and seem 
Almost annihilated — not a prince, 
In all that proud old world beyond the 

deep, 
E'er wore his crown as loftily as he 
Wears the green coronal of leaves with 

which 60 

Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his 

root 
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare 
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest 

flower, 
With scented breath and look so like a 

smile, 
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould, 
An emanation of the indwelling Life, 
A visible token of the upholding Love, 
That are the soul of this great universe. 

My heart is awed within me when I 
think 
Of the great miracle that still goes on, 70 
In silence, round me — the perpetual work 



Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed 
Forever. Written on thy works I read 
The lesson of thy own eternity. 
Lo ! all grow old and die — but see again, 
How on the faltering footsteps of decay 
Youth presses — ever gay and beautiful 

youth 
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty 

trees 
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors 
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not 

lost So 

One of earth's charms: upon her bosom 

yet, _ 

After the flight of untold centuries, 
The freshness of her far beginning lies 
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle 

hate 
Of his arch-enemy Death — yea, seats him- 
self 
Upon the tyrant's throne — the sepulchre, 
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe 
Makes his own nourishment. For he came 

forth 
From thine own bosom, and shall have no 
end. 

There have been holy men who hid 

themselves 90 

Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave 
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they 

outlived 
The generation born with them, nor seemed 
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks 
Around them ; — and there have been holy 

men 
Who deemed it were not well to pass life 

thus. 
But let me often to these solitudes 
Retire, and in thy presence reassure 
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies, 
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink 
And tremble and are still. O God ! when 

Thou 101 

Dost scare the world with tempests, set on 

fire 
The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or 

fill, 
With all the waters of the firmament, 
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the 

woods 
And drowns the villages; when, at thy call, 
Uprises the great deep and throws himself 
Upon the continent, and overwhelms 
Its cities — who forgets not, at the sight 



14 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Of these tremendous tokens of thy power, 
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies 

by? 
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face 
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the 

wrath 
Of the mad unchained elements to teach 
Who rides them. Be it ours to meditate, 
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty, 
And to the beautiful order of thy works 
Learn to conform the order of our lives. 1 



1825. 



1825. 



JUNE 2 

I gazed upon the glorious sky 

And the green mountains round, 
And thought that when I came to lie 

At rest within the ground, 
'T were pleasant, that in flowery June, 
When brooks send up a cheerful tune, 

And groves a joyous sound, 
The sexton's hand, my grave to make, 
The rich, green mountain-turf should break. 

A cell within the frozen mould, io 

A coffin borne through sleet, 

And icy clods above it rolled, 

While fierce the tempests beat — 

Away ! — I will not think of these — 

Blue be the sky and soft the breeze, 
Earth green beneath the feet, 

And be the damp mould gently pressed 

Into my narrow place of rest. 

There through the long, long summer 
hours, 
The golden light should lie, 20 

And thick young herbs and groups of flow- 
ers 
Stand in their beauty by. 

1 These are lines c of whose great rhythmical beauty 
it is scarcely possible to speak too highly.' (Poe.) 

2 Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so 
much impressed me as the one which he entitles ' June.' 
The rhythmical flow, here, is even voluptuous — no- 
thing could be more melodious. The poem has always 
affected me in a remarkable manner. The intense mel- 
ancholy which seems to well up, perforce, to the surface 
of all the poet's cheerful sayings about his grave, we 
find thrilling us to the soul — while there is the truest 
poetic elevation in the thrill. The impression left is 
one of a pleasurable sadness. And if, in the remaining 
compositions which I shall introduce to you, there be 
more or less of a similar tone always apparent, let 
me remind you that (how or why we know not) this 
certain taint of sadness is inseparably connected with 
all the higher manifestations of true Beauty. (Poe. ) 



The oriole should build and tell 
His love-tale close beside my cell; 

The idle butterfly 
Should rest him there, and there be heard 
The housewife bee and hummmg-bird. 

And what if cheerf id shouts at noon 
Come, from the vfllage sent, 

Or songs of maids, beneath the moon 3< 
With fairy laughter blent ? 

And what if, in the evening light, 

Betrothed lovers walk in sight 
Of my low monument ? 

I would the lovely scene around 

Might know no sadder sight nor sound. 

I know that I no more should see 

The season's glorious show, 
Nor would its brightness shine for me, 

Nor its wild music flow; 40 

But if, around my place of sleep, 
The friends I love should come to weep, 

They might not haste to go. 
Soft airs, and song, and light, and bloom 
Should keep them lingering by my tomb. 

These to their softened hearts should bear 
The thought of what has been, 

And speak of one who cannot share 
The gladness of the scene; 

Whose part, in all the pomp that fills 50 

The circuit of the summer hills, 
Is that his grave is green; 

And deeply would their hearts rejoice 

To hear again his living voice. 3 

1825. 1826. 



OCTOBER 

Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious 

breath ! 
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, 
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns 

grow brief, 
And the year smiles as it draws near its 

death. 
Wind of the sunny south ! oh, still delay 
In the gay woods and in the golden air, 
Like to a good old age released from care, 
Journeying, in long serenity, away. 
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I 

3 Bryant died in the month of June (1878), and was 
buried in the beautiful village cemetery at Roslyn, 
Long Island. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



i5 



Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers 

and brooks, 
And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks, 
And music of kind voices ever nigh; 
And when my last sand twinkled in the 

glass, 
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass. 
1826. 1826. 



THE PAST l 

Thou unrelenting Past ! 
Strong are the barriers round thy dark 
domain, , 

And fetters, sure and fast, 
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign. 

Far in thy realm withdrawn, 
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom, 

And glorious ages gone 
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb. 

Childhood, with all its mirth, 
Youth, Manhood, Age that draws us to the 
ground, 10 

And last, Man's Life on earth, 
Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound. 

Thou hast my better years; 
Thou hast my earlier friends, the good, the 
kind, 

Yielded to thee with tears — 
The venerable form, the exalted mind. 

My spirit yearns to bring 
The lost ones back — yearns with desire 
intense, 
And struggles hard to wring 
Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives 
thence. 20 

In vain; thy gates deny 
All passage save to those who hence de- 
part; 
Nor to the streaming eye 
Thou giv'st them back — nor to the broken 
heart. 

In thy abysses hide 
Beauty and excellence unknown; to thee 

1 According to Godwin, Bryant considered this his 
best poem, setting it above ' Thanatopsis.' 

The last stanza alludes to his father, and to a sister 
who died in her twenty-second year. See Godwin's Life, 
vol. i, p. 192. 



Earth's wonder and her pride 
Are gathered, as the waters to the sea ; 

Labors of good to man, 
Unpublished charity, unbroken faith, 30 

Love, that midst grief began, 
And grew with years, and faltered not in 
death. 

Full many a mighty name 
Lurks in thy depths, unuttered, unrevered; 

With thee are silent fame, 
Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappeared. 

Thine for a space are they — 
Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last: 

Thy gates shall yet give way, 
Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past ! 4 o 

All that of good and fair 
Has gone into thy womb from earliest time, 

Shall then come forth to wear 
The glory and the beauty of its prime. 

They have not perished — no ! 
Kind words, remembered voices once so 
sweet, 

Smiles, radiant long ago, 
And features, the great soul's apparent seat. 

All shall come back; each tie 
Of pure affection shall be knit again; 50 

Alone shall Evil die, 
And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign. 

And then shall I behold 
Him, by whose kind paternal side I sprung, 

And her, who, still and cold, 
Fills the next grave — the beautiful and 

young. 
1828. 1829. 



THE EVENING WIND 2 

Spirit that breathest through my lattice, 
thou 
That cool'st the twilight of the sultry day, 
Gratefully flows thy freshness round my 
brow; 
Thou hast been out upon the deep at 
play> 

2 This poem, by its imaginative treatment of nature, 
and by its artistic completeness, aroused Poe's great 
admiration. He speaks of the last lines in the third 
stanza as ' breathing all the spirit of Shelley.' 



i6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Riding all clay the wild blue waves till now, 
Roughening their crests, and scattering 

high their spray, 
And swelling the white sail. I welcome 

thee 
To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the 

sea! 

Nor I alone ; a thousand bosoms round 

Inhale thee in the fulness of delight; 10 
And languid forms rise up, and pulses 
bound 
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night; 
And, languishing to hear thy grateful 
sound, 
Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the 
sight. 
Go forth into the gathering shade; go 

forth, 
God's blessing breathed upon the fainting 
earth ! 

Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest, 
Curl the still waters, bright with stars, 
and rouse 
The wide old wood from his majestic rest, 
Summoning from the innumerable 
boughs 20 

The strange, deep harmonies that haunt 
his breast: 
Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly 
bows 
The shutting flower, and darkling waters 

pass, 
And where the o'ershadowing branches 
sweep the grass. 

The faint old man shall lean his silver head 
To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child 
asleep, 
And dry the moistened curls that over- 
spread 
His temples, while his breathing grows 
more deep; 
And they who stand about the sick man's 
bed, 
Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep, 30 
And softly part his curtains to allow 
Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow. 

Go — but the circle of eternal change, 
Which is the life of Nature, shall re- 
store, 

With sounds and scents from all thy mighty 
range, 



Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once 

more; 
Sweet odors in the sea-air, sweet and 

strange, 
Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the 

shore; 
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall 

deem 
He hears the rustling leaf and running 

stream. 40 

1829. 1830. 



TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN * 

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, 
And colored with the heaven's own blue, 
That openest when the quiet light 
Succeeds the keen and frosty night, 

Thou comest not when violets lean 
O'er wandering brooks and springs un- 
seen, 
Or columbines, in purple dressed, 
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest. 

Thou waitest late and com'st alone, 
When woods are bare and birds are 

flown, 
And frosts and shortening days portend 
The aged year is near his end. 

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye 
Look through its fringes to the sky, 
Blue — blue — as if that sky let fall 
A flower from its cerulean wall. 

I would that thus, when I shall see 
The hour of death draw near to me, 
Hope, blossoming within my heart, 
May look to heaven as I depart. 

1829. 1832. 

1 Compare with this poem Wordsworth's ' To the 
Small Celandine,' and others. 

Notice that Bryant addresses his verses to a distinc- 
tively American flower; as later he chooses an Ameri- 
can bird, the bobolink, for the subject of a poem which 
is to be contrasted with Wordsworth's ' To the Sky- 
lark,' 'To the Green Linnet,' etc. Bryant gives the 
reason for this choice in a letter to his brother John, 
February 19, 1832 : ' I saw some lines by you to the 
skylark. Did you ever see such a bird 1 Let me 
counsel you to draw your images, in describing Nature, 
from what you observe around you, unless you are 
professedly composing a description of some foreign 
country, when, of course, you will learn what you can 
from books. The skylark is an English bird, and an 
American who has never visited Europe has no right to 
be in raptures about it.' 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



17 






HYMN OF THE CITY 

Not in the solitude 
Alone may man commune with Heaven, or 
see, 
Only in savage wood 
And sunny vale, the present Deity; 

Or only hear his voice 
Where the winds whisper and the waves re- 
joice. 

Even here do I behold 
Thy steps, Almighty ! — here, amidst the 
crowd 
Through the great city rolled, 
With everlasting niurmur deep and loud — 
Choking the ways that wind u 

'Mongst the proud piles, the work of hu- 
man kind. 

Thy golden sunshine comes 

I From the round heaven, and on their 
dwellings lies 
And lights their inner homes; 
For them Thou ftll'st with air the unbounded 
skies, 
And givest them the stores 
Of ocean, and the harvests of its shores. 

Thy Spirit is around, 
Quickening the restless mass that sweeps 
along; 20 

And this eternal sound — 
Voices and footfalls of the numberless 
throng — 
Like the resounding sea, 
Or like the rainy tempest, speaks of Thee. 

And when the hour of rest 
Comes, like a calm upon the mid-sea 
brine, 

Hushing its billowy breast — 
The quiet of that moment too is thine; 

It breathes of Him who keeps 
The vast and helpless city while it sleeps. 30 
1830 ? 1830. 



SONG OF MARION'S MEN 1 

Our band is few but true and tried, 
Our leader frank and bold; 

1 The exploits of General Francis Marion, the famous 
partisan warrior of South Carolina, form an interesting 
chapter in the annals of the American Revolution. 
The British troops were so harassed by the irregular 



The British soldier trembles 2 

When Marion's name is told. 
Our fortress is the good greenwood, 

Our tent the cypress-tree ; 
We know the forest round us, 

As seamen know the sea. 
We know its walls of thorny vines, 

Its glades of reedy grass, . 10 

Its safe and silent islands 

Within the dark morass. 

Woe to the English soldiery 

That little dread us near ! 
On them shall light at midnight 

A strange and sudden fear: 
When, waking to their tents on fire, 

They grasp their arms in vain, 
And they who stand to face us 

Are beat to earth again; 20 

And they who fly in terror deem 

A mighty host behind, 
And hear the tramp of thousands 

Upon the hollow wind. 

Then sweet the hour that brings release 

From danger and from toil: 
We talk the battle over, 

And share the battle's spoil. 
The woodland rings with laugh and shout, 

As if a hunt were up, 3 o 

And woodland flowers are gathered 

To crown the soldier's cup. 
With merry songs we mock the wind 

That in the pine-top grieves, 
And slumber long and sweetly 

On beds of oaken leaves. 

Well knows the fair and friendly moon 
The band that Marion leads — 

The glitter of their rifles, 

The scampering of their steeds. 40 

and successful warfare which he kept up at the head 
of a few daring followers, that they sent an officer to 
remonstrate with him for not coming into the open 
field and fighting 'like a gentleman and a Christian.' 
(Bryant.) 

On the occasion of a reception given to Bryant in 
Charleston, South Carolina, in 1873, one of the speak- 
ers said that the ' Song of Marion's Men ' had been 
sung in many a Southern bivouac, and warmed the 
soldier's heart at many a Confederate camp-fire.' See 
Godwin's Life of Bryant, vol. ii, pp. 330, 331. 

2 In the edition of Bryant's poems published in Eng- 
land in 1S32, and edited by Washington Irving, this 
line was changed to 

The foeman trembles in his camp. 
Considerable discussion over this change arose later in 
America, of which a full account can be found in Bige- 
low's Life of Bryant, pp. 129-139. 



i8 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



'T is life to guide the fiery barb 

Across the moonlight plain; 
'T is life to feel the night-wind 

That lifts the tossing inane. 
A moment in the British camp — 

A moment — and away 
Back to the pathless forest, 

Before the peep of day. 

Grave men there are by broad Santee, 

Grave men with hoary hairs ; 50 

Their hearts are all with Marion, 

For Marion are their prayers. 
And lovely ladies greet our band 

With kindliest welcoming, 
With smiles like those of summer, 

And tears like those of spring. 
For them we wear these trusty arms, 

And lay them down no more 
Till we have driven the Briton, 

Forever, from our shore. 60 

1831. ' 1831. 



THE PRAIRIES 1 

These are the gardens of the Desert, 

these 
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, 
For which the speech of England has no 

name — 
The Prairies. I behold them for the first, 
And my heart swells, while the dilated 

sight 
Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo ! they 

stretch, 
In airy undulations, far away, 
As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell, 
Stood still, with all his rounded billows 

fixed, 

1 See the account of Bryant's first visit to the West, 
in Godwin's Life, vol. i, pp. 282-286. Especially signi- 
ficant is a passage from Bryant's letter to Richard H. 
Dana : ' I have seen the great West, where I ate corn 
and hominy, slept in log houses, with twenty men, 
women, and children in the same room. . . . At Jackson- 
ville, where my two brothers live, I got on a horse, and 
travelled about a hundred miles to the northward over 
the immense prairies, with scattered settlements, on 
the edges of the groves. These prairies, of a soft, fer- 
tile garden soil, and a smooth undulating surface, on 
which you may put a horse to full speed, covered with 
high, thinly growing grass, full of weeds and gaudy 
flowers, and destitute of bushes or trees, perpetually 
brought to my mind the idea of their having been once 
cultivated. They looked to me like the fields of a race 
which had passed away, whose enclosures and habita- 
tions had decayed, but on whose vast and rich plains, 
smoothed and levelled by tillage, the forest had not yet 
encroached.' 



And motionless forever. — Motionless ? — 

No — they are all unchained again. The 
clouds 1 1 

Sweep over with their shadows, and, be- 
neath, 

The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye ; 

Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase 

The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South ! 

Who toss the golden and the flame-like 
flowers, 

And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on 
high, 

Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not 2 — 
ye have played 

Among the palms of Mexico and vines 

Of Texas, and have crisped the limpid 
brooks 20 

That from the fountains of Sonora glide 

Into the calni Pacific — have ye fanned 

A nobler or a lovelier scene than this ? 

Man hath no power in all this glorious 
work: 

The hand that built the firmament hath 
heaved 

And smoothed these verdant swells, and 
sown their slopes 

With herbage, planted them with island 
groves, 

And hedged them round with forests. Fit- 
ting floor 

For this magnificent temple of the sky — 

With flowers whose glory and whose mul- 
titude • 30 

Rival the constellations ! The great hea- 
vens 

Seem to stoop down upon the scene in 
love, — 

A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue, 

Than that which bends above our eastern 
hills. 

As o'er the verdant waste I guide my 

steed, 
Among the high rank grass that sweeps his 

sides 
The hollow beating of his footstep seems 
A sacrilegious sound. I think of those 
Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they 

here — 
The dead of other days ? — and did the 

dust 40 

Of these fair solitudes once stir with life 

2 I have seen the prairie-hawk balancing himself in 
the air for hours together, apparently over the same 
spot; probably watching his prey. (Bryant.) 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



i9 



And burn with passion ? Let the mighty 

mounds 
That overlook the rivers, or that rise 
In the dim forest crowded with old oaks, 
Answer. A race, that long has passed 

away, 
Built them ; — a disciplined and populous 

race 
Heaped, with long toil, the earth, while yet 

the Greek 
Was hewing the Pentelicus to forms 
Of symmetry, and rearing on its rock 
The glittering Parthenon. These ample 

fields 50 

Nourished their harvests, here their herds 

were fed, 
When haply by their stalls the bison lowed, 
And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke. 
All day this desert murmured with their 

toils, 
Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked, 

and wooed 
In a forgotten language, and old tunes, 
From instruments of unremembered form, 
Gave the soft winds a voice. The red man 

came — 
The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and 

fierce, 
And the mound-builders vanished from the 

earth. 60 

The solitude of centuries untold 
Has settled where they dwelt. The 

prairie-wolf 
Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug 

den 
Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the 

. ground 
Where stood their swarming cities. All is 

gone ; 
All — save the piles of earth that hold 

their bones, 
The platforms where they worshipped un- 
known gods, 
The barriers which they builded from the 

soil 
To keep the foe at bay — till o'er the walls 
The wild beleaguerers broke, and, one by 

one, 70 

The strongholds of the plain were forced, 

and heaped 
With corpses. The brown vultures of the 

wood 
Flocked to those vast uncovered sepulchres, 
And sat unscared and silent at their feast. 
Haply some solitary fugitive, 



Lurking in marsh and forest, till the sense 
Of desolation and of fear became 
Bitterer than death, yielded himself to 

die. 
Man's better nature triumphed then. Kind 

words 
Welcomed and soothed him; the rude 

conquerors 80 

Seated the captive with their chiefs; he 

chose 
A bride among their maidens, and at length 
Seemed to forget — yet ne'er forgot — the 

wife 
Of his first love, and her sweet little ones, 
Butchered, amid their shrieks, with all his 

race. 

Thus change the forms of being. Thus 

arise 
Races of living things, glorious in strength, 
And perish, as the quickening breath of 

God 
Fills them, or is withdrawn. The red man, 

too, 
Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so 

long, 9 o 

And, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, sought 
A wilder hunting-ground. The beaver builds 
No longer by these streams, but far away, 
On waters whose blue surface ne'er gave 

back 
The white man's face — among Missouri's 

springs, 
And pools whose issues swell the Oregon — 
He rears his little Venice. In these plains 
The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty 

leagues 
Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp, 
Roams the majestic brute, in herds that 

shake 100 

The earth with thundering steps — yet here 

I meet 
His ancient footprints stamped beside the 

pool. 

Still this great solitude is quick with life. 
Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers 
They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds, 
And birds, that scarce have learned the 

fear of man, 
Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground, 
Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer 
Bounds to the wood at my approach. The 

bee, 
A more adventurous colonist than man, no 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



With whom he came across the eastern 

deep, 
Fills the savannas with his inurmurings, 
And hides his sweets, as in the golden age, 
Within the hollow oak. I listen long 
To his domestic hum, and think I hear 
The sound of that advancing multitude 
Which soon shall fill these deserts. From 

the ground 
Comes up the laugh of children, the soft 

voice 
Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn 

hymn 
Of Sabbath worshippers. The low of herds 
Blends with the rustling of the heavy 

grain 121 

Over the dark brown furrows. All at once 
A fresher wind sweeps by, and breaks my 

dream, 
And I am in the wilderness alone. 



1832. 



1833. 



THE BATTLE-FIELD 

Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands, 
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd, 

And fiery hearts and armed hands 
Encountered in the battle-cloud. 

Ah ! never shall the land forget 

How gushed the life-blood of her brave — 
Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet, 

Upon the soil they fought to save. 

Now all is calm, and fresh, and still; 

Alone the chirp of flitting bird, 10 

And talk of children on the hill, 

And bell of wandering kine, are heard. 

No solemn host goes trailing by 

The black-mouthed gun and staggering 
wain; 
Men start not at the battle-cry, 

Oh, be it never heard again ! 

Soon rested those who fought; but thou 
Who minglest in the harder strife 

For truths which men receive not now, 
Thy warfare only' ends with life. 20 

A friendless warfare ! lingering long 
Through weary day and weary year, 

A wild and many-weaponed throng 

Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear. 



Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof, 
And blench not at thy chosen lot. 

The timid good may stand aloof, 

The sage may frown — yet faint thou 
not. 

Nor heed the shaft too surely cast, 

The foul and hissing bolt of scorn; 30 

For with thy side shall dwell, at last, 
The victory of endurance born. 

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again; 

Th' eternal years of God are hers ; 
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, 

And dies among his worshippers. 

Yea, though thou lie upon the dust, 

When they who helped thee flee in fear, 

Die full of hope and manly trust, 

Like those who fell in battle here. 40 

Another hand thy sword shall wield, 
Another hand the standard wave, 

Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed 
The blast of triumph o'er thy grave. 

1837. 1837. 



THE ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM 

Here are old trees, tall oaks, and gnarled 

pines, 
That stream with gray-green mosses; here 

the ground 
Was never trenched by spade, and flowers 

spring up 
Unsown, and die ungathered. It is sweet 
To linger here, among the flitting birds 
And leaping squirrels, wandering brooks, 

and winds 
That shake the leaves, and scatter, as they 

pass, 
A fragrance from the cedars, thickly set 
With pale-blue berries. In these peaceful 

shades — 
Peaceful, unpruned, immeasurably old — 10. 
My thoughts go up the long dim path of 

years, 
Back to the earliest days of liberty. 

O Freedom ! thou art not, as poets 

dream, 
A fair young girl, with light and delicate 

limbs, 
And wavy tresses gushing from the cap 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



With which the Roman master crowned 

his slave 
When he took off the gyves. A bearded 

man, 
Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailed 

hand 
Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword ; 

thy brow, 
Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred 
With tokens of old wars; thy massive 

limbs 21 

Are strong with struggling. Power at thee 

has launched 
His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten 

thee; 
They could not quench the life thou hast 

from heaven; 
Merciless Power has dug thy dungeon 

deep, 
And his swart armorers, by a thousand 

fires, 
Have forged thy chain; yet, while he deems 

thee bound, 
The links are shivered, and the prison- walls 
Fall outward ; terribly thou springest forth, 
As springs the flame above a burning pile, 
And shoutest to the nations, who return 31 
Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor 

flies. 

Thy birthright was not given by human 
hands : 
Thou wert twin-born with man. In plea- 
sant fields, 
While yet our race was few, thou sat'st 

with him, 
To tend the quiet flock and watch the stars, 
And teach the reed to utter simple airs. 
Thou by his side, amid the tangled wood, 
Didst war upon the panther and the wolf, 
His only foes; and thou with him didst 
draw 40 

The earliest furrow on the mountain-side, 
Soft with the deluge. Tyranny himself, 
Thy enemy, although of reverend look, 
Hoary with many years, and far obeyed, 
Is later born than thou; and as he meets 
The grave defiance of thine elder eye, 
The usurper trembles in his fastnesses. 

Thou shalt wax stronger with the lapse 

of years, 
But he shall fade hito a feebler age — 
Feebler, yet subtler. He shall weave his 

snares, so 



And spring them on thy careless steps, and 

clap 
His withered hands, and from their ambush 

call 
His hordes to fall upon thee. He shall 

send 
Quaint maskers, wearing fair and gallant 

forms 
To catch thy gaze, and uttering graceful 

words 
To charm thy ear; while his sly imps, by 

stealth, 
Twine round thee threads of steel, light 

thread on thread, 
That grow to fetters; or bind down thy 

arms 
With chains concealed in chaplets. Oh ! 

not yet 
Mayst thou unbrace thy corslet, nor lay 

by 60 

Thy sword; nor yet, O Freedom ! close thy 

lids 
In slumber; for thine enemy never sleeps, 
And thou must watch and combat till the 

day 
Of the new earth and heaven. But wouldst 

thou rest 
Awhile from tumult and the frauds of 

men, 
These old and friendly solitudes invite 
Thy visit. They, while yet the forest-trees 
Were young upon the unviolated earth, 
And yet the moss-stains on the rock were 

new, 
Beheld thy glorious childhood, and re- 
joiced. 70 
1842, 1842. 



<0 MOTHER OF A MIGHTY 
RACE ' 

O mother of a mighty race, 
Yet lovely in thy youthful grace ! 
The elder dames, thy haughty peers, 
Admire and hate thy blooming years. 

With words of shame 
And taunts of scorn they join thy name. 

For on thy cheeks the glow is spread 
That tints thy morning hills with red; 
Thy step — the wild-deer's rustling feet 
Within thy woods are not more fleet; 10 

Thy hopeful eye 
Is bright as thine own sunny sky. 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Ay, let them rail — those haughty ones, 
While safe thou dwellest with thy sons. 
They do not know how loved thou art, 
How many a fond and fearless heart 

Would rise to throw 
Its life between thee and the foe. 

They know not, in their hate and pride, 
What virtues with thy children bide; 20 
How true, how good, thy graceful maids 
Make bright, like flowers, the valley-shades ; 

What generous men 
Spring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen; — 

What cordial welcomes greet the guest 
By thy lone rivers of the West; 
How faith is kept, and truth revered, 
And man is loved, and God is feared, 

In woodland homes, 
And where the ocean border foams. 30 

There 's freedom at thy gates and rest 
For Earth's down-trodden and opprest, 
A shelter for the hunted head, 
For the starved laborer toil and bread. 

Power, at thy boimds, 
Stops and calls back his baffled hounds. 

O fair young mother ! on thy brow 

Shall sit a nobler grace than now. 

Deep in the brightness of the skies 

The thronging years in glory rise, 40 

And, as they fleet, 
Drop strength and riches at thy feet. 

Thine eye, with every coming hour, 
Shall brighten, and thy form shall tower; 
And when thy sisters, elder born, 
Woidd brand thy name with words of 
scorn, 

Before thine eye, 
Upon their lips the taunt shall die. 
1846. 1847. 



THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE- 
TREE 

Come, let us plant the apple-tree. 
Cleave the tough greensward with the 

spade ; 
Wide let its hollow bed be made; 
There gently lay the roots, and there 
Sift the dark moidd with kindly care, 

And press it o'er them tenderly, 



As, round the sleeping infant's feet, 
We softly fold the cradle-sheet; 
So plant we the apple-tree. 

What plant we in this apple-tree ? 10 
Buds, which the breath of summer days 
Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; 
Boughs where the thrush, with crimson 

breast, 
Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest; 

We plant, upon the sunny lea, 
A shadow for the noontide hour, 
A shelter from the summer shower, 

When we plant the apple-tree. 

What plant we in this apple-tree ? 
Sweets for a hundred flowery springs 20 
To load the May-wind's restless wings, 
When, from the orchard-row, he pours 
Its fragrance through our open doors; 

A world of blossoms for the bee, 
Flowers for the sick girl's silent room, 
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom, 

We plant with the apple-tree. 

What plant we in this apple-tree ? 
Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, 
And redden in the August noon, 30 

And drop, when gentle airs come by, 
That fan the blue September sky, 

While children come, with cries of 
glee, 
And seek them where the fragrant grass 
Betrays their bed to those who pass, 

At the foot of the apple-tree. 

And when, above this apple-tree, 
The winter stars are quivering bright, 
And winds go howling through the night, 
Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, 
Shall peel its fruit by cottage-hearth, 41 

And guests in prouder homes shall see, 
Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine 
And golden orange of the line, 

The fruit of the apple-tree. 

The fruitage of this apple-tree 
Winds and our flag of stripe and star 
Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, 
Where men shall wonder at the view, 
And ask in what fair groves they grew; 50 

And sojourners beyond the sea 
Shall think of childhood's careless day, 
And long, long hours of summer play, 

In the shade of the apple-tree. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



2 3 



Each year shall give this apple-tree 
A broader flush of roseate bloom, 
A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, 
And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, 
The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower. 

The years shall come and pass, but we 
Shall hear no longer, where we lie, 61 

The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, 

In the boughs of the apple-tree. 

And time shall waste this apple-tree. 
Oh, when its aged branches throw 
Thin shadows on the ground below, 
Shall fraud and force and iron will 
Oppress the weak and helpless still ? 

What shall the tasks of mercy be, 
Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears 7 o 

Of those who live when length of years 

Is wasting this little apple-tree ? 

' Who planted this old apple-tree ? ' 
The children of that distant day 
Thus to some aged man shall say; 
And, gazing on its mossy stem, 
The gray-haired man shall answer them: 

' A poet of the land was he, 
Born in the rude but good old times; 
'T is said he made some quaint old rhymes, 

On planting the apple-tree.' 1 81 

1849. 1864. 

ROBERT OF LINCOLN 

Merrily swinging on brier and weed, 

Near to the nest of his little dame, 
Over the mountain-side or mead, 

Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
Snug and safe is that nest of ours, 
Hidden among the summer flowers. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

1 Compare a letter of Bryant's written November 17, 
1846 (Godwin's Life of Bryant, vol. ii, pp. 27, 28) : 
' I have been, and am, at my place on Long Island, 
planting and transplanting trees, in the mist ; sixty or 
seventy ; some for shade ; most for fruit. Hereafter, 
men, whose existence is at present merely possible, 
will gather pears from the trees which I have set in 
the ground, and wonder what old covey — for in those 
days the slang terms of the present time, by the ordi- 
nary process of change in languages, will have become 
classical — what old covey of past ages planted them ? 
Or they will walk in the shade of the mulberry, apricot, 
and cherry trees that I have set in a row beside a green 
lane, and think, if they think at all about the matter 
— for who can tell what the great-grandchildren of ours 
will think about — that they sprang up of themselves by 
the way.' 



Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest, io 

Wearing a bright black wedding-coat; 
White are his shoulders and white his crest. 
Hear him call in his merry note: 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
Look, what a nice new coat is mine, 
Sure there was never a bird so fine. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife, 

Pretty and quiet, with plain brown 
wings, 20 

Passing at home a patient life, 

Broods in the grass while her husband 
sings: 

Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
Brood, kind creature; you need not fear 
Thieves and robbers while I am here. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Modest and shy as a nun is she; 

One weak chirp is her only note. 
Braggart and prince of braggarts is he, 30 
Pouring boasts from his little throat: 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
Never was I afraid of man; 
Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can ! 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Six white eggs on a bed of hay, 

Flecked with purple, a pretty sight ! 
There as the mother sits all day, 

Robert is singing with all his might: 40 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
Nice good wife, that never goes out, 
Keeping house while I frolic about. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Soon as the little ones chip the shell, 
Six wide mouths are open for food; 
Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well, 
Gathering seeds for the hungry brood. 

Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, so 

Spink, spank, spink; 
This new life is likely to be 
Hard for a guy young fellow like me. 
Chee, chee, chee. 

Robert of Lincoln at length is made 

Sober with work, and silent with care; 
Off is his holiday garment laid, 



24 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



60 



Half forgotten that merry air: 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
Nobody knows but my mate and I 
Where our nest and our nestlings lie. 
Chee, chee, ehee. 



Summer wanes; the children are grown; 

Fun and frolic no more he knows; 
Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone; 
Off he flies, and we sing as he goes: 
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, 
Spink, spank, spink; 
When you can pipe that merry old strain, 70 
Robert of Lincoln, come back again. 

Chee, chee, chee. 
1855. 1855. 



OUR COUNTRY'S CALL 

Lay down the axe; fling by the spade; 

Leave in its track the toiling plough; 
The rifle and the bayonet-blade 

For arms like yours were fitter now; 
And let the hands tbat ply the pen 

Quit the light task, and learn to wield 
The horseman's crooked brand, and rein 

The charger on the battle-field. 

Our country calls; away ! away ! 

To where the blood-stream blots the 
green. IO 

Strike to defend the gentlest sway 

That Time in all his course has seen. 
See, from a thousand coverts — see, 

Spring the armed foes that haunt her 
track; 
They rush to smite her down, and we 

Must beat the banded traitors back. 

Ho ! sturdy as the oaks ye cleave, 

And moved as soon to fear and flight, 
Meu of the glade and forest ! leave 

Your woodcraft for the field of fight. 20 
The arms that wield the axe must pour 

An iron tempest on the foe ; 
His serried ranks shall reel before 

The arm that lays the panther low. 

And ye who breast the mountain-storm 
By grassy steep or highland lake, 

Come, for the laud ye love, to form 
A bulwark that no foe can break. 

Stand, like your own gray cliffs that mock 



The whirlwind, stand in her defence ; 30 
The blast as soou shall move the rock 
As rushing squadrons bear ye thence. 

And ye whose homes are by her grand 

Swift rivers, rising far away, 
Come from the depth of her green land, 

As mighty in your march as they; 
As terrible as when the rains 

Have swelled them over bank and bourne, 
With sudden floods to drown the plains 

And sweep along the woods uptorn. 40 

And ye who throng, beside the deep, 

Her ports and hamlets of the strand, 
In number like the waves that leap 

On his long-murmuring marge of sand — 
Come like that deep, when, o'er his brim, 

He rises, all his floods to pour, 
And flings the proudest barks that swim, 

A helpless wreck, against the shore ! 

Few, few were they whose swords of old 

Won the fair land in which we dwell; 50 
But we are many, we who hold 

The grim resolve to guard it well. 
Strike, for that broad and goodly land, 

Blow after blow, till men shall see 
That Might and Right move hand in hand, 

And glorious must their triumph be ! 
September, 1861. 1861. 

THE LITTLE PEOPLE OF THE 
SNOW 

Alice. One of your old-world stories, 

Uncle John, 
Such as you tell us by the winter fire, 
Till we all wonder it is grown so late. 
Uncle John. The story of the witch that 

ground to death 
Two children in her mill, or will you have 
The tale of Goody Cutpurse ? 

Alice. Nay, now, nay; 

Those stories are too childish, Uncle John, 
Too childish even for little Willy here, 
And I am older, two good years, than he; 
No, let us have a tale of elves that ride, 10 
By night, with jingling reins, or gnomes of 

the mine, 
Or water-fairies, such as you know how 
To spin, till Willy's eyes forget to wink, 
And good Aunt Mary, busy as she is, 
Lays down her knitting. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



2 5 



Uncle John. Listen to me, then. 

'T was in the olden time, long, long ago, 
And long before the great oak at our door 
Was yet an acorn, on a mountain's side 
Lived, with his wife, a cottager. They dwelt 
Beside a glen and near a dashing brook, 20 
A pleasant spot in spring, where first the 

wren 
Was heard to chatter, and, among the grass:. 
Flowers opened earliest; but when winter 

came, 
That little brook was fringed with other 

flowers, — 
White flowers, with crystal leaf and stem, 

that grew 
In clear November nights. And, later still, 
That mountain-glen was filled with drifted 

snows 
From side to side, that one might walk 

across; 
While, many a fathom deep, below, the 

brook 
Sang to itself, and leaped and trotted on 30 
Unfrozen, o'er its pebbles, toward the vale. 
Alice. A mountain-side, you said; the 

Alps, perhaps, 
Or our own Alleghanies. 

Uncle John. Not so fast, 

My young geographer, for then the Alps, 
With their broad pastures, haply were un- 

trod 
Of herdsman's foot, and never human voice 
Had soimded in the woods that overhang 
Our Alleghanies' streams. I think it was 
Upon the slopes of the great Caucasus, 
Or where the rivulets of Ararat 40 

Seek the Armenian vales. That mountain 

rose 
So high, that, on its top, the winter snow 
Was never melted, and the cottagers 
Among the smnmer blossoms, far below, 
Saw its white peaks in August from their 

door. , 

One little maiden, hi that cottage-home, 
Dwelt with her parents, light of heart and 

limb, 
Bright, restless, thoughtless, flitting here 

and there, 
Like sunshine on the uneasy ocean-waves, 
And sometimes she forgot what she was bid, 
As Alice does. 

Alice. Or Willy, quite as oft. 51 

Uncle John. But you are older, Alice, two 

good years, 
And should be wiser. Eva was the name 



Of this young maiden, now twelve summers 
old. 
Now you must know that, in those early 
times, 

When autumn days grew pale, there came 
a troop 

Of childlike forms from that cold mountain- 
top; 

With trading garments through the air they 
came, 

Or walked the ground with girded loins, 
and threw 

Spangles of silvery frost upon the grass, 60 

And edged the brooks with glistening para- 
pets, 

And built it crystal bridges, touched the 
pool, 

And turned its face to glass, or, rising 
thence, 

They shook from their full laps the soft, 
light snow, 

And buried the great earth, as autumn 
winds 

Bury the forest-floor in heaps of leaves. 
A beautiful race were they, with baby 
brows, 

And fair, bright locks, and voices like the 
sound 

Of steps on the crisp snow, in which they 
talked 

With man, as friend with friend. A merry 
sight 70 

It was, when, crowding round the traveller, 

They smote him with their heaviest snow- 
flakes, flung 

Needles of frost in handfuls at his cheeks, 

And, of the light wreaths of his smoking 
breath, 

Wove a white fringe for his brown beard, 
and laughed 

Their slender laugh to see him wink and 
grin 

And make grim faces as he floundered on. 
But, when the spring came on, what ter- 
ror reigned 

Among these Little People of the Snow ! 

To them the sun's warm beams were shafts 
of fire, 80 

And the soft south-wind was the wind of 
death. 

Away they flew, all with a pretty scowl 

Upon their childish faces, to the north, 

Or scampered upward to the mountain's 
top, 

And there defied their enemy, the Spring; 



26 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Skipping and dancing on the frozen peaks, 

And moulding little snow-balls in their 
palms, 

And rolling them, to crush her flowers be- 
low, 88 

Down the steep snow-fields. 

Alice. That, too, must have been 

A merry sight to look at. 

Uncle John. You are right, 

But I must speak of graver matters now. 
Midwinter was the time, and Eva stood, 

Within the cottage, all prepared to dare 

The outer cold, with ample furry robe 

Close-belted round her waist, and boots of 
fur, 

And a broad kerchief, which her mother's 
hand 

Had closely drawn about her ruddy cheek. 

' Now, stay not long abroad,' said the 
good dame, 

' For sharp is the outer air, and, mark me 
well, 

Go not upon the snow beyond the spot ioo 

Where the great linden bounds the neigh- 
boring field.' 
The little maiden promised, and went 
forth, 

And climbed the rounded snow-swells firm 
with frost 

Beneath her feet, and slid, with balancing 
arms, 

Into the hollows. Once, as up a drift 

She slowly rose, before her, in the way, 

She saw a little creature, lily-cheeked, 

With flowing flaxen locks, and faint blue 
eyes, 

That gleamed like ice, and robe that only 
seemed 

Of a more shadowy whiteness than her 
cheek. no 

On a smooth bank she sat. 

Alice. She must have been 

One of your Little People of the Snow. 
Uncle John. She was so, and, as Eva 
now drew, near, 

The tiny creature bounded from her seat; 

'And come,' she said, 'my pretty friend; 
to-day 

We will be playmates. I have watched 
thee long, 

And seen how well thou lov'st to walk these 
drifts, 

And scoop their fair sides into little cells, 

And carve them with quaint figures, huge- 
limbed men, 119 



Lions, and griffins. We will have, to-day, 
A merry ramble over these bright fields, 
And thou shalt see what thou hast never 

seen.' 
On went the pair, until they reached the 

bound 
Where the great linden stood, set deep in 

snow, 
Up to the lower branches. ' Here we 

stop,' 
Said Eva, ' for my mother has my word 
That I will go no farther than this tree.' 
Then the snow-maiden laughed : ' And 

what is this ? 
This fear of the pure snow, the innocent 

snow, 
That never harmed aught living? Thou 

mayst roam 130 

For leagues beyond this garden, and return 
In safety; here the grim wolf never prowls, 
And here the eagle of our mountain-crags 
Preys not in winter. I will show the 

way, 
And bring thee safely home. Thy mother, 

sure, 
Counselled thee thus because thou hadst no 

guide.' 
By such smooth words was Eva won to 

break 
Her promise, and went on with her new 

friend, 
Over the glistening snow and down a bank 
Where a white shelf, wrought by the eddy- 
ing wind, 140 
Like to a billow's crest in the great sea, 
Curtained an opening. ' Look, we enter 

here.' 
And straight, beneath the fair o'erhanging 

fold, 
Entered the little pair that hill of snow, 
Walking along a passage with white walls, 
And a white vault above where snow-stars 

shed , 

A wintry twilight. Eva moved in awe, 
And held her peace, but the snow-maiden 

smiled, 
And talked and tripped along, as down the 

way, 
Deeper they went into that mountainous 

drift. 150 

And now the white walls widened, and 

the vault 
Swelled upward, like some vast cathedral- 
dome, 
Such as the Florentine, who bore the name 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



27 



Of heaven's most potent angel, reared 

long since, 
Or the unknown builder of that wondrous 

fane, 
The glory of Burgos. Here a garden lay, 
In which the Little People of the Snow 
Were wont to take their pastime when 

their tasks 
Upon the mountain's side and in the clouds 
Were ended. Here they taught the silent 

frost 160 

To mock, in stem and spray, and leaf and 

flower, 
The growths of summer. Here the palm 

upreared 
Its white columnar trunk and spotless 

sheaf 
Of plume-like leaves; here cedars, huge as 

those 
Of Lebanon, stretched far their level 

boughs, 
Yet pale and shadowless; the sturdy oak 
Stood, with its huge gnarled roots of seem- 
ing strength, 
Fast anchored in the glistening bank; light 

sprays 
Of myrtle, roses in their bud and bloom, 
Drooped by the winding walks; yet all 

seemed wrought 170 

Of stainless alabaster; up the trees 
Ran the lithe jessamine, with stalk and 

leaf 
Colorless as her flowers. ' Go softly on,' 
Said the snow-maiden ; ' touch not, with 

thy hand, 
The frail creation round thee, and beware 
To sweep it with thy skirts. Now look 

above. 
How sumptuously these bowers are lighted 

U P . 
With shifting gleams that softly come and 

go! 
These are the northern lights, such as thou 

seest 
In the midwinter nights, cold, wandering 

flames, 180 

That float with our processions, through 

the air; 
And here, within our winter palaces, 
Mimic the glorious daybreak.' Then she 

told 
How, when the wind, in the long winter 

nights, 
Swept the light snows into the hollow dell, 
She and her comrades guided to its place 



Each wandering flake, and piled them 

quaintly up, 
In shapely colonnade and glistening arch, 
With shadowy aisles between, or bade them 

grow, 189 

Beneath their little hands, to bowery walks 
In gardens such as these, and, o'er them all, 
Built the broad roof. ' But thou hast yet 

to see 
A fairer sight,' she said, and led the way 
To where a window of pellucid ice 
Stood in the wall of snow, beside their 

path. 
' Look, but thou mayst not enter.' Eva 

looked, 
And lo ! a glorious hall, from whose high 

vault 
Stripes of soft light, ruddy and delicate 

green, 
And tender blue, flowed downward to the 

floor 
And far around, as if the aerial hosts, 200 
That march on high by night, with beamy 

spears, 
And streaming banners, to that place had 

brought 
Their radiant flags to grace a festival. 
And in that hall a joyous multitude 
Of those by whom its glistening walls were 

reared, 
Whirled in a merry dance to silvery sounds, 
That rang from cymbals of transparent ice, 
And ice-cups, quivering to the skilful touch 
Of little fingers. Bound and round they 

flew, 
As when, in spring, about a chimney-top, 
A cloud of twittering swallows, just re- 
turned, 211 
Wheel round and round, and turn and wheel 

again, 
Unwinding their swift track. So rapidly 
Flowed the meandering stream of that fair 

dance, 
Beneath that dome of light. Bright eyes 

that looked 
From under lily-brows, and gauzy scarfs 
Sparkling like snow-wreaths in the early 

sun, 
Shot by the window in their mazy whirl. 
And there stood Eva, wondering at the 

sight 
Of those bright revellers and that graceful 

sweep 220 

Of motion as they passed her; — long she 

gazed, 



28 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And listened long to the sweet sounds that 

thrilled 
The frosty air, till now the encroaching 

cold 
Recalled her to herself. ' Too long, too 

long 
I linger here,' she said, and then she sprang 
Into the path, and with a hurried step 
Followed it upward. Ever by her side 
Her little guide kept pace. As on they 

went, 
Eva bemoaned her faidt: ' What must they 

think — 229 

The dear ones in the cottage, while so long, 
Hour after hour, I stay without ? I know 
That they will seek me far and near, and 

weep 
To find me not. How could I, wickedly, 
Neglect the charge they gave me ? ' As 

she spoke, 
The hot tears started to her eyes; she knelt 
In the mid-path. ' Father ! forgive this 

sin; 
Forgive myself I cannot ' — thus she 

prayed, 
And rose and hastened onward. When, at 

last, 
They reached the OTiter air, the clear north 

breathed 
A bitter cold, from which she shrank with 

dread, 240 

But the snow-maiden bounded as she felt 
The cutting blast, and uttered shouts of 

joy, 
And skipped, with boundless glee, from 

drift to drift, 
And danced round Eva, as she labored up 
The mounds of snow. ' Ah me ! I feel my 

eyes 
Grow heavy,' Eva said; 'they swim with 

sleep; 
I cannot walk for utter weariness, 
And I must rest a moment on this bank, 
But let it not be long.' As thus she spoke, 
In half -formed .words, she sank on the 

smooth snow, 250 

With closing lids. Her guide composed 

the robe 
About her limbs, and said: ' A pleasant spot 
Is this to slumber in ; on such a couch 
Oft have I slept away the winter night, 
And had the sweetest dreams.' So Eva 

slept, 
But slept in death ; for when the power of 

frost 



Locks up the motions of the living frame, 
The victim passes to the realm of Death 
Through the dim porch of Sleep. The little 

guide, 
Watching beside her, saw the hues of life 
Fade from the fair smooth brow and 

rounded cheek, 261 

As fades the crimson from a morning 

cloud, 
Till they were white as marble, and the 

breath 
Had ceased to come and go, yet knew she 

not 
At first that this was death. But when she 

marked 
How deep the paleness was, how motionless 
That once lithe form, a fear came over her. 
She strove to wake the sleeper, plucked her 

robe, 
And shouted in her ear, but all in vain; 
The life had passed away from those young 

limbs. 270 

Then the snow-maiden raised a wailing 

cry, 
Such as the dweller in some lonely wild, 
Sleepless through all the long December 

night, 
Hears when the mournful East begins to 

blow. 
But suddenly was heard the sound of 

steps, 
Grating on the crisp snow; the cottagers 
Were seeking Eva; from afar they saw 
The twain, and hurried toward them. As 

they came 
With gentle chidings ready on their lips, 
And marked that deathlike sleep, and heard 

the tale 280 

Of the snow-maiden, mortal anguish fell 
Upon their hearts, and bitter words of grief 
And blame were uttered: ' Cruel, cruel 

one, 
To tempt our daughter thus, and cruel we, 
Who suffered her to wander forth alone 
In this fierce cold ! ' They lifted the dear 

child, 
And bore her home and chafed her tender 

limbs, 
And strove, by all the simple arts they 

knew, 
To make the chilled blood move, and win 

the breath 
Back to her bosom ; fruitlessly they strove ; 
The little maid was dead. In blank de- 
spair 29 T 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



29 



They stood, and gazed at her who never 

more 
Should look on them. ' Why die we not 

with her ? ' 
They said; 'Without her, life is bitterness.' 
Now came the funeral-clay; the simple 

folk 
Of all that pastoral region gathered round 
To share the sorrow of the cottagers. 
They carved a way into the mound of snow 
To the glen's side, and dug a little grave 
In the smooth slope, and, following the bier, 
In long procession from the silent door, 301 
Chanted a sad and solemn melody: 

' Lay her away to rest within the ground. 
Yea, lay her down whose pure and innocent 

life 
Was spotless as these snows; for she was 

reared 
In love, and passed in love life's pleasant 

spring, 
And all that now our tenderest love can 

do 
Is to give burial to her lifeless limbs.' 
They paused. A thousand slender voices 

round, 309 

Like echoes softly flung from rock and hill, 
Took up the strain, and all the hollow air 
Seemed mourning for the dead; for, on 

that day, 
The Little People of the Snow had come, 
From mountain-peak, and cloud, and icy 

hall, 
To Eva's burial. As the murmur died, 
The funeral-tram renewed the solemn chant: 
' Thou, Lord, hast taken her to be with 

Eve, 
Whose gentle name was given her. Even 

so, 
For so thy wisdom saw that it was best 
For her and us. We bring our bleeding 

hearts, 320 

And ask the touch of healing from thy 

hand, 
As, with submissive tears, we render back 
The lovely and beloved to Him who gave.' 
They ceased. Again the plaintive mur- 
mur rose. 
From shadowy skirts of low-hung cloud it 

came, 
And wide white fields, and fir-trees capped 

with snow, 
Shivering to the sad sounds. They sank 

away 
To silence in the dim-seen distant woods. 



The little grave was closed; the funeral- 
train 
Departed; winter wore away; the Spring 
Steeped, with her quickening rains, the 

violet-tufts, 331 

By fond hands planted where the maiden 

slept. 
But, after Eva's burial, never more 
The Little People of the Snow were seen 
By human eye, nor ever human ear 
Heard from their lips articulate speech 

again; 
For a decree went forth to cut them off, 
Forever, from communion with mankind. 
The winter-clouds, along the mountainside, 
Rolled downward toward the vale, but no 

fair form 340 

Leaned from their folds, and, in the icy 

glens, 
And aged woods, under snow-loaded pines, 
Where once they made their haunt, was 

emptiness. 
But ever, when the wintry days drew 

near, 
Around that little grave, in the long night, 
Frost-wreaths were laid and tufts of silvery 

rime 
In shape like blades and blossoms of the 

field 
As one would scatter flowers upon a bier. 
1863. 1864. 



THE POET 

Thou who wouldst wear the name 

Of poet 'mid thy brethren of mankind, 

And clothe in words of flame 

Thoughts that shall live within the gen- 
eral mind ! 

Deem not the framing of a deathless lay 

The pastime of a drowsy summer day. 

But gather all thy powers, 

And wreak them on the verse that thou 
dost weave, 
And in thy lonely hours, 

At silent morning or at wakeful eve, 10 
While the warm current tingles through 

thy veins 
Set forth the burning words in fluent 
strains. 

No smooth array of phrase, 

Artfully sought and ordered though it be, 



3° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Which the cold rhymer lays 

Upon his page with languid industry, 
Can wake the listless pulse to livelier 

speed, 
Or fill with sudden tears the eyes that 

read. 

The secret wouldst thou know 

To touch the heart or fire the blood at 
will ? 20 

Let thine own eyes o'erflow; 

Let thy lips quiver with the passionate 
thrill; 
Seize the great thought, ere yet its power 

be past, 
And bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast. 

Then, should thy verse appear 

Halting and harsh, and all unaptly 
wrought, 
Touch the crude line with fear, 

Save in the moment of impassioned 
thought; 
Then summon back the original glow, and 

mend 
The strain with rapture that with fire was 
penned. 30 

Yet let no empty gust 

Of passion find an utterance in thy lay, 
A blast that whirls the dust 

Along the howling street and dies away; 
But feelings of calm power and jpiighty 

sweep, 
Like currents journeying through the wind- 
less deep. 

Seek'st thou, in living lays, 

To limn the beauty of the earth and 
sky? _ 
Before thine inner gaze 

Let all that beauty in clear vision lie ; 40 
Look on it with exceeding love, and write 
The words inspired by wonder and de- 
light. 

Of tempests wouldst thou sing, 

Or tell of battles — make thyself a part 
Of the great tumult; cling 

To the tossed wreck with terror in thy 
heart; 
Scale, with the assaulting host, the ram- 
part's height, 
And strike and struggle in the thickest 
fight. 



So shalt thou frame a lay 

That haply may endure from age to age, 

And they who read shall say: 51 

' What witchery hangs upon this poet's 

page ! 

What art is his the written spells to find 

That sway from mood to mood the willing 

mind !' 
1863. 1864. 



MY AUTUMN WALK 

On woodlands ruddy with autumn 

The amber sunshine lies; 
I look on the beauty round me, 

And tears come into my eyes. 

For the wind that sweeps the meadows 
Blows out of the far Southwest, 

Where our gallant men are fighting, 
And the gallant dead are at rest. 

The golden-rod is leaning, 

And the purple aster waves 10 

In a breeze from the land of battles, 

A breath from the land of graves. 

Full fast the leaves are dropping 
Before that wandering breath; 

As fast, on the field of battle, 
Our brethren fall in death. 

Beautiful over my pathway 

The forest spoils are shed; 
They are spotting the grassy hillocks 

With purple and gold and red. 20 

Beautiful is the death-sleep 

Of those who bravely fight 
In their country's holy quarrel, 

And perish for the Right. 

But who shall comfort the living, 
The light of whose homes is gone: 

The bride that, early widowed, 
Lives broken-hearted on; 

The matron whose sons are lying 

In graves on a distant shore ; 30 

The maiden, whose promised husband 
Comes back from the war no more ? 

I look on the peaceful dwellings 
Whose windows glimmer in sight, 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



3i 



With croft and garden and orchard, 
That bask in the mellow light; 

And I know that, when our couriers 

With news of victory come, 
They will bring a bitter message 

Of hopeless grief to some. 40 

Again I turn to the woodlands, 

And shudder as I see 
The mock-grape's blood-red banner 

Himg out on the cedar-tree; 

And I think of days of slaughter, 
And the night-sky red with flames, 

On the Chattahoochee's meadows, 
And the wasted banks of the James. 

Oh, for the fresh spring-season, 

When the groves are in their prime ; 50 

And far away in the future 
Is the frosty autumn-time ! 

Oh, for that better season, 

When the pride of the foe shall yield, 
And the hosts of God and Freedom 

March back from the well- won field; 

And the matron shall clasp her first- 
born 

With tears of joy and pride ; 
And the scarred and war-worn lover 

Shall claim his promised bride ! 60 

The leaves are swept from the branches; 

But the living buds are there, 
With folded flower and foliage, 

To sprout in a kinder air. 
October, 1864. January, 1865. 



THE DEATH OF LINCOLN 1 

Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare, 
Gentle and merciful and just ! 

Who, in the fear of God, didst bear 
The sword of power, a nation's trust ! 

In sorrow by thy bier we stand, 
Amid the awe that hushes all, 

And speak the anguish of a land 
That shook with horror at thy fall. 

1 Bryant wrote this poem for the day when Lin- 
coln's body was carried in funeral procession through 
the streets of New York city. 



Thy task is done; the bond are free: 
We bear thee to an honored grave, 

Whose proudest monument shall be 
The broken fetters of the slave. 

Pure was thy life; its bloody close 

Hath placed thee with the sons of light, 

Among the noble host of those 

Who perished in the cause of Right. 

April, 1865. January, 1866. 

A LIFETIME 

I sit in the early twilight, 

And, through the gathering shade, 

I look on the fields around me 
Where yet a child 1 played. 

And I peer into the shadows, 
Till they seem to pass away, 

And the fields and their tiny brooklet 
Lie clear in the light of day. 

A delicate child and slender, 

With locks of light-brown hair, 10 

From knoll to knoll is leaping 

In the breezy summer air. 

He stoops to gather blossoms 

Where the running waters shine; 

And I look on him with wonder, 
His eyes are so like mine. 

I look till the fields and brooklet 

Swim like a vision by, 
And a room in a lowly dwelling 

Lies clear before my eye. 20 

There stand, in the clean-swept fireplace, 
Fresh boughs from the wood in bloom, 

And the birch-tree's fragrant branches 
Perfume the humble room. 

And there the child is standing 

By a stately lady's knee, 
And reading of ancient peoples 

And realms beyond the sea: 

Of the cruel King of Egypt 

Who made God's people slaves, 30 

And perished, with all his army, 

Drowned in the Red Sea waves; 

Of Deborah who mustered 
Her brethren long oppressed, 



32 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And routed the heathen army, 
And gave her people rest; 

And the sadder, gentler story- 
How Christ, the crucified, 

With a prayer for those who slew Him, 
Forgave them as He died. 4 o 

I look again, and there rises 

A forest wide and wild, 
And in it the boy is wandering, 

No longer a little child. 

He murmurs his own rude verses 
As he roams the woods alone; 

And again I gaze with wonder, 
His eyes are so like my own. 

I see him next in his chamber, 

Where he sits him down to write 50 
The rhymes he framed in his ramble, 

And he cons them with delight. 

A kindly figure enters, 

A man of middle age, 
And points to a line just written, 

And 't is blotted from the page. 

And next, in a hall of justice, 
Scarce grown to manly years, 

'Mid the hoary-headed wranglers 

The slender youth appears. 60 

With a beating heart he rises, 

And with a burning cheek, 
And the judges kindly listen 

To hear the youug man speak. 

Another change, and I see him 
Approach his dwelling-place, 

Where a fair-haired woman meets him, 
With a smile on her young face — 

A smile that spreads a sunshine 

On lip and cheek and brow; 70 

So sweet a smile there is not 
In all the wide earth now. 

She leads by the hand their first-born, 

A fair-haired little one, 
And their eyes as they meet him sparkle 

Like brooks in the morning sun. 

Another change, and I see him 
Where the city's ceaseless coil 



Sends up a mighty murmur 

From a thousand modes of toil. So 

And there, 'mid the clash of presses, 

He plies the rapid pen 
In the battles of opinion, 

That divide the sons of men. 

I look, and the clashing presses 
And the town are seen no more, 

But there is the poet wandering 
A strange and foreign shore. 

He has crossed the mighty ocean 

To realms that lie afar, 90 

In the region of ancient story, 
Beneath the morning star. 

And now he stands in wonder 

On an icy Alpine height; 
Now pitches his tent in the desert 

Where the jackal yells at night; 

Now, far on the North Sea islands, 
Sees day on the midnight sky, 

Now gathers the fair strange fruitage 
Where the isles of the Southland lie. 

I see him again at his dwelling, 101 

Where, over the little lake, 
The rose-trees droop in their beauty 

To meet the image they make. 

Though years have whitened his temples, 
His eyes have the first look still, 

Save a shade of settled sadness, 
A forecast of coming ill. 

For in that pleasant dwelling, 

On the rack of ceaseless pain, no 

Lies she who smiled so sweetly, 

And prays for ease in vain. 

And I know that his heart is breaking, 

When, over those dear eyes, 
The darkness slowly gathers, 

And the loved and loving dies. 

A grave is scooped on the hillside 
Where often, at eve or morn, 

He lays the blooms of the garden — 
He, and his youngest born. 120 

And well I know that a brightness 
From his life has passed away, 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



33 



And a smile from the green earth's beauty, 
And a glory from the day. 

But I behold, above him, 

In the far blue deeps of air, 
Dim battlements shining faintly, 

And a throng of faces there ; 

See over crystal barrier 

The airy figures bend, 130 

Like those who are watching and waiting 

The coming of a friend. 

And one there is among them, 

With a star upon her brow, 
In her life a lovely woman, 

A sinless seraph now. 

I know the sweet calm features; 

The peerless smile I know, 
And I stretch my arms with transport 

From where I stand below. 140 

And the quick tears drown my eyelids, 

But the airy figures fade, 
And the shining battlements darken 

And blend with the evening shade. 

I am gazing into the twilight 

Where the dim-seen meadows lie, 

And the wind of night is swaying 
The trees with a heavy sigh. 

1876 ? 1876. 



THE FLOOD OF YEARS 

A mighty Hand, from an exhaustless Urn, 
Pours forth the never-ending Flood of 

Years, 
Among the nations. How the rushing waves 
Bear all before them ! On their foremost 

edge, 
And there alone, is Life. The Present there 
Tosses and foams, and fills the air with 

roar 
Of mingled noises. There are they who toil, 
And they who strive, and they who feast, 

and they 
Who hurry to and fro. The sturdy swain — 
Woodman and delver with the spade — is 

there, 10 

And busy artisan beside his bench, 
And pallid student with his written roll. 
A moment on the mounting billow seen, 



The flood sweeps over them and they are 

gone. 
There groups of revellers whose brows are 

twined 
With roses, ride the topmost swell awhile, 
And as they raise their flowing cups and 

touch 
The clinking brim to brim, are whirled be- 
neath 
The waves and disappear. I hear the jar 
Of beaten drums, and thunders that break 

forth 20 

From cannon, where the advancing billow 

sends 
Up to the sight long files of armed men, 
That hurry to the charge through flame and 

smoke. 
The torrent bears them under, whelmed and 

hid 
Slayer and slain, in heaps of bloody foam. 
Down go the steed and rider, the plumed 

chief 
Sinks with his followers; the head that 

wears 
The imperial diadem goes down beside 
The felon's with cropped ear and branded 

cheek. 
A funeral-train — the torrent sweeps away 
Bearers and bier and mourners. By the 

bed 3 i 

Of one who dies men gather sorrowing, 
And women weep aloud ; the flood rolls 

on; 
The wail is stifled and the sobbing group 
Borne under. Hark to that shrill, sudden 

shout, 
The cry of an applauding multitude, 
Swayed by some loud-voiced orator who 

wields 
The living mass as if he were its soul ! 
The waters choke the shout and all is still. 
Lo ! next a kneeling crowd, and one who 

spreads 4 o 

The hands in prayer — the engulfing wave 

o'ertakes 
And swallows them and him. A sculptor 

wields 
The chisel, and the stricken marble grows 
To beauty; at his easel, eager-eyed, 
A painter stands, and sunshine at his touch 
Gathers upon his canvas, and life glows; 
A poet, as he paces to and fro, 
Murmurs his sounding lines. Awhile they 

ride 
The advancing billow, till its tossing crest 



34 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Strikes them and flings them under, while 

their tasks so. 

Are yet unfinished. See a mother smile 
On her young babe that smiles to her again; 
The torrent wrests it from her arms; she 

shrieks 
And weeps, and midst her tears is carried 

down. 
A beam like that of moonlight turns the 

spray 
To glistening pearls; two lovers, hand in 

hand, 
Rise on the billowy swell and fondly look 
Into each other's eyes. The rushing flood 
Flings them apart: the youth goes down; 

the maid 
With hands outstretched in vain, and 

streaming eyes, 60 

Waits for the next high wave to follow 

him. 
An aged man succeeds; his bending form 
Sinks slowly. Mingling with the sullen 

stream 
Gleam the white locks, and then are seen 

no more. 
Lo ! wider grows the stream — a sea-like 

flood 
Saps earth's walled cities ; massive palaces 
Crumble before it; fortresses and towers 
Dissolve in the swift waters; populous 

realms 
Swept by the torrent see their ancient 

tribes 
Engidfed and lost; their very languages 70 
Stifled, and never to be uttered more. 
I pause and turn my eyes, and looking 

back 
Where that tumultudus flood has been, I 

see 
The silent ocean of the Past, a waste 
Of waters weltering over graves, its shores 
Strewn with the wreck of fleets where 

mast and hull 
Drop away piecemeal; battlemented walls 
Frown idly, green with moss, and temples 

stand 
Unroofed, forsaken by the worshipper. 
There lie memorial stones, whence time 

has gnawed 80 

The graven legends, thrones of kings o'er- 

turned, 
The broken altars of forgotten gods, 
Foundations of old cities and long streets 
Where never fall of human foot is heard, 
On all the desolate pavement. I behold 



Dim glimmerings of lost jewels, far within 
The sleeping waters, diamond, sardonyx, 
Ruby and topaz, pearl and chrysolite, 
Once glittering at the banquet on fair 

brows 
That long ago were dust, and all around 90 
Strewn on the surface of that silent sea 
Are withering bridal wreaths, and glossy 

locks 
Shorn from dear brows, by loving hands, 

and scrolls 
O'erwritten, haply with fond words of love 
And vows of friendship, and fair pages 

flung 
Fresh from the printer's engine. There 

they lie 
A moment, and then sink away from sight. 
I look, and the quick tears are in my 

eyes, 
For I behold in every one of these 
A blighted hope, a separate history " 100 
Of human sorrows, telling of dear ties 
Suddenly broken, dreams of happiness 
Dissolved in air, and happy days too brief 
That sorrowfully ended, and I think 
How painfully must the poor heart have 

beat 
In bosoms without number, as the blow 
Was struck that slew their hope and broke 

their peace. 
Sadly I turn and look before, where yet 
The Flood must pass, and I behold a mist 
Where swarm dissolving forms, the brood 

of Hope, no 

Divinely fair, that rest on banks of flowers, 
Or wander among rainbows, fading soon 
And reappearing, haply giving place 
To forms of grisly aspect such as Fear 
Shapes from the idle air — where serpents 

lift 
The head to strike, and skeletons stretch 

forth 
The bony arm in menace. Further on 
A belt of darkness seems to bar the way, 
Long, low, and distant, where the Life to 

come 
Touches the Life that is. The Flood of 

Years 120 

Rolls toward it near and nearer. It must 

pass 
That dismal barrier. What is there be- 
yond ? 
Hear what the wise and good have said. 

Beyond 
That belt of darkness, still the Years roll on 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 



35 



More gently, but with not less mighty 

sweep. 
They gather up again and softly bear 
All the sweet lives that late were over- 
whelmed 
And lost to sight, all that in them was good, 
Noble, and truly great, and worthy of 
love — 129 

The lives of infants and ingenuous youths, 
Sages and saintly women who have made 
Their households happy ; all are raised and 

borne 
By that great current in its onward sweep, 
Wandering and rippling with caressing 

waves 
Around green islands with the breath 
Of flowers that never wither. So they pass 
From stage to stage along the shining 

course 
Of that bright river, broadening like a sea 
As its smooth eddies curl along their way. 



They bring old friends together; hands are 
clasped 140 

In joy unspeakable ; the mother's arms 
Again are folded round the child she loved 
And lost. Old sorrows are forgotten now, 
Or but femembered to make sweet the 

hour 
That overpays them; wounded hearts that 

bled 
Or broke are healed forever. In the room 
Of this grief-shadowed present, there shall 

be 
A Present in whose reign no grief shall 

gnaw 
The heart, and never shall a tender tie 
Be broken; in whose reign the eternal 
Change 150 

That waits on growth and action shall pro- 
ceed 
With everlasting Concord hand in hand. 
1876. 1876. 



EDQAR ALLAN POE 



TAMERLANE » 

Kind solace in a dying- hour ! 2 

Such, father, is not (now) my theme — 8 
I will not madly deem that power 

1 'Tamerlane,' wmoh first appeared in 1827 in Tamer- 
lane and Other Poems, was entirely re-written lor Poe's 
volume of 1829, A{ Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor 
Poems. The text of the poem as here given is practi- 
cally that of 1829. It follows the edition of 1S45 (as 
given in the Virginia and Stedman-Woodberry editions 
of Poe's works), but the differences of this edition from 
that of 1829 are confined (with one exception) to mat- 
ters of punctuation and typography. The edition of 
1S31 offers somewhat greater variations, all of which are 
carefully recorded in the notes of both the Virginia and 
the Stedman-Woodberry editions. The version of lS'JT 
is given complete in the notes to both these editions, 
and may also be found in Mr. R. H. Shepherd's complete 
reprint of the 1S27 volume (London, 1S84). 

The subject of the poem, not very clear at first read- 
ing, is the evil triumph of ambition over love, illus- 
trated in the career of the Mogul emperor Tamerlane, 
■who, according to the story as conceived by Poe, was 
born a shepherd, left his mountain home and his early 
love for the conquest of the eastern world, and returned 
only to find that his love had died of his neglect. 

The well-worn device of a death-bed narrative to the 
conventional friar is lamely excused by Poe in his first 
note to the 1S27 edition : ' How I shall account for 
giving him " a friar " as a death-bed confessor, — I can- 
not exactly determine. He wanted some one to listen 
to his tale — and why not a friar 1 It does not pass the 
bounds of possibility, — quite sufficient for my purpose, 
— and I have at least good authority on my side for such 
innovations.' 

- The beginning of the poem is somewhat clearer in 
the 1S2T version : — 

I have sent for thee, holv friar : 
But 't was not with the drunken hope. 
Which is hut agony of desire 
To shun the fate, with which to cope 
Is more than crime may dare to dream, 
That I have eall'd thee at this hour : 
Such, father, is not my theme — 
Nor am 1 mad, to doom that power 
Of earth may shrive me of the sin 
Unearthly pride hath fevell'd in — 
I would not call thee fool, old man. 
But hope is not a sift of thine ; 
If I can hope (O God ! I can) 
It falls from an eternal shrine. 

The gay wall of this gaudy tower 
Grows aim around me — death is near. 
I had not thought, until this hour 
When passing from the earth, that ear 
Of any, were it not the shade 
Of one whom in life I made 
All mystery but a simple name. 
Might know the secret of a spirit 
Bow'd down in sorrow, and in shame. — 

3 Poe's own somewhat peculiar punctuation is fol- 
lowed throughout, as given in the Virginia edition of 
Poe's Works. Faithfulness to this punctuation, about 
which Poe was particular, makes the Virginia edition, 
in text, superior to all others. 



Of Earth may shrive me of the sin 
Unearthly pride hath revell'd in — 
I have no time to dote or dream: 
You call it hope — that fire of fire ! 
It is but agony of desire: 
If I can hope — O God! I can — 

Its fount is holier — more divine — io 
I woidd not call thee fool^ old man, 
But such is not a gift of thine. 

Know thou the secret of a spirit 

Bow'd from its wild pride into shame. 

yearning heart! I did inherit 

Thy withering portion with the fame, 

The searing glory which hath shone 

Amid the Jewels of my throne, 

Halo of Hell ! and with a pain 

Not Hell shall make me fear again — 20 

craving heart, for the lost flowers 
And sunshine of my summer hours! 
The undying voice of that dead time, 
With its interminable chime, 
Rings, in the spirit of a spell, 
Upon thy emptiness — a knell. 

1 have not always been as now: 
The fever 'd diadem on my brow 

I clamrd and won usurpingly 

Hath not the same fierce heirdom given 30 
Rome to the Ca?sar — this to me ? 
The heritage of a kingly mind, 
And a proud spirit which hath striven 
Triumphantly with human kind. 

On mountain soil I first drew life: 
The mists of the Tagiay have shed 4 
Nightly their dews upon my head, 

And, I believe, the winged strife 

And tumult of the headlong air 

Have nestled in my very hair. 40 

So late from Heaven — that dew — it fell 

( 'Mid dreams of an unholy night) 
Upon me with the touch of Hell, 

4 The mountains of Belur Tagiay are a branch of the 
Imaus. in the southern part of Independent Tartary. 
They are celebrated for the singular wildness and beauty 
of their valleys. (Poe, 1S2T.) 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 



37 



While the red flashing of the light 
From clouds that hung, like banners, o'er, 
Appeared to my half-closing eye 
The pageantry of monarchy, 
And the deep trumpet-thunder's roar 
Came hurriedly upon me, telling 

Of human battle, where my voice, 50 
My own voice, silly child ! — was swel- 
ling 
(O ! how my spirit would rejoice, 
And leap within me at the cry) 
The battle-cry of Victory ! 

The rain came down upon my head 
Unshelter'd — and the heavy wind 
Rendered me mad and deaf and blind. 
It was but man, I thought, who shed 
Laurels upon me: and the rush — 
The torrent of the chilly air 60 

Gurgled within my ear the crash 

Of empires — with the captive's prayer — 
The hum of suitors — and the tone 
Of flattery 'round a sovereign's throne. 

My passions, from that hapless hour, 

Usurp'd a tyranny which men 
Have deem'd, since I have reach'd to power, 
My innate nature — be it so : 

But, father, there liv'd one who, then, 
Then — in my boyhood — when their fire 70 

Burn'd with a still intenser glow 
(For passion must, with youth, expire) 

E'en then who knew this iron heart 

In woman's weakness had a part. 

I have no words — alas ! — to tell 
The loveliness of loving well ! 
Nor would I now attempt to trace 
The more than beauty of a face 
Whose lineaments, upon my mind, 

Are shadows on th' .unstable wind: 80 

Thus I remember having dwelt 

Some page of early lore upon, 
With loitering eye, till I have felt 
The letters — with their meaning — melt 

To fantasies — with none. 

O, she was worthy of all love ! 

Love — as in infancy was mine — 
'T was such as angel minds above 

Might envy; her young heart the shrine 
On which my every hope and thought 90 

Were incense — then a goodly gift, 
For they were childish and upright — 
Pure as her young example taught: 



Why did I leave it, and, adrift, 
Trust to the fire within, for light ? 

We grew in age — and love together — 

Roaming the forest, and the wild ; 

My breast her shield in wintry weather — 
And, when the friendly sunshine smil'd, 

And she would mark the opening skies, 100 

/ saw no Heaven — but in her eyes. 

Young Love's first lesson is — the heart : 

For 'mid that sunshine, and those smiles, 
When, from our little cares apart, 

And laughing at her girlish wiles, 
I 'd throw me on her throbbing breast, 

And pour my spirit out in tears — 
There was no need to speak the rest — 

No need to quiet any fears 
Of her — who ask'd no reason why, no 

But turn'd on me her quiet eye ! 

Yet more than worthy of the love 
My spirit struggled with, and strove, 
When, on the mountain peak, alone, 
Ambition lent it a new tone — 
I had no being — but in thee : 

The world, and all it did contain 
In the earth — the air — the sea — 

Its joy — its little lot of pain 
That was new pleasure the ideal, 120 

Dim, vanities of dreams by night — 
And dimmer nothings which were real — 

(Shadows — and a more shadowy light !) 
Parted upon their misty wings, 
And, so, confusedly, became 
Thine image and — a name — a name ! 
Two separate — yet most intimate~things. 

I was ambitious — have you known 

The passion, father ? You have not : 
A cottager, I mark'd a throne 130 

Of half the world as all my own, 

And murmur'd at such lowly lot — 
But, just like any other dream, 

Upon the vapor of the dew 
My own had past, did not the beam 

Of beauty which did while it thro' 
The minute — the hour — the day — op- 
press 
My mind with double loveliness. 1 

1 The last two paragraphs, twenty-seven lines in all, 
should be compared with the corresponding para- 
graphs (numbered vii and viii) in the version of 1827, 
which contain seventy-one lines, in order to appreciate 
the greater condensation and strength of the 1829 ver- 
sion. The advance which Poe made between these two 



3§ 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



We walk'd together on the crown 

Of a high mountain which look'd down 140 

Afar from its proud natural towers 

Of rock and forest, on the hills — 
The dwindled hills ! begirt with bowers 

And shouting with a thousand rills. 

I spoke to her of power and pride, 

But mystically — in such guise 
That she might deem it nought beside 

The moment's converse ; in her eyes 
I read, perhaps too carelessly — 

A mingled feeling with my own — 150 
The flush on her bright cheek, to me 

Seem'd to become a queenly throne 
Too well that I should let it be 

Light in the wilderness alone. 

I wrapp'd myself in grandeur then 

And donn'd a visionary crown 

Yet it was not that Fantasy 
Had thrown her mantle over me — 
But that, among the rabble — men, 

Lion ambition is chain'd down — 160 
And crouches to a keeper's hand — 
Not so in deserts where the grand — 
The wild — the terrible conspire 
With their own breath to fan his fire. 1 

Look 'round thee now on Samarcand ! 2 — 

Is she not queen of Earth ? her pride 
Above all cities ? in her hand 

Their destinies ? in all beside 
Of glory which the world hath known 
Stands she not nobly and alone ? 170 

Falling — her veriest stepping-stone 
Shall form the pedestal of a throne — 
And who her sovereign ? Timour s — he 

Whom the astonished people saw 
Striding o'er empires haughtily 

A diadem'd outlaw ! 

O, human love ! thou spirit given, 
On Earth, of all we hope in Heaven ! 
Which fall'st into the soul like rain 
Upon the Siroc-wither'd plain, 180 

versions, the way in which he 'found himself,' is 
strikingly illustrated by the characteristic suggestive- 
ness, beauty, and perhaps vagueness of expression in 
these two paragraphs as they now stand. 

1 These ten lines have taken the place of ninety- 
three lines (sections xi-xiv) in the 1827 edition. 

2 I believe it was after the battle of Angora that 
Tamerlane made Samarcand his residence. It became 
for a time the seat of learning and the arts. (Poe, 1827.) 

3 He was called Timur Bek as well as Tamerlane. 
(Poe, 1827.) 



And, failing in thy power to bless, 
But leav'st the heart a wilderness ! 
Idea ! which bindest life around 
With music of so strange a sound 
And beauty of so wild a birth — 
Farewell ! for I have won the Earth. 

When Hope, the eagle that tower'd, could 

see 
No cliff beyond him in the sky, 
His pinions were bent droopingly — 
And homeward turn'd his soften'd eye. 4 igo 
'T was sunset: when the sun will part 
There comes a sullenness of heart 
To him who still would look upon 
The glory of the summer sun. 
That soul will hate the ev'ning mist 
So often lovely, and will list 
To the sound of the coming darkness 

(known 
To those whose spirits harken) as one 
Who, in a dream of night, would fly 
But cannot from a danger nigh. 200 

What tho' the moon — the white moon 
Shed all the splendor of her noon, 
Her smile is chilly — and her beam, 
In that time of dreariness, will seem 
(So like you gather in your breath) 
A portrait taken after death. 

And boyhood is a summer sun 

Whose waning is the dreariest one — 

For all we live to know is known 

And all we seek to keep hath flown — 210 

Let life, then, as the day-flower, fall 

With the noon-day beauty — which is all. 

I reach'd my home — my home no more — 
For all had flown who made it so. 

I pass'd from out its mossy door, 

And, tho' my tread was soft and low, 

A voice came from the threshold stone 

Of one whom I had earlier known — 
O, I defy thee, Hell, to show 
On beds of fire that burn below, 220 

An humbler heart — a deeper woe. 



4 At this point the story is given more clearly in the 
version of 1827 : — 



My eyes were still on pomp and power, 
My wilder'd heart was far away 
In the valleys of the wild Taglay, 
In mine own Ada's matted bower. 
I dwelt not long in Samarcand 
Ere, in a peasant's lowlv guise, 
I sought my long-abandon'd land ; 
By sunset did its mountains rise 
In dusky grandeur to my eyes. 






EDGAR ALLAN POE 



39 



Father, I firmly do believe — * 

I know — for Death who comes for me 
From regions of the blest afar, 
Where there is nothing to deceive, 
Hath left his iron gate ajar, 
And rays of truth you cannot see 

Are flashing thro' Eternity 

I do believe that Eblis hath 
A snare in every human path — 230 

Else how, when hi the holy grove 
I wandered of the idol, Love, 
Who daily scents his snowy wings 
With incense of burnt offerings 
From the most unpolluted things, 
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven 
Above with trellic'd rays from Heaven 
No mote may shun — no tiniest fly — 
The light'ning of his eagle eye — 
How was it that Ambition crept, 240 

Unseen, amid the revels there, 
Till growing bold, lie laughed and leapt 
In the tangles of Love's very hair ? 
18219-1829 . 2 1827, 1827. 



TO 

I saw thee on thy bridal day — 

When a burning blush came o'er thee, 

Though happiness around thee lay, 
The world all love before thee : 

And in thine eye a kindling light 

(Whatever it might be) 
Was all on Earth my aching sight 

Of Loveliness could see. 

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame — 
As such it well may pass — 

1 This last paragraph of the poem was added in the 
edition of 1829. 

2 In his preface to the original edition of Tamerlane, 
Poe says : ' The greater part of the poems which com- 
pose this little volume were written in the year 1821- 
1822, when the author had not completed his fourteenth 
year.' This statement is not to be trusted implicitly. 
But even if we assign the composition of these poems 
to the latest possible date, 1826-1827, the early develop- 
ment of their author seems hardly the less remarkable ; 
for he would then be only seventeen or eighteen years 
old. Keats was almost twenty-two at the time when 
his first volume was published. 4 Both in promise and 
in actual performance,' says Mr. Shepherd in his pre- 
face to the 1884 reprint of Tamerlane and Other Poems 
(quoted by Mr. Harrison), ' it may claim to rank as the 
most remarkable production that any English-speaking 
or English-writing poet of this century has published 
in his teens.' Poe was only eighteen years old when 
the volume wr s published, and it is interesting to note 
that the printer and publisher of the book, Calvin 
Thomas of Boston, was then only nineteen years old. 



Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame 
In the breast of him, alas ! 

Who saw thee on that bridal day, 

When that deep blush would come o'er 
thee, 

Though happiness around thee lay, 
The world all love before thee. 

1820. 1827. 

SONG FROM AL AARAAF 

'Neath blue-bell or streamer — 

Or tufted wild spray 
That keeps, from the dreamer, 

The moonbeam away — 
Bright beings ! that ponder, 

With half closing eyes, 
On the stars which your wonder 

Hath drawn from the skies, 
'Till they glance thro' the shade, and 

Come down to your brow 10 

Like eyes of the maiden 

Who calls on you now — 
Arise ! from your dreaming 

In violet bowers, 
To duty beseeming 

These star-litten hours — 
And shake from your tresses 

Encumber'd with dew 
The breath of those kisses 

That cumber them too — 20 

3 This song was introduced in the second part of ' Al 
Aaraaf ' as being sung to summon the spirit of music, 
or better the spirit of universal harmony. One of the 
most beautiful of Poe's tales, called ' Ligeia,' is an 
even finer embodiment of this conception. 

Mr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson gives in his Short 
Studies of American. Authors some vivid reminiscences 
of the evening when Poe read ' Al Aaraaf ' to an audi- 
ence in Boston. The story is told in more condensed 
form in Higginson and Boynton's Reader's History of 
American Literature, page 214 : 'The verses had long 
since been printed in his youthful volume . . . and 
they produced no very distinct impression on the audi- 
ence until Poe began to read the maiden's song in the 
second part. Already his tones had been softening to 
a finer melody than at first, and when he came to the 
verses, — 

Ligeia ! Ligeia I 

My beautiful one ! 

his voice seemed attenuated to the faintest golden 
thread ; the audience became hushed, and, as it were, 
breathless ; there seemed no life in the hall but his ; and 
every syllable was accentuated with such delicacy, and 
sustained with such sweetness, as I never heard equaled 
by other lips. When the lyric ended, it was like the 
ceasing of the gypsy's chant in Browning's " Flight of 
the Duchess ; " and I remember nothing more, except 
that in walking back to Cambridge my comrades and I 
felt that we had been under the spell of some wizard. 
Indeed, I feel much the same in the retrospect, to this 
day.' 



4-0 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



(0 ! how, without you, Love ! 

Could angels be blest ?) 
Those kisses of true love 

That lull'd ye to rest ! 
Up ! — shake from your wing 

Each hindering thing: 
The dew of the night — 

It would weigh down your flight; 
And true love caresses — 

O ! leave them apart ! 
They are light on the tresses, 

But lead on the heart. 

Ligeia! Ligeia! 

My beautiful one ! 
Whose harshest idea 

Will to melody run, 
O! is it thy will 

On the breezes to toss ? 
Or, capriciously still, 

Like the lone Albatross, 
Incumbent on night 

(As she on the air) 
To keep watch with delight 

On the harmony there ? 

Ligeia ! wherever 

Thy image may be, 
No magic shall sever 

Thy music from thee. 
Thou hast bound many eyes 

In a dreamy sleep — 
But the strains still arise 

Which thy vigilance keep — 
The sound of the rain 

Which leaps down to the flower, 
And dances again 

In the rhythm of the shower — 
The murmur that springs 

From the growing of grass 
Are the music of things — 

But are modell'd, alas ! — 
Away, then my dearest, 

O ! hie thee away 
To springs that lie clearest 

Beneath the moon-ray — 
To lone lake that smiles, 

In its dream of deep rest, 
At the many star-isles 

That enjewel its breast — 
Where wild flowers, creeping, 

Have mingled their shade, 
On its margin is sleeping 

Full many a maid — 
Some have left the cool glade, and 



Have slept with the bee — 
Arouse them my maiden, 

On moorland and lea — 
Go ! breathe on their slumber, 

All softly in ear, 
The musical number 

They slumber 'd to hear — 
For what can awaken 

An angel so soon 
Whose sleep hath been taken 

Beneath the cold moon, 
As the spell which no slumber 

Of witchery may test, 
The rhythmical number 

Which lull'd him to rest ? 



1S29? 



1821). 



ROMANCE 



Romance, who loves to nod and sing, 
With drowsy head and folded wing, 
Among the green leaves as they shake 
Far down within some shadowy lake, 
To me a painted paroquet 
Hath been — a most familiar bird — 
Taiight me my alphabet to say — 
To lisp my very earliest word 
While in the wild wood I did lie, 
A child — with a most knowing eye. 

Of late, eternal Condor years 
So shake the very Heaven on high 
With tumult as they thunder by, 
I have no time for idle cares 
Through gazing on the unquiet sky. 
And when an hour with calmer wings 
Its down upon my spirit flings — 
That little time with lyre and rhyme 
To while away — forbidden things ! 
My heart woidd feel to be a crime 
Unless it trembled with the strings. 

1829. 



SONNET — TO SCIENCE 

Science ! true daughter of Old Time thou 

art! 
Who alterest all thim ring 

eyes. 
Why preyest thou th <et's 

heart, 
Vulture, whose wings a litiea ? 

How should he love t' 3em 

thee wise, 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 



4i 



Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering 
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, 
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing ? 
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car ? 
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood 
To seek a shelter in some happier star ? 
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, 
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me 
The summer dream beneath the tamarind 
tree? 

1829. 

TO 

The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see 

The wantonest singing birds, 
Are lips — and all thy melody 

Of lip-begotten words — 

Thine eyes, in Heaven of heart enshrined 

Then desolately fall, 
God ! on my funereal mind 

Like starlight on a pall — 

Thy heart — thy heart ! — I wake and sigh, 

And sleep to dream till day 
Of the truth that gold can never buy — 

Of the baubles that it may. 

1829. 

TO 

I heed not that my earthly lot 

Hath little of Earth in it, 
That years of love have been forgot 

In the hatred of a minute : 
I mourn not that the desolate 

Are happier, sweet, than I, 
But that you sorrow for my fate 

Who am a passer-by. 

1829. 

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM 

Take this kiss upon the brow ! 

And, in parting from you now, 

Thus much let me avow — 

You are not wrong, who deem 

That my days have been a dream; 

Yet if hope has flown away 

In a night, or in a day, 

In a vision, or in none, 

Is it therefore the less gone ? 

All that we see or seem 

Is but a dream within a dream. 



I stand amid the roar 
Of a surf-tormented shore, 
And I hold within my hand 
Grains of the golden sand — 
How few! yet how they creep 
Through my fingers to the deep, 
While I weep — while I weep ! 
O God ! can I not grasp 
Them with a tighter clasp ? 
O God ! can I not save 
One from the pitiless wave ? 
Is all that we see or seem 
But a dream within a dream ? 

1829, 1849. 1 

TO HELEN 

Helen, thy beauty is to me 

Like those Nice'an barks of yore, 

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, 
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore 
To his own native shore. 

On desperate seas long wont to roam, 
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, 

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home 
To the glory that was Greece, 
And the grandeur that was Rome. 

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche 
How statue-like I see thee stand, 

The agate lamp within thy hand! 
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which 
Are Holy-Land! 

1831. 

ISRAFEL 2 

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell 

' Whose heart-strings are a lute ; ' 
None sing so wildly well 

1 This poem suffered more changes than any other of 
Poe's. The germ of it is perhaps to be found in ' Imi- 
tation,' in the 1827 volume ; but no phrase of that 

poem is identical with any phrase of this. ' To 

,' in the volume of 1S29, contains one line taken 

from ' Imitation.' Part of ' To ' was used as 

a last paragraph of ' Tamerlane ' in the edition of 1831 ; 
and the whole was later revised and considerably short- 
ened, and was published by Griswold in 1849 with its 
present title. 

2 And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a 
lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God's crea- 
tures. — Koban. (Poe's note, 1845.) 

Poe alone is responsible for the words ' Whose heart- 
strings are a lute.' The rest of the phrase had been 
quoted by Thomas Moore, in his ' Lalla Rookh,' from 
Sale's ' Preliminary Discourse ' to the Koran. Poe, as 
Professor Woodberry has pointed out, took the phrase 
from Moore. 



42 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



As the angel Israf el, 
And the giddy stars (so legends tell) 
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell 
Of his voice, all mute. 

Tottering above 

In her highest noon, 

The enamored moon 10 

Blushes with love, 

While, to listen, the red levin 

(With the rapid Pleiads, even, 

Which were seven, ) 

Pauses in Heaven. 

And they say (the starry choir 
And the other listening things) 

That Israfeli's fire 

Is owing to that lyre 

By which he sits and sings — 20 

The trembling living wire 

Of those unusual strings. 

But the skies that angel trod, 

Where deep thoughts are a duty — 

Where Love 's a grown-up God — 
Where the Houri glances are 

Imbued with all the beauty 
Which we worship in a star. 

Therefore, thou art not wrong, 

Israfeli, who despisest 30 

An unimpassioned song ; 
To thee the laurels belong, 

Best bard, because the wisest! 
Merrily live, and long! 

The ecstasies above 

With thy burning measures suit — 

Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, 
With the fervor of thy lute — 
Well may the stars be mute! 

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this 40 

Is a world of sweets and sours; 
Our flowers are merely — flowers, 

And the shadow of thy perfect bliss 
Is the sunshine of ours. 

If I could dwell 
Where Israfel 

Hath dwelt, and he where I, 
He might not sing so wildly well 

A mortal melody, # 49 

While a bolder note than this might swell 

From my lyre within the sky. 

1831. 



THE CITY IN THE SEA 

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne 

In a strange city lying alone 

Far down within the dim West, 

Where the good and the bad and the worst 

and the best 
Have gone to their eternal rest. 
There shrines and palaces and towers 
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!) 
Resemble nothing that is ours. 
Around, by lifting winds forgot, 
Resignedly beneath the sky ' i C 

The melancholy waters lie. 

No rays from the holy heaven come down 
On the long night-time of that town; 
But light from out the lurid sea 
Streams up the turrets silently — ■ 
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free — 
Up domes — up spires — up kingly halls — 
Up fanes — up Babylon-like walls — 
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers 
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers — 2c 
Up many and many a marvellous shrine 
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine 
The viol, the violet, and the vine. 
Resignedly beneath the sky 
The melancholy waters lie. 
So blend the turrets and shadows there 
That all seem pendulous in air, 
While from a proud tower in the town 
Death looks gigantically down. 

There open fanes and gaping graves 3c 

Yawn level with the luminous waves 

But not the riches there that lie 

In each idol's diamond eye — 

Not the gayly-jewelled dead 

Tempt the waters from their bed; 

For no ripples curl, alas! 

Along that wilderness of glass : — 

No swellings tell that winds may be 

Upon some far-off happier sea — 

No heavinj^pnt that winds have been 4c 

On seas Jrarmdeously serene. 

B»t lo, a stir is in the air! 

The wave — there is a movement there ! 

As if the towers had thrust aside, 

In slightly sinking, the dull tide — 

As if their tops had feebly given 

A void within the filmy Heaven. 

The waves have now a redder glow — 

The hours are breathing faint and low — 






EDGAR ALLAN POE 



43 



And when, amid no earthly moans, 50 

Down, down that town shall settle hence, 
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, 
Shall do it reverence. 

1831, 1845. 

THE SLEEPER 1 

At midnight, in the month of June, 

I stand beneath the mystic moon. 

An~opiate vapor, dewy, dim, ' 

Exhales from out her golden rim, 

And, softly dripping, drop by drop, 

Upon the quiet mountain top, 

Steals drowsily and musically 

Into the universal valley. 

The rosemary nods upon the grave ; 

The lily lolls upon the wave ; 10 

Wrapping the fog about its breast, 

The ruin moulders into rest; 

Looking like Lethe, see ! the lake 

A conscious slumber seems to take, 

And would not, for the world, awake. 

All Beauty sleeps ! — and lo ! where lies 

Irene, with her Destinies! 

Oh, lady bright ! -can it be right — 
This window open to the night ? 
The wanton airs, from the tree-top, 20 

Laughingly through the lattice drop — 
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout, 
Flit through thy chamber in and out, 
And wave the curtain canopy 
So fitfully — so fearfully — 
Above the closed and fringed lid 
'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid, 
That, o'er the floor and down the wall, 
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall ! 
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear ? 3G 

Why and what art thou dreaming here ? 
Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas, 
A wonder to these garden trees ! 
Strange is thy pallor ! strange thy dress ! 
Strange, above all, thy length of tress, 
And this all solemn silentness ! 

The lady sleeps ! Ob, may her sleep, 
Which is enduring, so be deep ! 

1 Poe says in a letter, probably of 1845 : ' Your ap- 
preciation of ' ' The Sleeper ' ' delights me. In the higher 
qualities of poetry it is better than " The Raven ; " but 
there is not one man in a million who could be brought 
to agree with me in this opinion. "The Raven" of 
course, is far the better as a work of art ; but in the 
true basis of all art, " The Sleeper " is the superior. I 
wrote the latter when quite a boy.' 



Heaven have her in its sacred keep ! 

This chamber changed for one more holy, 

This bed for one more melancholy, 41 

I pray to God that she may lie 

Forever with unopened eye, 

While the pale sheeted ghosts go by ! - 

My love, she sleeps ! Oh, may her sleep, 
As it is lasting, so be deep ! 
Soft may the worms about her creep ! 
Far in the forest, dim and old, 
For her may some tall vaidt unfold — 
Some vault tbat oft hath flung its black 50 
And winged panels fluttering back, 
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls, 
Of her grand family funerals — 
Some sepulchre, remote, alone, 
Against whose portal she hath thrown, 
In childhood, many an idle stone — 
Some tomb from out whose sounding door 
She ne'er shall force an echo more, 
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin ! 
It was the dead who groaned within. 60 

1831. 

LENORE 2 

Ah, broken is the golden bowl ! the spirit 
flown forever! 

2 The first and third stanzas are supposed to be spo- 
ken by the ' wretches,' relatives or false friends of 
Lenore ; the second and fourth stanzas by Guy De 
Vere, her lover. 

In this one case, perhaps, Poe's latest version is not 
so good as an earlier one. The form of Lenore published 
in 1843 is given below for comparison. 
Ah, broken is the golden bowl ! 

The spirit flown forever ! 
Let the bell toll ! — A saintly soul 

Glides down the Stygian river I 

And let the burial rite be read — 

The funeral song be sung — 

A dirge for the most lovely dead 

That ever died so young ! 

And, Guy De Vere, 

Hast thoit no tear ? 

Weep now or nevermore 1 
See, on yon drear 
And rigid bier, 

Low lies thy love Lenore ! 

' Yon heir, whose cheeks of pallid hue 

With tears are streaming wet, 
Sees only, through 
Their crocodile dew, 
A vacant coronet — 
False friends ! ye loved her for her wealth 

And hated her for her pride, 
And, when she fell in feeble health, 

Ye blessed her — that she died. 
How shall the ritual, then, be read ? 

The requiem hoxv be suDg 
For her most wrong'd of all the dead 
That ever died so young ? ' 

Peccavimus! 

But rave not thus ! 

And let the solemn song 
Go up to God so mournfully that she may feel no wrong ! 

The sweet Lenore 

Hath ' gone before ' 



44 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Let the bell toll! — a saintly soul floats on 

the Stygian river; 
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear ? — 

weep now or never more ! 
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies 

thy love, Lenore ! 
Come ! let the burial rite be read — the 

funeral song be sung ! — 
An anthem for the queenliest dead that 

ever died so young — 
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she 

died so young. 

' Wretches ! ye loved her for her wealth 

and hated her for her pride, 
' And when she fell hi feeble health, ye 

blessed her — that she died ! 
' How shall the ritual, then, be read ? — 

the requiem how be sung 
' By you — by yours, the evil eye, — by 

yours, the slanderous tongue 

With young hope at her side, 

And thou art wild 

For the dear child 
That should have been thy bride — 

For her, the fair 

And debonair, 
That now so lowlv lies — 

The life still there 

XJpon her hair, 
The death upon her eyes. 

' Avaunt I — to-night 
My heart is light — 

No dirge will I upraise, 
But waft the angel on her flight 
With a Paaan of old days ! 
Let no bell toll ! 
Lest her sweet soul, 

Amid its hallow'd mirth, 
Should catch the note 
As it doth float 
Up from the damned earth — 

To friends above, from fiends below, 
Th' indignant ghost is riven — 
From grief and moan 
To a gold throne 
Beside the King of Heaven ! ' 

It seems probable that Poe was influenced by the suc- 
cess of ' The Raven ' to rearrange ' Lenore ' in some- 
what similar lines of even length. 

In the text above I have given the last stanza of the 
poem as it stands in the Lorimer Graham copy — a 
copy of the edition of 1845, corrected by Poe's own 
hand. In the edition of 1845, uncorrected, the stanza 
reads as follows : — 

' Avaunt ! — avaunt I from fiends below, the indignant ghost 
is riven — 

' From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven — 

'From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King 
of Heaven.' 

Let no bell toll then ! — lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth, 

Should catch the note as it doth float up from the damned 
Earth ! — 

And I ! — to-night my heart is light I No dirge will I up- 
raise, 

But waft the angel on her flight with a Paaan of old days ! 

It is interesting to note that in this case, and perhaps 
in this case only, Poe, after changing considerably a 
passage of his work, later returned to a previous ver- 
sion. The arrangement of ideas in his corrected copy of 
this fourth stanza is much closer to the 1843 version 
than to that of 1845. 



' That did to death the innocence that died, 
and died so young ? ' 

Peccavimus ; but rave not thus ! and let a 

Sabbath song * 

Go up to God so solemnly the dead may 

feel no wrong! 
The sweet Lenore hath ' gone before,' with 

Hope, that flew beside, 
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that 

should have been thy bride — 
For her, the fair and debonair, that now so 

lowly lies, 
The life upon her yellow hair but not within 

her eyes — 
The life still there, upon her hair — the 

death upon her eyes. 

' Avaunt ! to-night my heart is light. No 

dirge will I upraise. 
' But waft the angel on her flight with a 

psean of old days ! 
' Let no bell toll ! — lest her sweet soul, 

amid its hallowed mirth, 
' Should catch the note, as it doth float up 

from the damned Earth. 
'To friends above, from fiends below, the 

indignant ghost is riven — 
' From Hell unto a high estate far up 

within the Heaven — 
' From grief and groan, to a golden throne, 

beside the King of Heaven.' 

1831, 1843, 1845. 



THE VALLEY OF UNREST 

" Once it smiled a silent dell 
Where the people did not dwell; 
They had gone unto the wars, 
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars, 
Nightly, from their azure towers, 
To keep watch above the flowers, 
In the midst of which all day 
The red sun-light lazily lay. 
Now each visiter shall confess 
The sad valley's restlessness. 
Nothing there is motionless — 
Nothing save the airs that brood 
Over the magic solitude. 
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees 
That palpitate like the chill seas 
Around the misty Hebrides ! 
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven 
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 



45 



Uneasily, from morn till even, 

Over the violets there that lie 

In myriad types of the human eye — v 

Over the lilies there that wave 

And weep above a nameless grave ! 

They wave : — from out their fragrant tops 

Eternal dews come down in drops. 

They weep : — from off their delicate stems 

Perennial tears descend in gems. 

1831, 1845. 

THE COLISEUM i 

Type of the antique Rome ! Rich reliquary 
Of lofty contemplation left to Time 
By buried centuries of pomp and power ! 
At length — at length — after so many 

days 
Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, 
(Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee 

lie,) 
I kneel, an altered and an humble man, 
Amid thy shadows, and so drink within 
My very seul thy grandeur, gloom, and 

glory ! 9 

Vastness ! and Age! and Memories of Eld! 
Silence ! and Desolation ! and dim Night ! 
I feel ye now — I feel ye in your strength — 
O spells more sure than e'er Judsean king 
Taught in the gardens of Gethsemane ! 
O charms more potent than the rapt 

Chaldee 
Ever drew down from out the quiet stars ! 

Here, where a hero fell, a column falls ! 
Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold, 
A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat ! 
Here, where the dames of Rome then- 
gilded hair 20 
Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and 

thistle ! 
Here, where on golden throne the monarch 

lolled, 
Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home, 
Lit by the wan light of the horned moon, 
The swift and silent lizard of the stones ! 

But stay ! these walls — these ivy-clad 

arcades — 
These mouldering plinths — these sad and 

blackened shafts — 
1 Compare the descriptions of the Coliseum by 
Byron {Manfred, act. iii, scene iv, Childe Harold, 
canto iv, stanzas 114 and following), by Chateaubriand 
{Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem), etc. 



These vague entablatures — this crumbling 

frieze — 
These shattered cornices — this wreck — 

this ruin — 
These stones — alas ! these gray stones — 

are they all — 3 o 

All of the famed, and the colossal left 
By the corrosive Hours to Fate and me ? 

' Not all ' — the Echoes answer me — ' not 

all! 
Prophetic sounds and loud, arise forever 
From us, and from all Ruin, unto the 

wise, 
As melody from Memnon to the Sun. 
We rule the hearts of mightiest men — we 

rule 
With a despotic sway all giant minds. 
We are not impotent — we pallid stones. 
Not all our power is gone — not all our 

fame — 4 o 

Not all the magic of our high renown — 
Not all the wonder that encircles us — 
Not all # the mysteries that hi us lie — 
Not all the memories that hang upon 
And cling around about us as a garment, 
Clothing us in a robe of more than glory.' 

1833. 

HYMN 

At morn — at noon — at twilight dim — 
Maria ! thou hast heard my hymn ! 
In joy and woe — in good and ill — 
Mother of God, be with me still ! 
When the Hours flew brightly by, 
And not a cloud obscured the sky, 
My soul, lest it should truant be, 
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee ; 
Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast 
Darkly my Present and my Past, 
Let my Future radiant shine 
With sweet hopes of. thee and thine ! 

1835. 

TO ONE IN PARADISE 2 

Thou wast all that to me, love, 
For which my soul did pine — 

A green isle in the sea, love, 
A fountain and a shrine, 

2 Originally in the tale, ' The Visionary ' (now called 
' The Assignation '). There, and in most later versions, 
the first line reads, — 

Thou wast that all to me, love . . . 



46 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, 
And all the flowers were mine. 

Ah, dream too bright to last ! 

Ah, starry Hope ! that didst arise 
But to be overcast ! 

A voice from out the Future cries, 
< On ! on ! ' — but o'er the Past 

(Dim gulf !) my spirit hovering lies 
Mute, motionless, aghast ! 

For, alas! alas! with me 

The light of Life is o'er ! 

' No more — no more — no more — ' 
(Such language holds the solemn sea 

To the sands upon the shore) 
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, 

Or the stricken eagle soar ! 

And all my days are trances, 

And all my nightly dreams 
Are where thy gray eye glances, 

And where thy footstep gleams — 
In what ethereal dances, 

By what eternal streams. 

1835. 

TO F 1 

Beloved ! amid the earnest woes 

That crowd around my earthly path — 

(Drear path, alas ! where grows 

Not even one lonely rose) — 
My soul at least a solace hath 

In dreams of thee, and therein knows 

An Eden of bland repose. 

And thus thy memory is to me 
Like some enchanted far-off isle 

In some tumultuous sea — 

Some ocean throbbing far and free 
With storms — but where meanwhile 

Serenest skies continually 

Just o'er that one bright island smile. 

1835. 



TO F- 



-S S. O- 



-D 2 



Thou wouldst be loved ? — then let thy 
heart 
From its present pathway part not ! 

i The title was in 1835 ' To Mary,' in 1842 ' To One 
Departed,' and in 1845 ' To F .' 

2 Addressed in 1845, with some changes from the 
version of 1835, to Frances Sargent Osgood. See the 
biographies. 



Being everything which now thou art, 
Be nothing which thou art not. 

So with the world thy gentle ways, 
Thy grace, thy more' than beauty, 

Shall be an endless theme of praise, 
And love — a simple duty. 

1835, 1845. 

SONNET TO ZANTE 

Fair isle, that from the fairest of all 
flowers, 
Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost 
take ! 3 
How many memories of what radiant hours 
At sight of thee and thine at once awake ! 
How many scenes of what departed bliss ! 
How many thoughts of what entombed 
hopes ! 
How many visions of a maiden that is 
No more — no more upon thy verdant 
slopes ! 
No more ! alas, that magical sad sound 
Transforming all ! Thy charms shall 
please no more — 
Thy memory no more ! Accursed ground 
Henceforth I hold thy flower-enamelled 
shore, 
O hyacinthine isle ! O purple Zante ! 
' Isola d'oro ! Fior di Levante ! ' 

1837. 

THE HAUNTED PALACE 4 

In the greenest of our valleys 

By good angels tenanted, 
Once a fair and stately palace — 

Radiant palace — reared its head. 
In the monarch Thought's dominion — 

It stood there ! 
Never seraph spread a pinion 

Over fabric half so fair ! 

3 Je souris a ses noms d'Isola d'oro, de Fior di Le- 
vante. Ce nom de fleur me rappelle que l'hyacinthe 
etait originaire de l'tle de Zante, et que cette tie recut 
son nom de la plante qu'elle avait portee. (Cha- 
teaubriand, Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem.) 

4 This poem is a part of Poe's tale of the ' Fall of 
the House of Usher,' which should be read entire. 
Lowell calls it ' one of the most beautiful of his 
poems,' and goes on : 'It loses greatly by being taken 
out of its rich and appropriate setting . . . We know 
no modern poet who might not have been justly proud 
of it. . . . Was ever the wreck and desolation of a noble 
mind so musically sung ? ' ' By the " Haunted Pal- 
ace" I mean to imply a mind haunted by phantoms — a 
disordered brain,' says Poe himself, in a letter in 
which he also accuses Longfellow of plagiarizing from 
this poem in the ' Beleaguered City.' 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 



47 



Banners yellow, glorious, golden, 

On its roof did float and flow, 10 

(This — all this — was in the olden 

Tune long ago,) 
And every gentle air that dallied, 

In that sweet day, 
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, 

A winged odor went away. 

"Wanderers in that happy valley, 

Through two luminous windows, saw 
Spirits moving musically, 

To a lute's well-tuned law, 20 

Round about a throne where, sitting, 

(Porphyrogene !) 
In state his glory well befitting, 

The ruler of the realm was seen. 

And all with pearl and ruby glowing 

Was the fair palace door, 
Through which came flowing, flowing, 
flowing 

And sparkling evermore, 
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty 

Was but to sing, 30 

In voices of surpassing beauty, 

The wit and wisdom of their king. 

But evil things, in robes of sorrow, 

Assailed the monarch's high estate. 
(Ah, let us mourn ! — for never morrow 

Shall dawn upon him desolate !) 
And roimd about his home the glory 

That blushed and bloomed, 
Is but a dim-remembered story 

Of the old time entombed. 40 

And travellers, now, within that valley, 

Through the red-litten windows see 
Vast forms, that move fantastically 

To a discordant melody, 
While, like a ghastly rapid river, 

Through the pale door 
A hideous throng rush out forever 

And laugh — but smile no more. 

1839. 

SONNET — SILENCE 

There are some qualities — some incorpo- 
rate things, 
That have a double life, which thus is made 
A type of that twin entity which springs 
From matter and light, evinced in solid and 
shade. 



There is a two-fold Silence — sea aud 

shore — 
Body and soul. One dwells in lonely places, 
Newly with grass o'ergrown ; some solemn 

graces, 
Some human memories and tearful lore, 
Render him terrorless: his name's 'No 

More.' 
He is the corporate Silence : dread him 

not! 
No power hath he of evil in himself; 
But should some urgent fate (untimely 

lot!) 
Bring thee to meet his shadow (nameless 

elf, 
That haunteth the lone regions where hath 

trod 
No foot of man,) commend thyself to God ! 

1840. 

THE CONQUEROR WORM 

Lo ! 't is a gala night 

Within the lonesome latter years ! 
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight 

In veils, and drowned in tears, 
Sit in a theatre, to see 

A play of hopes and fears, 
While the orchestra breathes fitfully 

The music of the spheres. 

Mimes, in the form of God on high, 

Mutter and mumble low, 10 

And hither and thither fly — 

Mere puppets they, who come and go 
At bidding of vast formless things 

That shift the scenery to and fro, 
Flapping from out their Condor wings 

Invisible Woe ! 

That motley drama — oh, be sure 

It shall not be forgot ! 
With its Phantom chased for evermore, 

By a crowd that seize it not, 20 

Through a circle that ever returneth in 

To the self-same spot, ■ 
And much of Madness, and more of Sin, 

And Horror the soul of the plot. 

But see, amid the mimic rout 

A crawling shape intrude ! 
A blood-red thing that writhes from out 

The scenic solitude ! 
It writhes ! — it writhes ! — with mortal 
pangs 






4 8 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



The uiimes become its food, 30 

And seraphs sob at vermin fangs 
In human gore imbued. 

Out — out are the lights — out all ! 

And, over each quivering form, 
The curtain, a funeral pall, 

Comes down with the rush of a storm, 
While the angels, all pallid and wan, 

Uprising, unveiling, affirm 
That the play is the tragedy, ' Man,' 40 

And its hero the Conqueror Worm. 

1843. 

DREAM-LAND 

By a route obscure and lonely, 
Haunted by ill angels only, 
Where an Eidolon, named Night, 
On a black throne reigns upright, 
I have reached these lands but newly 
From an ultimate dim Thule — 
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sub- 
lime, 
Out of Space — out of Time. 

Bottomless vales and boundless floods, 
And chasms, and caves and Titan woods, 
With forms that no man can discover n 
For the tears that drip all over; 
Mountains toppling evermore 
Into seas without a shore; 
Seas that restlessly aspire, 
Surging, unto skies of fire; 
Lakes that endlessly outspread 
Their lone waters — lone and dead, — 
Their still waters — still and chilly 
With the snows of the lolling lily. 20 

By the lakes that thus outspread 
Their lone waters, lone and dead, — 
Their sad waters, sad and chilly 
With the snows of the lolling lily, — 
By the mountains — near the river 
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever, — 
By the gray woods, — by the swamp 
Where the toad and the newt encamp, — 
By the dismal tarns and pools 

Where dwell the Ghoitls, — 30 

By each spot the most unholy — 
In each nook most melancholy, — 
There the traveller meets, aghast, 
Sheeted Memories of the Past — 
Shrouded forms that start and sigh 
As they pass the wanderer by — 



White-robed forms of friends long given, 
In agony, to the Earth — and Heaven. 

For the heart whose woes are legion 
'T is a peaceful, soothing region — 4c 
For the spirit that walks in shadow 
'T is — oh 't is an Eldorado ! 
But the traveller, travelling through it, 
May not — dare not openly view it; 
Never its mysteries are exposed 
To the weak human eye unclosed; 
So wills its King, who hath forbid 
The uplifting of the fringed lid; 
And thus the sad Soul that here passes 
Beholds it but through darkened glasses. 

By a route obscure and lonely, 51 

Hamited by ill angels only, 
Where an Eidolon, named Night, 
On a black throne reigns upright, 
I have wandered home but newly 
From this ultimate dim Thule. 



1844. 



THE RAVEN 1 



Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pon- 
dered, weak and weary, 

Over many a quaint and curious volume of 
forgotten lore — 

1 In connection with the ' Eaven ' Poe's ' Philoso- 
phy of Composition ' must be read. See also : In- 
gram (John H.), The Raven, London, 1885. Benton 
(Joel), In the Poe Circle. Kent (Charles W.), ' Poe 
and Chivers ' (in the Virginia Edition of Poe's Works, 
vol. vii, pp. 266-288). Woodberry (G. E.), 'The Poe- 
Chivers Papers ' (in the Century, January and Febru- 
ary, 1903). Newcomer (A. G.), 'The Poe-Chivers Tra- 
dition re-examined ' (in the Sewanee Review, January, 
1904.) Stedman (E. C), The Raven, illustrated by 
Dor6, with comment by E. C. Stedman. 

Whether or not Poe in the ' Eaven ' owed anything 
to Chivers, he unquestionably, as Mr. Stedman has 
pointed out, owed less to Chivers than to Mrs. Brown- 
ing. With the beginning of Poe's third stanza, 

'And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple 
curtain,' 

compare Mrs. Browning's fourth stanza in the ' Conclu- 
sion ' of Lady Geraldine's Courtship, 

' With a murmurous stir uncertain, in the air the purple 

curtain 
Swelleth in and swelleth out around her motionless pale 

brows, 
While the gliding of the river sends a rippling noise for ever 
Through the open casement whitened by the moonlight's 

slant repose.' 

Here, if we use the method adopted by Poe in his 
arraignment of Longfellow and his attack on Long- 
fellow's defenders, where he insists that rhythm, metre, 
and stanza must form an essential part of any compari- 
son, and that the probability of imitation is in direct 
ratio to the brevity of the passages compared as well as 
to the number of coincidences, it would be easy to show 
that Poe has followed, or as he would say plagiarized 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 



*-*- 



49 



While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly 

there came a tapping, 
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at 

my chamber door. 



from, Mrs. Browning. The rhythm is the same, trochaic ; 
the metre is the same, octameter ; the first four lines 
of the stanza which Poe uses throughout the ' Raven ' 
are exactly identical with Mrs. Browning's stanza, the 
first and third lines having internal feminine rhyme at 
the fourth foot, and the second and fourth having sin- 
gle masculine rhymes. The only difference is that Poe 
has added another internal rhyme in the fourth line. 
He has then added a fifth line (always in part a repe- 
tition of the fourth and ending with the same word or 
words), and the refrain. Again to adopt Poe's method 
of comparison, one might note that in the first line of 
Poe's third stanza and of Mrs. Browning's fourth, the 
same word, ' curtain ' occupies the same, and the most 
prominent, place, that it is matched in each case with 
the same rhyme-word, ' uncertain,' that the curtain is 
in each case a purple curtain, and in each case a 
vaguely waving curtain, and that in each case it pro- 
duces a murmuring or rustling sound — and finally, 
that all these coincidences occur within the compass of 
one line, and are as numerous and peculiar as those 
which Poe insists upon, in what he calls the brief com- 
pass of eight or sixteen lines, in his article against 
Longfellow and Aldrich (see the Longfellow War in the 
Virginia Edition of Poe's Works, vol. xii, pp. 41-106, 
especially pp. 76-82). Other minute resemblances 
might be pointed out, such as the mention in both 
poems of the lattice-window ; but this would be less 
profitable than to recognize the essential originality of 
Poe's conception and expression. He was a frank ad- 
mirer of Mrs. Browning's poetry, and dedicated his 
chief volume, the Raven and Other Poems, to her : 
' To the Noblest of her Sex — to the Author of ' ' The 
Drama of Exile" — to Miss Elizabeth Barrett of Eng- 
land — I dedicate this volume, with the most enthusi- 
astic admiration and with the most sincere esteem.' 
It is to be noted also that Mrs. Browning was more 
fond than any other English poet of the refrain. On 
Poe's use of the refrain, and also of the repetend, on 
which point he may be best compared with Coleridge, 
see C. A. Smith's Repetition and Parallelism in English 
Verse, J. P. Fruit's The Mind and Art of Poe^s 
Poetry, etc. 

However much of the ' Raven ' may have been sug- 
gested by Poe's predecessors, it suggested even more to 
his followers. The most important instance of this (not 
forgetting his influence on Baudelaire and Mallarm6) is 
perhaps to be found in its having suggested to Rossetti 
'The Blessed Damozel.' See W. M. Rossetti's Dante 
Gabriel Rossetti : His Family Letters, etc., 1895, vol. i, 
p. 107 : '" The Blessed Damozel " was written with a 
view to its insertion in a manuscript family magazine, 
of brief vitality. In 1881 Rossetti gave Mr. Caine an 
account of its origin, as deriving from his perusal and 
admiration of Edgar Poe's " Raven." " I saw " (this is 
Mr. Caine's version of Rossetti's statement) " that Poe 
had done the utmost it was possible to do with the 
grief of the lover on earth, and I determined to reverse 
the condition, and give utterance to the yearning of the 
loved one in heaven." Along with "The Raven " and 
other poems by Poe, "Ulalume," "For Annie," 
" The Haunted Palace," and many another were a 
deep well of delight to Rossetti in all these years. He 
once wrote a parody of "Ulalume." I do not rightly 
remember it, nor has it left a vestige behind.' 

On the time and place of composition of the 'Raven,' 
see the long note in the Stedman-Woodberry edition of 
the Poems, pages 156-9, and the authorities there cited ; 
the last pages of chapter ix in Harrison's Life of Poe; 
and Ingram's The Raven, referred to above. 



' 'T is some visiter,' I muttered, ' tapping 
at my chamber door — 
Only this and nothing more.' 

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the 
bleak December; 

And each separate dying ember wrought 
its ghost upon the floor. 

Eagerly I wished the morrow ; — vainly I 
had sought to borrow 

From my books surcease of sorrow — sor- 
row for the lost Lenore — io 

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the 
angels name Lenore — 
Nameless here for evermore. 

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of 
each purple curtain 

Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic ter- 
rors never felt before; 

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, 
I stood repeating 

' 'T is some visiter entreating entrance at 
my chamber door — 

Some late visiter entreating entrance at my 
chamber door; — 
Thfe it is and nothing more.' 

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitat- 
ing then no longer, 

' Sir,' said I, ' or Madam, truly your for- 
giveness I implore ; 20 

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently 
you came rapping, 

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at 
my chamber door, 

That I scarce was sure I heard you ' — here 
I opened wide the door; 
Darkness there and nothing more. 

Deep into that darkness peering, long I 
stood there wondering, fearing, 

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever 
dared to dream before; 

But the silence was unbroken, and the still- 
ness gave no token, 

And the only word there spoken was the 
whispered word, ' Lenore ! ' 

This I whispered, and an echo murmured 
back the word ' Lenore ! ' 
Merely this and nothing more. 30 

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul 

within me burning, 
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat 

louder than before. 



5° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



' Surely,' said I, ' surely that is something 

at my window- lattice; 
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this 

mystery explore — 
Let my heart be still a moment and this 

mystery explore ; — 
'T is the wind and nothing more ! ' 

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with 
many a flirt and flutter 

In there stepped a stately Raven of the 
saintly days of yore. 

Not the least obeisance made he ; not a min- 
ute stopped or stayed he ; 

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched 
above my chamber door — 4 o 

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above 
my chamber door — 
Perched, and sat, and nothing more. 

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy 

into smiling, 
By the grave and stern decorum of the 

countenance it wore, 
' Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, 

thou,' I said, ' art sure no craven, 
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering 

from the Nightly shore — 
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the 

Night's Plutonian shore ! ' 
Quoth the Raven, ' Nevermore.' 

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to 

hear discourse so plainly, 
Though its answer little meaning — little 

relevancy bore; 50 

For we cannot help agreeing that no living 

human being 
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above 

his chamber door — 
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above 

his chamber door, 
With such name as ' Nevermore.' 

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid 

bust, spoke only 
That one word, as if his soid in that one 

word he did outpour. 
Nothing farther then he uttered — not a 

feather then he fluttered — 
Till I scarcely more than muttered ' Other 

friends have flown before — 
On the morrow Tie will leave me, as my 

hopes have flown before.' 
Then the bird said ' Nevermore.' 60 



Startled at the stillness broken by reply so 

aptly spoken, 
' Doubtless,' said I, ' what it utters is its 

only stock and store 
Caught from some unhappy master whom 

unmerciful Disaster 
Followed fast and followed faster till his 

songs one burden bore — 
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy 

burden bore 
Of " Never — nevermore." ' 

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy 
into smiling, 

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front 
of bird, and bust and door; 

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook 
myself to linking 

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this omi- 
nous bird of yore — 70 

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, 
and ominous bird of yore 
Meant in croaking ' Nevermore.' 

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syl- 
lable expressing 

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned 
into my bosom's core; 

This and more I sat divining, with my head 
at ease reclining 

On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp- 
light gloated o'er, 

But whose velvet violet lining with the 
lamp-light gloating o'er, 
She shall press, ah, nevermore ! 

Then, methought, the air grew denser, per- 
fumed from an unseen censer 

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled 
on the tufted floor. 80 

'Wretch,' I cried, 'thy God hath lent 
thee — by these angels he hath sent 
thee 

Respite — respite and nepenthe from thy 
memories of Lenore; 

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and for- 
get this lost Lenore ! ' 
Quoth the Raven ' Nevermore.' 

' Prophet ! ' said I, ' thing of evil ! prophet 

still, if bird or devil ! — 
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest 

tossed thee here ashore, 
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert 

land enchanted — 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 



5* 



On this home by Horror haunted — tell me 

truly, I implore — 
Is there — is there balm in Gilead ? — tell 

me — tell me, I implore ! ' 
Quoth the Raven ' Nevermore.' 90 

' Prophet ! ' said I, ' thing of evil I — 

prophet still, if bird or devil ! 
By that Heaven that bends above us — by 

that God we both adore — 
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within 

the distant Aidenn, 
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the 

angels name Lenore — 
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the 

angels name Lenore.' 
Quoth the Raven ' Nevermore.' 

' Be that word our sign of parting, bird or 

fiend ! ' I shrieked, upstarting — 
'Get thee back into the tempest and the 

Night's Plutonian shore ! 
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie 

thy soul hath spoken ! 
Leave my loneliness unbroken ! — quit the 

bust above my door ! 100 

Take thy beak from out my heart, and 

take thy form from off my door ! ' 
Quoth the Raven ' Nevermore.' 

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, 
still is sitting 

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my 
chamber door; 

And his eyes have all the seeming of a de- 
mon's that is dreaming, 

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming 
throws his shadow on the floor; 

And my soid from out that shadow that lies 
floating on the floor 
Shall be lifted — nevermore ! l 



1842-44 ? 



1845. 



EULALIE — A SONG 



I dwelt alone 
In a world of moan, 
And my soul was a stagnant tide, 
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my 

blushing bride — 
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie be- 
came my smiling bride. 

1 In the concluding stanza ... I convert him [the 
raven] into an allegorical emblem or personification of 
Mournful Remembrance, out of the Shadow of which 
the poet is 'lifted nevermore.' (Poe, Works, vol. xii, 
p. 75.) 



Ah, less — less bright 
The stars of the night 
Than the eyes of the radiant girl ! 
And never a flake 
That the vapor can make 
With the moon-tints of purple and 
pearl, 
Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most un- 
regarded curl — 
Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's 
most humble and careless curl. 

Now Doubt — now Pain 
Come never again, 
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh, 
And all day long 
Shines, bright and strong, 
Astarte within the sky, 
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her 

matron eye — 
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns 
her violet eye. 

1845. 

ULALUME 2 

The skies they were ashen and sober ; 

The leaves they were crisped and sere — 

The leaves they were withering and sere ; 
It was night in the lonesome October 

Of my most immemorial year ; 
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber, 

In the misty mid region of Weir — 
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber, 

In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

Here once, through an alley Titanic, 10 

Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul -=- 
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul. 

These were days when my heart was vol- 
canic 
As the scoriae rivers that roll — 
As the lavas that restlessly roll 

Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek 
In the ultimate climes of the pole — 

That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek 
In the realms of the boreal pole. 

Our talk had been serious and sober, 20 
But our thoughts they were palsied and 

sere — 
Our memories were treacherous and 

sere — 

2 Poe's child-wife Virginia died in January of 1847, 
and this poem was published in December. See the 
biographical sketch. 



52 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



For we knew not the month was October, 
And we marked not the night of the 

year — 
(Ah, night of all nights in the year !) 
We noted not the dim lake of Auber — 
(Though once we had journeyed down 
here) — 
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber, 
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. 

And now, as the night was senescent 30 
And star-dials pointed to morn — 
As the star-dials hinted of morn — 

At the end of our path a liquescent 
And nebulous lustre was born, 

Out of which a miraculous crescent 
Arose with a duplicate horn — 

Astarte's bediamonded crescent 
Distinct with its duplicate horn. 

And I said — ' She is warmer than Dian : 
She rolls through an ether of sighs — 40 
She revels in a region of sighs : 

She has seen that the tears are not dry on 
These cheeks, where the worm never 
dies 

And has come past the stars of the Lion 
To point us the path to the skies — 
To the Lethean peace of the skies — 

Come up, in despite of the Lion, 

To shine on us with her bright eyes — 

Come up through the lair of the Lion, 
With love in her luminous eyes.' 50 

But Psyche, uplifting her finger, 

Said — ' Sadly this star I mistrust — 
Her pallor I strangely mistrust : — 

Oh, hasten ! — oh, let us not linger ! 
Oh, fly ! — let us fly ! — for we must.' 

In terror she spoke, letting sink her 
Wings until they trailed in the dust — 

In agony sobbed, letting sink her 

Plumes till they trailed hi the dust — 
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the 
dust. 60 

I replied — ' This is nothing but dreaming : 
Let us on by this tremulous light ! 
Let us bathe in this crystalline light ! 
Its Sibyllic splendor is beaming 

With Hope and in Beauty to-night : — 
**lfc See ! — it flickers up the sky through 
the night ! 
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming, 
And be sure it will lead us arig-ht — 



We safely may trust to a gleaming 

That cannot but guide us aright, 70 

Since it flickers up to Heaven through 
the night.' 

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her, 
And tempted her out of her gloom — 
And conquered her scruples and gloom ; 

And we passed to the end of the vista, 
But were stopped by the door of a tomb — 
By the door of a legended tomb ; 

And I said — ' What is written, sweet 
sister, 
On the door of this legended tomb ? ' 
She replied — ' Ulalume — Ulalume — 
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume ! ' 81 

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober 
As the leaves that were crisped and 

sere — 
As the leaves that were withering and 
sere, 
And I cried — ' It was surely October 
On this very night of last year 
That I journeyed — I journeyed down 

here — 
That I brought a dread burden down 

here — 
On this night of all nights in the year, 
Ah, what demon has tempted me here ? 90 
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber — 

This misty mid region of Weir — 
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber, 
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.' 

1847. 

TO HELEN 1 

I saw thee once — once only — years ago : 
I must not say how many — but not many. 
It was a July midnight; and from out 
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own 

soid, soaring, 
Sought a precipitate pathway up through 

heaven, 

1 The occasion of Poe's first sight of Mrs. Whitman 
is romantically described as follows : — 

' Poe caught a glimpse of a white figure wandering 
in a moonlit garden in Providence, on his way from 
Boston, when he visited that city to deliver a poem 
before the Lyceum there. Restless, near midnight, he 
wandered from his hotel near where she lived, until he 
saw her walking in a garden. He related the incident 
afterwards in one of his most exquisite poems, worthy 
of himself, of her, and of the most exalted passion.' 
(Harrison's Life of Poe, p. 2S4.) See also Mrs. Whit- 
man's Poems, and Woodberry's Life of Poe, pp. 308- 
325. 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 



53 



There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, 
With quietude and sultriness and slumber, 
Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand 
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden, 
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tip- 
toe IO 

Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses 
That gave out, in return for the love-light, 
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death — 
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses 
That smiled and died in this parterre, en- 
chanted 
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence. 

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank 
I saw thee half reclining; while the moon 
Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses, 
And on thine own, upturn'd — alas, in sor- 
row! 20 

Was it not Fate, that, on this July mid- 
night — 

Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sor- 
row), 

That bade me pause before that garden- 
gate, 

To breathe the incense of those slumbering 
roses ? 

No footstep stirred: the hated world all 
slept, 

Save only thee and me. (Oh, heaven ! — 
oh, God ! 

How my heart beats in coupling those two 
words !) 

Save only thee and me. I paused — I 
looked — 

And in an instant all things disappeared. 

(Ah, bear in mind this garden was en- 
chanted !) 30 

The pearly lustre of the moon went out: 

The mossy banks and the meandering paths, 

The happy flowers and the repining trees, 

Were seen no more: the very roses' odors 

Died in the arms of the adoring airs. 

All — all expired save thee — save less 
than thou: 

Save only the divine light in thine eyes — 

Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes. 

I saw but them — they were the world to 
me. 

I sa w but them — saw only them for 
hours — 40 

Saw only them tmtil the moon went down. 

What wild heart-histories seemed to lie en- 
written 



Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres ! 
How dark a woe ! yet how sublime a hope ! 
How silently serene a sea of pride ! 
How daring an ambition ! yet how deep — 
How fathomless a capacity for love ! 

But now, at length, dear Dian sank from 

sight, 
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud; 
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing 

trees 50 

Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained. 

They would not go — they never yet have 

gone. 
Lighting my lonely pathway home that 

night, 
They have not left me (as my hopes have) 

since. 
They follow me — they lead me through 

the years 
They are my ministers — yet I their slave. 
Their office is to illumine and enkindle — 
My duty, to he saved by their bright light, 
And purified in their electric fire, 
And sanctified in their elysian fire. 60 

They fill my soul with Beauty (which is 

Hope), 
And are far up in Heaven — the stars I 

kneel to 
In the sad, silent watches of my night; 
While even in the meridian glare of day 
I see them still — two sweetly scintillant 
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun ! 
1848. 1848. 



THE BELLS : 



Hear the sledges with the bells — 
Silver bells ! 
What a world of merriment their melody 
foretells ! 

1 It was shortly after this, during the summer, that 
Poe wrote the first rough draft of ' The Bells,' at Mrs. 
Shew's residence. ' One day he came in,' she records, 
' and said, " Marie Louise, I have to write a poem ; I 
have no feeling, no sentiment, no inspiration." ' His 
hostess persuaded him to have some tea. It was served 
in the conservatory, the windows of which were open, 
and admitted the sound of neighboring church bells. 
Mrs. Shew said, playfully, 'Here is paper;' but the 
poet, declining it, declared, ' I so dislike the noise of 
bells to-night, I cannot write. I have no subject 
— I am exhausted.' The lady then took up the pen, 
and, pretending to mimic his style, wrote, ' The Bells, 
by E. A. Poe; ' and then in pure sportiveness, ' The 
Bells, the little silver Bells,' Poe finishing off the stanza. 
She then suggested for the next verse, ' The heavy iron 



54 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 

In the icy air of night ! 
While the stars that oversprinkle 
All the heavens, seem to twinkle 
With a crystalline delight; 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme, 10 

To the thitinnabulation that so musically 
wells 
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
From the jingling and the tinkling of the 
bells. 



Hear the mellow wedding bells — 
Golden bells ! 
What a world of happiness their harmony 
foretells ! 
Through the balmy air of night 
How they ring out their delight ! — 
From the molten-golden notes, 20 

And all in time, 
What a liquid ditty floats 
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she 
gloats 

Bells ;' and this Poe also expanded into a stanza. He 
next copied out the complete poem, and headed it, ' By 
Mrs. M. L. Shew,' remarking that it was her poem, as 
she had suggested and composed so much of it. (In- 
gram, Life of Poe.) 

Such was the beginning of the poem ; its develop- 
ment is described by the editor of Sartain's Union 
Magazine, a month after it was first published : ' This 
poem came into our possession about a year since. It 
then consisted of eighteen lines ! They were as follows : 

THE BELLS -A SONG 

The bells! — hear the bells ! 
The merry wedding-bells I 
The little silver bells ! 
How fairy-like a melody there swells 
From the silver tinkling cells 
Of the hells, bells, bells I 
Of the bells ! 

The bells ! — ah, the bells I 
The heavy iron bells ! 
Hear the tolling of the bells ! 
Hear the knells ! 
How horrible a monody there floats 
From their throats — 
From their deep-toned throats 1 
How I shudder at the notes 

From the melancholy throats 
Of the bells, bells, bells ! 
Of the bells ! 

' About six months after this we received the poem 
enlarged and altered nearly to its present size and 
form ; and about three months since, the author sent 
another alteration and enlargement, in which condition 
the poem was left at the time of his death.' 

Professor Woodberry suggests that Poe probably had 
the idea of his poem in mind for some time before Mrs. 
Shew induced him to begin writing it, and remarks on 
' his frequent reference to the magical sound of bells 
throughout his literary life.' {Life of Poe, pp. 302-304.) 
He also quotes a striking parallel passage from Cha- 
teaubriand's Genie du Chrislianisme. 



On the moon ! 
Oh, from out the sounding cells, 
What a gush of euphony voluminously 
wells ! 

How it swells ! 
How it dwells 
On the Future ! — how it tells 
Of the rapture that impels 30 

To the swinging and the ringing 
Of the bells, bells, bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
To the rhyming and the chiming of the 
bells ! 



Hear the loud alarum bells — 
Brazen bells ! 
What a tale of terror, now their turbulency 
tells ! 
In the startled ear of night 
How they scream out their affright ! 40 
Too much horrified to speak, 
They can only shriek, shriek, 
Out of tune, 
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of 

the fire, 
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and 
frantic fire, 
Leaping higher, higher, higher, 
With a desperate desire, 
And a resolute endeavor 
Now — now to sit, or never, 
By the side of the pale-faced moon. 50 
Oh, the bells, bells, bells ! 
What a tale their terror tells 
Of Despair ! 
How they clang, and clash, and roar! 
What a horror they outpour 
On the bosom of the palpitating air! 
Yet the ear, it fully knows, 
By the twanging, 
And the clanging, 
How the danger ebbs and flows ; 60 
Yet the ear distinctly tells, 
In the jangling, 
And the wrangling, 
How the danger sinks and swells, 
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger 
of the bells — 
Of the bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
In the clamor and the clanging of the 
bells ! 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 



55 



Hear the tolling of the bells — 70 

Iron bells! 
What a world of solemn thought their 
monody compels! 
In the silence of the night, 
How we shiver with affright 
At the melancholy menace of their tone! 
For every sound that floats 
From the rust within their throats 

Is a groan. 
And the people — ah, the people — 
They that dwell up in the steeple, 80 

All alone, 
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,. 

In that muffled monotone, 
Feel a glory in so rolling 

On the human heart a stone — 
They are neither man nor woman — 
They are neither brute nor human — 

They are Ghouls : — 
And their king it is who tolls: — 
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, 90 

Rolls 
A psean from the bells ! 
And his merry bosom swells 

With the psean of the bells ! 
And he dances, and he yells; 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme, 
To the paean of the bells: — 
Of the bells: 
Keeping time, time, time 100 

In a sort of Runic rhyme, 

To the throbbing of the bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells — 

To the sobbing of the bells : — 
Keeping time, time, time, 

As he knells, knells, knells, 
In a happy Runic rhyme, 

To the rolling of the bells — 
Of the bells, bells, bells :— 

To the tolling of the bells — 1 10 

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells — 
To the moaning and the groaning of the 

bells. 
1848-49. 1849. 

TO MY MOTHER 1 

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, 
The angels, whispering to one another, 

1 Mrs. Clemm, Virginia's mother. See the biograph- 
ical sketch. 



Can find, among their burning terms of 

love, 
None so devotional as that of ' Mother,' 
Therefore by that dear name I long have 

called you — 
You who are more than mother unto me, 
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death 

installed you, 
In setting my Virginia's spirit free. 
My mother — my own mother, who died 

early, 
Was but the mother of myself; but you 
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly, 
And thus are dearer than the mother I 

knew 
By that infinity with which my wife 
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life. 

1849. 

FOR ANNIE 2 

Thank Heaven ! the crisis — 

The danger is past, 
And the lingering illness 

Is over at last — 
And the fever called ' Living ' 

Is conquered at last. 

Sadly, I know 

I am shorn of my strength, 
And no muscle I move 

As I lie at full length — 10 

But no matter ! — I feel 

I am better at length. 

And I rest so composedly 

Now, in my bed, 
That any beholder 

Might fancy me dead — 
Might start at beholding me, 

Thinking me dead. 

The moaning and groaning, 

The sighing and sobbing, 20 

Are quieted now, 

With that horrible throbbing 
At heart: — ah that horrible, 

Horrible throbbing ! 

2 See Harrison's Life of Poe, pp. 301, 302 ; and 
chapters xi and xii of the Letters, especially pp. 342- 
344, the letter of March 23, 3S49, quoted also in In- 
gram's Life of Poe. In this letter was enclosed the 
poem, of which Poe says: 'I think the lines "For 
Annie " much the best I have ever written.' 

The last two lines of the first stanza were suggested 
by Longfellow as an inscription for the monument 
tardily erected over Poe's grave in 1875. 



56 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



The sickness — the nausea — 


She tenderly kissed me, 


The pitiless pain — 


She fondly caressed, 


Have ceased with the fever 


And then I fell gently 


That maddened my brain — 


To sleep on her breast — 


With the fever called ' Living ' 


Deeply to sleep 


That burned in my brain. 30 


From the heaven of her breast. 


And oh ! of all tortures 


When the light was extinguished, 


That torture the worst 


She covered me warm, 80 


Has abated — the terrible 


And she prayed to the angels 


Torture of thirst 


To keep me from harm — 


For the napthaline river 


To the queen of the angels 


Of Passion accurst : — 


To shield me from harm. 


I have drank of a water 




That quenches all thirst: — 


And I lie so composedly, 




Now, in my bed, 


Of a water that flows, 


(Knowing her love) 


With a lullaby sound, 40 


That you fancy me dead — 


From a spring but a very few 


And I rest so contentedly, 


Feet under ground — 


Now, in my bed, 90 


From a cavern not very far 


(With her love at my breast) 


Down under ground. 


That you fancy me dead — 




That you shudder to look at me, 


And ah ! let it never 


Thinking me dead: — 


Be foolishly said 




That my room it is gloomy 


But my heart it is brighter 


And narrow my bed; 


Than all of the many 


For a man never slept 


Stars of the sky, 


In a different bed — 50 


For it sparkles with Amiie — 


And, to sleep, you must slumber 


It glows with the light 


In just such a bed. 


Of the love of my Annie — 100 




With the thought of the light 


My tantalized spirit 


Of the eyes of my Annie. 


Here blandly reposes, 


1849. 


Forgetting, or never 




Regretting, its roses — 


ANNABEL LEE 


Its old agitations 




Of myrtles and roses: 


It was many and many a year ago, 




In a kingdom by the sea 


For now, while so quietly 


That a maiden there lived whom you may 


Lying, it fancies 60 


know 


A holier odor 


By the name of Annabel Lee; 


About it, of pansies — 


And this maiden she lived with no other 


A rosemary odor, 


thought 


Commingled with pansies — 


Than to love and be loved by me. 


With rue and the beautiful 




Puritan pansies. 


/ was a child and she was a child, 




In this kingdom by the sea, 


And so it lies happily, 


But we loved with a love that was more 


Bathing in many 


than love — 


A dream of the truth 


I and my Annabel Lee — 10 


And the beauty of Annie — 70 


With a love that the winged seraphs of 


Drowned in a bath 


heaven 


Of the tresses of Annie. 


Coveted her and me. 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 



57 



And this was the reason that, long ago, 


Of my darling — my darling — my life and 


In this kingdom by the sea, 


my bride, 


A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling 


In the sepulchre there by the sea — 40 


My beautiful Annabel Lee; 


In her tomb by the sounding sea. 


So that her high-born kinsmen came 


1849. 1849. 


And bore her away from me, 




To shut her up in a sepulchre 


ELDORADO 


In this kingdom by the sea. 20 






Gaily bedight, 


The angels, not half so happy in heaven, 


A gallant knight, 


Went envying her and me — 


In sunshine and in shadow, 


Yes ! — that was the reason (as all men 


Had journeyed long, 


know, 


Singing a song, 


In this kingdom by the sea^ 


In search of Eldorado. 


That the wind came out of the cloud by 




night, 


But he grew old — 


Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. 


This knight so bold — 




And o'er his heart a shadow 


But our love it was stronger by far than 


Fell as he found 


the love 


No spot of ground 


Of those who were older than we — 


That looked like Eldorado. 


Of many far wiser than we — 




And neither the angels in heaven above, 30 


And, as his strength 


Nor the demons down under the sea, 


Failed him at length, 


Can ever dissever my soul from the soul 


He met a pilgrim shadow — 


Of the beautiful Annabel Lee : 


' Shadow,' said he, 




' Where can it be — 


For the moon never beams, without bring- 


This land of Eldorado ? ' 


ing me dreams 




Of the beautiful Annabel Lee, 


' Over the Mountains 


And the stars never rise, but I feel the 


Of the Moon, 


bright eyes 


Down the Valley of the Shadow, 


Of the beautiful Annabel Lee : 


Ride, boldly ride,' 


And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by 


The shade replied, — 


the side 


' If you seek for Eldorado.' 




>* 1850. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



GOOD-BYE x 

Good-bye, proud world ! I 'm going home : 
Thou art not ray friend, and I 'm not thine. 
Long through thy weary crowds I roam; 
A river-ark on the ocean brine, 
Long I 've been tossed like the driven foam ; 
But now, proud world ! I 'm going home. 

Good-bye to Flattery's fawning face; 
To Grandeur with his wise grimace; 
To upstart Wealth's averted eye; 
To supple Office, low and high; 10 

To crowded halls, to court and street; 
To frozen hearts and hasting feet; 
To those who go, and those who come; 
Good-bye, proud world! I 'm going home. 

I am going to my own hearth-stone, 
Bosomed in yon green hills alone, — 
A secret nook in a pleasant land, 
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned; 
Where arches green, the livelong day, 
Echo the blackbird's roundelay, 20 

And vulgar feet have never trod 
A spot that is sacred to thought and God. 

O, when I am safe in my sylvan home, 
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome; 
And when I am stretched beneath the pines, 
Where the evening star so holy shines, 
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, 
At the sophist schools and the learned clan; 
For what are they all, in their high conceit, 
When man in the bush with God may meet ? 
1823. 1839. 



1 In sending these verses to Rev. James Freeman 
Clarke, in 1839, Emerson said : ' They were written 
sixteen years ago, when I kept school in Boston, and 
lived in a corner of Roxbury called Canterbury. They 
have a slight misanthropy, a shade deeper than belongs 
to me. . . .' 

This ' corner of Roxbury ' is now a part of Franklin 
Park. It is called ' Schoolmaster's Hill,' and one of 
its rocks bears the inscription : ' Near this rock, a. d. 
1823-1825, was the house of Schoolmaster Ralph Waldo 
Emerson. Here some of his earlier poems were written; 
among them that from which the following lines are 
taken. . . .' There follows the last stanza of this 
poem. 



THOUGHT 

I am not poor, but I am proud, 

Of one inalienable right, 
Above the envy of the crowd, — 

Thought's holy light. 

Better it is than gems or gold, 

And oh! it cannot die, 
But thought will glow when the sun 
grows cold, 
And mix with Deity. 
1823. 1904. 

THE RIVER 2 

And I behold once more 
My old familiar haunts; here the blue river, 
The same blue wonder that my infant eye 
Admired, sage doubting whence the travel- 
ler came, — 
Whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he 

washed 
The fragrant flag-roots in my father's fields, 
And where thereafter in the world he went. 
Look, here he is, unaltered, save that now 
He hath broke his banks and flooded all 
the vales 10 

With his redundant waves. 
Here is the rock where, yet a simple child, 
I caught with bended pin my earliest fish, 
Much triumphing, — and these the fields 
Over whose flowers I chased the butterfly, 
A blooming hunter of a fairy fine. 
And hark ! where overhead the ancient 

crows 
Hold their sour conversation in the sky: — 
These are the s'ame, but I am not the same, 
But wiser than I was, and wise enough 19 
Not to regret the changes, tho' they cost 
Me many a sigh. Oh, call not nature dumb ; 

2 This poem should be compared with Wordsworth's 
' Line3 left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree,' both because 
the two poems are similar in thought and mood, and 
because each marks the same point of development in 
its author's thought and powers of expression. This was 
written when Emerson was twenty-four years old, and 
Wordsworth's when he was twenty-five. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



59 



These trees and stones are audible to me, 
These idle flowers, that tremble in the wind, 
I understand their faery syllables, 
And all their sad significance. The wind, 
That rustles down the well-known forest 

road — 
It hath a sound more eloquent than speech. 
The stream, the trees, the grass, the sighing 

wind, 
All of them utter soimds of 'monishment 
And grave parental love. 30 

They are not of our race, they seem to say, 
And yet have knowledge of our moral 

race, 
And somewhat of majestic sympathy, 
Something of pity for the puny clay, 
That holds and boasts the immeasurable 

mind. 
I feel as I were welcome to these trees 
After long months of weary wandering, 
Acknowledged by their hospitable boughs ; 
They know me as their son, for side by 

side, 
They were coeval with my ancestors, 40 
Adorned with them my country's primitive 

times, 
And soon may give my dust their funeral 

shade. 



1827. 



1904. 



LINES TO ELLEN 



Tell me, maiden, dost thou use 
I Thyself thro' Nature to diffuse ? 
All the angles of the coast 
Were tenanted by thy sweet ghost, 
Bore thy colors every flower, 
Thine each leaf and berry bore ; 
All wore thy badges and thy favors 
In their scent or hi their savors, 
Every moth with painted wing, 
Every bird in carolling, 
The wood-boughs with thy manners waved, 
The rocks uphold thy name engraved, 
The sod throbbed friendly to my feet, 
And the sweet air with thee was sweet. 
The saffron cloud that floated warm 
Studied thy motion, took thy form, 
And in his airy road benign 
Recalled thy skill in bold design* 
Or seemed to use his privilege 
To gaze o'er the horizon's edge, 
To search where now thy beauty glowed, 
Or made what other purlieus proud. 
1829. 1904. 



TO ELLEN AT THE SOUTH 

The green grass is bowing, 

The morning wind is in it; 
'T is a tune worth thy knowing, 

Though it change every minute. 

'T is a tune of the Spring; 

Every year plays it over 
To the robin on the wing, 

And to the pausing lover. 

O'er ten thovisand, thousand acres, 

Goes light the nimble zephyr; 10 

The Flowers — tiny sect of Shakers — 
Worship him ever. 

Hark to the winning sound ! 

They summon thee, dearest, — 
Saying, ' We have dressed for thee the 
ground, 

Nor yet thou appearest. 

' O hasten; 't is our time, 

Ere yet the red Summer 
Scorch our delicate prime, 

Loved of bee, — the tawny hummer. 20 

' O pride of thy race ! 

Sad, in sooth, it were to ours, 
If our brief tribe miss thy face, 

We poor New England flowers. 

' Fairest, choose the fairest members 

Of our lithe society; 
June's glories and September's 

Show our love and piety. 

' Thou shalt command us all, — 
April's cowslip, summer's clover, 

To the gentian in the fall, x 30 

Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover. 

' O come, then, quickly come ! 

We are budding, we are blowing; 
And the wind that we perfume 

Sings a tune that 's worth the knowing.' 
1820. 1843. 

TO ELLEN 

And Ellen, when the graybeard years 
Have brought us to life's evening hour, 

And all the crowded Past appears 
A tiny scene of sun and shower, 



fb 



sxAxfi* $) 



A*L 



6o 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Then, if I read the page aright 

Where Hope, the soothsayer, reads our 
lot, 
Thyself shalt own the page was bright, 

Well that we loved, woe had we not, 

When Mirth is dumb and Flattery 's fled, 
And mute thy music's dearest tone, 

When all but Love itself is dead 
And all but deathless Reason gone. 

1829. 1904. 

THINE EYES STILL SHINED 

Thine eyes still shined for me, though far 
I lonely roved the land or sea: 

As I behold yon evening star, 
Which yet beholds not me. 

This morn I climbed the misty hill 
And roamed the pastures through; 

How danced thy form before my path 
Amidst the deep-eyed dew ! 

When the redbird spread his sable wing, 
And showed his side of flame; 

When the rosebud ripened to the rose, 
In both I read thy name. 

1829 or 1S30. 1846. 1 

WRITTEN IN NAPLES 2 

. We are what we are made; each following 
day 
Is the Creator of our human mould 

1 The first collected edition of Emerson's Poems, 
which bears the date 1847, and is listed under that year 
in the bibliographies, actually appeared in 1846. 

2 Remember the Sunday morning in Naples when I 
said, ' This moment is the truest vision, the best specta- 
cle I have seen amid all the wonders ; and this moment, 
this vision, I might have had in my own closet in Bos- 
ton.' (Emerson's Journal, 1834.) 

Compare the essay on ' Self-Reliance : ' — 

' Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of 
places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I 
can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I 
pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea 
and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is 
the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that 
I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I af- 
fect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but 
I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever 
I go.' 

Compare also ' The Day's Ration,' and Whittier s 
'The Last Walk in Autumn.' 

(The illustrative passages from Emerson's Journal 
given in these notes, and many of the parallel passages 
from Emerson's essays, are quoted by Mr. E. W. Em- 
erson in his exceedingly valuable notes to the ' Centen- 
ary Edition ' of the Poems, or in his Emerson in Con- 
cord.) 



Not less than was the first; the all- wise God 
Gilds a few points in every several life, 
And as each flower upon the fresh hillside, 
And every colored petal of each flower, 
Is sketched and dyed, each with a new de- 
sign, 
Its spot of purple, and its streak of brown, 
So each man's life shall have its proper 

lights, 
And a few joys, a few peculiar charms, 
For him round-in the melancholy hours 
And reconcile him to the common days. 
Not many men see beauty hi the fogs 
Of close low pine- woods in a river town; 
Yet unto me not morn's magnificence, 
Nor the red rainbow of a summer eve, 
Nor Rome, nor joyful Paris, nor the halls 
Of rich men blazing hospitable light, 
Nor wit, nor eloquence, — no, nor even the 

song 
Of any woman that is now alive, — 
Hath such a soid, such divine influence, 
Such resurrection of the happy past, 
As is to me when I behold the morn 
Ope in such low moist roadside, and beneath 
Peep the blue violets out of the black 

loam, 
Pathetic silent poets that sing to me 
Thine elegy, sweet singer, sainted wife. 8 
1833. 1883. 

WRITTEN AT ROME 4 

Alone in Rome. Why, Rome is lonely 

too; — 
Besides, you need not be alone; the soul 
Shall have society of its own rank. 
Be great, be true, and all the Scipios, 
The Catos, the wise patriots of Rome, 
Shall flock to you and tarry by your side, 
And comfort you with their high company. 
Virtue alone is sweet society, 
It keeps the key to all heroic hearts, 
And opens you a welcome in them all. 
You must be like them if you desire them, 
Scorn trifles and embrace a better aim 
Than wine or sleep or praise; 
Hunt knowledge as the lover wooes a maid, 

3 Emerson's first wife, the ' Ellen ' of the previous 
poems, died of consumption after they had been mar- 
ried only a year and a half. 

4 Don't you see you are the Universe to yourself .' 
You carry your fortunes in your own hand. Change of 
place won't mend the matter. You will weave the same 
web at Pernambuco as at Boston, if you have only 
learned how to make one texture. {Journal, Divimty 
Hall, Cambridge, November, 1827.) 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



61 



And ever in the strife of your own thoughts 
Obey the nobler impulse; that is Rome : 
That shall command a senate to your side; 
For there is no might in the universe 
That can contend with love. It reigns for- 
ever. 
Wait then, sad friend, wait in majestic peace 
The hour of heaven. Generously trust 
Thy fortune's web to the beneficent hand 
That until now has put his world in fee 
To thee. He watches for thee still. His 

love 
Broods over thee, and as God lives in heaven, 
However long thou walkest solitary, 
The hour of heaven shall come, the man ap- 
pear. 
1833. 1883. 

WEBSTER 1 

III fits the abstemious Muse a crown to 

weave 
For living brows; ill fits them to receive: 
And yet, if virtue abrogate the law, 
One portrait — fact or fancy — we may 

draw; 
A form which Nature cast in the heroic 

mould 
Of them who rescued liberty of old; 
He, when the rising storm of party roared, 
Brought his great forehead to the council 

board, 
There, while hot heads perplexed with fears 

the state, 
Calm as the morn the manly patriot sate ; 
Seemed, when at last his clarion accents 

broke, 
As if the conscience of the country spoke. 
Not on its base Monadnoc surer stood, 
Than he to common sense and common 

good: 
No mimic; from his breast bis counsel 

drew, 
Believed the eloquent was aye the true ; 

1 The only passage from the Phi Beta Kappa poem 
of 1834 which has been preserved in Emerson's Works. 
After Webster's death he wrote (185-1), with uninten- 
tional injustice, — 

Why did all manly gifts in Webster fail ? 
He wrote on Nature's grandest brow, For Sale. 

Compare Whittier's arraignment of Webster in ' Icha- 
bod,' and his partial retractation in ' The Lost Occa- 
sion.' Most of the New England abolitionists, many 
of whom, so long as the party of slavery was in power, 
were quite willing to disrupt the Union rather than to 
submit to its pro-slavery laws, could never forgive or 
at all understand Webster's position in setting the 
Union above all else, even abolition. 



He bridged the gulf from th' alway good 

and wise 
To that within the vision of small eyes. 
Self-centred; when he launched the genuine 

word 
It shook or captivated all who heard, 
Ran from his mouth to mountains and the 

sea, 
And burned in noble hearts proverb and 

prophecy. 
1834. 1883. 

THE RHODORA: 

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE 
FLOWER ? 

In May, when sea-winds pierced our soli- 
tudes, 
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, 
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp 

nook, 
To please the desert and the sluggish brook. 
The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 
Made the black water with their beauty 

gay; 
Here might the redbird come his plumes 

to cool, 
And court the flower that cheapens his ar- 
ray. 
Rhodora ! if the sages ask thee why 
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for 

seeing, 
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being: 2 
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose ! 
I never thought to ask, I never knew: 
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose 
The self-same Power that brought me there 

brought you. 
1834. 1839. 

EACH AND ALL 

Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked 

clown 
Of thee from the hill-top looking down; 
The heifer that lows in the upland farm, 

2 Compare the chapter on Beauty, in Emerson's 
' Nature : ' ' This element [Beauty] I call an ultimate 
end. No reason can be asked or given why the soul 
seeks beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest 
sense, is one expression for the universe. . . . The 
ancient Greeks called the world <cdo-|U.os, Beauty.' 

Compare also the ' Michael Angelo : ' ' Beauty can- 
not be defined. Like Truth, it is an ultimate aim of 
the human being.' 






62 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm ; 
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon, 
Deems not that great Napoleon 
Stops his horse, and lists with delight, 
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine 

height; x 
Nor knowest thou what argument 
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. 10 
All are needed by each one; 
Nothing is fair or good alone. 
I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, 
Singing at dawn on the alder bough; 
I brought him home, in his nest, at even; 
He sings the song, but it cheers not now, 
For I did not bring home the river and sky ; — 
He sang to my ear, — they sang to my 

eye. 
The delicate shells lay on the shore; 
The bubbles of the latest wave 20 

Fresh pearls to their enamel gave, 
And the bellowing of the savage sea 
Greeted their safe escape to me. 
I wiped away the weeds and foam, 
I fetched my sea-born treasures home; 
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things 
Had left their beauty on the shore 
With the sun and the sand and the wild up- 
roar. 2 
The lover watched his graceful maid, 
As 'mid the virgin train she strayed, 30 
Nor knew her beauty's best attire 
Was woven still by the snow-white choir. 
At last she came to his hermitage, 
Like the bird from the woodlands to the 

cage ; — 
The gay enchantment was undone, 
A gentle wife, but fairy none. 
Then I said, ' I covet truth; 
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; 
I leave it behind with the games of 

youth : ' — 
As I spoke, beneath my feet 40 

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, 
Running over the club-moss burrs; 

1 Buonaparte was sensible to the music of bells. 
Hearing the bell of a parish church, he would pause, 
and his voice faltered as he said, ' Ah ! that reminds 
me of the first years I spent at Brienne; I was then 
happy-' (Journal, 1844.) 

2 I remember when I was a boy going upon the beach 
and being charmed with the colors and forms of the 
shells. I picked up many and put them in my pocket. 
When I got home I could find nothing that I gathered 
— nothing but some dry, ugly mussel and snail shells. 
Thence I learned that Composition was more important 
than the beauty of individual forms to Effect. On the 
shore they lay wet and social, by the sea and under the 
sky. (Journal, May 16, 1834.) 



I inhaled the violet's breath; 
Around me stood the oaks and firs; 
Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground; 
Over me soared the eternal sky, 
Full of light and of deity; 
Agahi I saw, again I heard, 
The rolling river, the morning bird; — 
Beauty through my senses stole; 50 

I yielded myself to the perfect whole. 
1834 ? 1839. 



THE APOLOGY 8 

Think me not unkind and rude 

That I walk alone in grove and glen; 

I go to the god of the wood 
To fetch his word to men. 

Tax not my sloth that I 

Fold my arms beside the brook; 

Each cloud that floated in the sky 
Writes a letter in my book. 

Chide me not, laborious band, 
For the idle flowers I brought; 

Every aster in my hand 

Goes home loaded with a thought. 

There was never mystery 

But 't is figured in the flowers ; 

Was never secret history 

But birds tell it hi the bowers. 

One harvest from thy field 

Homeward brought the oxen strong; 
A second crop thine acres yield, 

Which I gather in a song. 4 
1834 ? 1846. 



3 Compare Wordsworth's ' Expostulation and Re- 
ply,' and 'The Tables Turned.' 

Compare also a passage in Emerson's description of 
Thoreau, as reported by Charles J. Woodbury : — 

' Men of note would come to talk with him. 

' " I don't know," he would say ; " perhaps a minute 
would be enough for both of us." 

' " But I come to walk with you when you take your 
exercise." 

'"Ah, walking — that is my holy time."' (Wood- 
bury's Talks with Emerson, p. 80.) 

4 Compare the beautiful lines in Emerson's poem, 
' The Dirge,' 1838 : — 

Knows he who tills this lonely field 

To reap its scanty corn, 
What mystic fruit his acres yield 

At midnight and at morn ? 

In the long sunny afternoon 

The plain was full of ghosts ; 
I wandered up, I wandered down, 

Beset by pensive hosts. 






RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



63 



CONCORD HYMN 1 

SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BAT- 
TLE MONUMENT, JULY 4, 1 837 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 

Here once the embattled farmers stood 
And fired the shot heard round the world. 

The foe long since in silence slept ; 

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 
And Time the ruined bridge has swept 

Down the dark stream which seaward 
creeps. 

On this green bank, by this soft stream, 

We set to-day a votive stone ; 
That memory may their deed redeem, 

When, like our sires, our sons are gone. 

Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
To die, and leave their children free, 

Bid Time and Nature gently spare 
The shaft we raise to them and thee. 

1837. 1837. 



THE HUMBLE-BEE 2 

Burly, dozing humble-bee, 
Where thou art is clime for me. 
Let them sail for Porto Rique, 
Far-off heats through seas to seek; 
I will follow thee alone, 
Thou animated torrid-zone ! 



1 Compare Emerson's 'Historical Discourse at Con- 
cord, September 12, 1835,' and his ' Address at the 
Hundredth Anniversary of the Concord Fight,' espe- 
cially a passage in the first of these addresses, describ- 
ing the battle and its motives : ' These poor farmers 
who came up, that day, to defend their native soil, 
acted from the simplest instincts. They did not know 
it was a deed of fame they were doing,' etc. 

The first quatrain of the poem is now inscribed on 
the Battle Monument at Concord. 

Emerson's grandfather, William Emerson, was minis- 
ter at Concord in 1775 ; in his pulpit he strongly advo- 
cated resistance to the British, and when the day of the 
fight came, he was among the ' embattled farmers.' 
The fight took place near his own house, later known 
as ' The old Manse,' and the home successively of Emer- 
son and of Hawthorne. (See Bartlett's Concord, His- 
toric and Literary.) ' Let us stand our ground,' he said 
to the minutemen ; ' if we die, let us die here.' 

2 Containing much of the quintessence of poetry. 
(Longfellow.) 

Yesterday in the woods I followed the fine humble- 
bee with rhymes and fancies fine. . . . The humble-bee 
and pine-warbler seem to me the proper objects of at- 
tention in these disastrous times. {Journal, 1837.) 



* Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer, 
Let me chase thy waving lines; 
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer, 
Singing over shrubs and vines. 10 

Insect lover of the sun, 
Joy of thy dominion ! 
Sailor of the atmosphere ; 
Swimmer through the waves of air; 
Voyager of light and noon; 
Epicurean of June; 
Wait, I prithee, till I come 
Within earshot of thy hum, — 
All without is martyrdom. 

When the south wind, in May days, 20 

With a net of shining haze 

Silvers the horizon wall, 

And with softness touching all, 

Tints the human countenance 

With a color of romance, 

And infusing subtle heats, 

Turns the sod to violets, 

Thou, in sunny solitudes, 

Rover of the underwoods, 

The green silence dost displace 30 

With thy mellow, breezy bass. 

Hot midsummer's petted crone, 
Sweet to me thy drowsy tone 
Tells of countless sunny hours, 
Long days, and solid banks of flowers ; 
Of gulfs of sweetness without bound 
< In Indian wildernesses found; 
Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure,- 
Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure. 

Aught unsavory or unclean 40 

Hath my insect never seen; 
But violets and bilberry bells, 
Maple-sap and daffodels, 
Grass with green flag half-mast high, 
Succory to match the sky, 
^ Columbine with horn of honey, 
Scented fern, and agrimony, 
Clover, catchfly, adder's-tongue 
And brier-roses, dwelt among; 
All beside was unknown waste, 50 

All was picture as he passed. 

Wiser far than human seer, 
Yellow-breeched philosopher ! 
Seeing only what is fair, 
Sipping only what is sweet, 
Thou dost mock at fate and care, 



64 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Leave the chaff, and take the wheat. 
When the fierce northwestern hlast 
Cools sea and land so far and fast, 
Thou already slumberest deep; 
Woe and want thou canst outsleep; 
Want and woe, which torture us, 
Thy sleep makes ridiculous. 



1837 ? 



1839. 



URIEL 1 



It fell in the ancient periods 

Which the brooding soul surveys, 

Or ever the wild Time corned itself 
Into calendar months and days. 

This was the lapse of Uriel 

Which in Paradise befell. 

Once, among the Pleiads walking, 

Seyd overheard the young gods talking; 

And tbe treason, too long pent, 

To his ears was evident. io 

The young deities discussed 

Laws of form, and metre just, 

Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams, 

What subsisteth and what seems. 

One, with low tones that decide, 

And doubt and reverend use defied, 

With a look that solved the sphere, 

And stirred the devils everywhere, 

Gave his sentiment divine 

Against the being of a line. 20 

' Line in nature is not f ound ; 

Unit and universe are round; 

In vain produced, all rays return; 

Evil will bless, and ice will burn.' 

As Uriel spoke with piercing eye, 

A shudder ran around the sky; 

The stern old war-gods shook their heads, 

The seraphs frowned from myrtle-beds; 

1 From its strange presentation in a celestial para- 
ble of the story of a crisis in its author's life, this 
poem demands especial comment. In his essay on ' Cir- 
cles ' — which sheds light upon it — Emerson said, 'Be- 
ware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this 
planet.' ' 

The earnest young men on the eve of entering the 
ministry asked him to speak to them. After serious 
thought he went to Cambridge (July 15, 1838) to give 
them the good and emancipating words which had been 
given to him in solitude, well aware, however, that he 
must shock or pain the older clergy vho were present. 
The poem, when read with the history of the Divinity 
School Address, and its consequences, in mind, is seen 
to be an account of that event generalized and sub- 
limed, — the announcement of an advance in truth, won 
not without pain and struggle, to hearers not yet ready, 
resulting in banishment to the prophet; yet the spoken 
word sticks like a barbed arrow, or works like a leaven. 
(E. W. Embbson.) 



Seemed to the holy festival 
The rash word boded ill to all; 30 

The balance-beam of Fate was bent; 
The bounds of good and ill were rent; 
Strong Hades could not keep his own, 
But all slid to confusion. 

A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell 
On the beauty of Uriel; 
In heaven once eminent, the god 
Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud; 
Whether doomed to long gyration 
In the sea of generation, 4 o 

Or by knowledge grown too bright 
To hit the nerve of feebler sight. 
Straightway, a forgetting wind 
Stole over the celestial kind, 
And their lips the secret kept, 
If in ashes the fire-seed slept. 
But now and then, truth-speaking things 
Shamed the angels' veiling wings; 
And, shrilling from the solar course, 
Or from fruit of chemic force, 50 

Procession of a soul in matter, 
Or the speeding change of water, 
Or out of the good of evil born, 
Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn, 
And a blush tinged the upper sky, 
And the gods shook, they knew not why. 
1838. 1846. 

THE PROBLEM 2 

I like a church; I like a cowl; 

I love a prophet of the soul; 

And on my heart monastic aisles 

Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles ; 

Yet not for all his faith can see 

Woidd I that cowled churchman be. 

Why should the vest on him allure, 
Which I could not on me endure ? 



Not from a vain or shallow thought 3 
His awful Jove young Phidias brought; 
Never from lips of cunning fell 1 

The thrilling Delphic oracle; 

2 It is very grateful to my feelings to go into a 
Roman Cathedral, yet I look as my countrymen do at 
the Roman priesthood. It is very grateful to me to 
go into an English Church and hear the liturgy read, 
yet nothing would induce me to be the English priest. 
{Journal, August 28, 1838.) 

3 Compare the essay on ' Compensation : ' ' This 
voice of fable has in it something divine. It came from 
thought above the will of the writer. . . . Phidias it is 
not,' etc. 









RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



65 



Out from the heart of nature rolled 

The burdens of the Bible old; 

The litanies of nations came, 

Like the volcano's tongue of flame, 

Up from the burning core below, — 

The canticles of love and woe: 

The hand that rounded Peter's dome 1 

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome 

Wrought in a sad sincerity: 2 21 

Himself from G-od he could not free ; 3 

He builded better than he knew ; — 4 

The conscious stone to beauty grew. 

Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's 

nest 
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast ? 
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, 
Painting with morn her annual cell ? 
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds 
To her old leaves new myriads ? 30 

Such and so grew these holy piles, 
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. 
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, 
As the best gem upon her zone, 
And Morning opes with haste her lids 
To gaze upon the Pyramids ; 
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, 
As on its frien,ds, with kindred eye ; 
For out of Thought's interior sphere 
These wonders rose to upper air ; 5 40 

And Nature gladly gave them place, 
Adopted them into her race, 
And granted them an equal date 
With Andes and with Ararat. 6 



1 See Emerson's essay on ' Michael Angelo ; ' and 
the quotation from his ' Poetry and Imagination,' in 
note 7 in the next column. 

2 Compare Emerson's essay on 'Art:' 'The Iliad 
of Homer, the songs of David, the odes of Pindar, the 
tragedies of iEschylus, the Doric temples, the Gothic 
cathedrals, the plays of Shakespeare, all and each were 
made not for sport, but in grave earnest, in tears and 
smiles of suffering and loving men.' 

3 Compare the essay on ' Art : ' ' The Gothic cathe- 
drals were built when the builder and the priest and 
the people were overpowered by their faith. Love and 
fear laid every stone.' Compare also line 32 of the 
poem : — 

Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. 

4 Compare the essay on ' Art : ' ' Our arts are happy 
hits. We are like the musician on the lake, whose 
melody is sweeter than he knows.' 

6 It is in the soul that architecture exists, and Santa 
Croce and the Duomo are poor, far-behind imitations. 
{Journal, Florence, 1833.) 

6 Compare the essay on ' Art : ' ' And so every genu- 
ine work of art has as much reason for being as the 
earth and the sun. . . . We feel in seeing a noble build- 
ing which rhymes well, as we do in hearing a perfect 
song, that it is spiritually organic ; that it had a neces- 
sity in nature for being ; was one of the possible forms 
in the Divine mind, and is now only discovered and exe- 
cuted by the artist, not arbitrarily composed by him.' 



These temples grew as grows the grass; 

Art might obey, but not surpass. 

The passive Master lent his hand 

To the vast soul that o'er him planned; 7 

And the same power that reared the 

shrine 
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. 50 
Ever the fiery Pentecost 
Girds with one flame the countless host, 
Trances the heart through chanting choirs, 
And through the priest the mind in- 
spires. 
The word unto the prophet spoken 
Was writ on tables yet unbroken; 
The word by seers or sibyls told, 
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, 
Still floats upon the morning wind, 
Still whispers to the willing mind. 60 

One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world hath never lost. 
I know what say the fathers wise, 
The Book itself before me lies, 
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, 
And he who blent both in his line, 
The younger Golden Lips or mines, 
Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines. 
His words are music in my ear, 
I see his cowled portrait dear; 70 

And yet, for all his faith could see, 
I would not the good bishop be. 
1839. 1840. 



WRITTEN IN A VOLUME OF 
GOETHE 8 

Six thankful weeks, — and let it be 
A meter of prosperity, — 
In my coat I bore this book, 
And seldom therein could I look, 
For I had too much to think, 
Heaven and earth to eat and drink. 
Is he hapless who can spare 
In his plenty things so rare ? 
1840* 1883. 



7 Compare Emerson's essay on ' Poetry and Imagina- 
tion,' in Letters and Social Aims: 'Michael Angelo is 
largely filled with the Creator that made and makes 
men. How much of the original craft remains in 
him, and he a mortal man ! . . . He knows that he did 
not make his thought, — no, his thought made him, and 
made the sun and stars.' 

8 Emerson wrote to Carlyle, in April, 1840 : ' You 
asked me if I read German. ... I have contrived to 
read almost every volume of Goethe, and I have fifty- 
five, but I have read nothing else — but I have not now 
looked even into Goethe, for a long time.' 



66 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



WOODNOTES 



When the pine tosses its cones 

To the song of its waterfall tones, 

Who speeds to the woodland walks ? 

To birds and trees who talks ? 

Caesar of his leafy Rome, 

There the poet is at home. 

He goes to the river-side, — 

Not hook nor line hath he ; 

He stands in the meadows wide, — 

Nor gun nor scythe to see. 10 

Sure some god his eye enchants: 

What he knows nobody wants. 

In the wood he travels glad, 

Without better fortune had, 

Melancholy without bad. 

Knowledge this man prizes best 

Seems fantastic to the rest: 

Pondering shadows, colors, clouds, 

Grass-buds and caterpillar-shrouds, 

Boughs on which the wild bees settle, 20 

Tints that spot the violet's petal, 

Why Nature loves the number five, 

And why the star-form she repeats: x 

Lover of all things alive, 

Wonderer at all he meets, 

Wonderer chiefly at himself, 

Who can tell him what he is ? 

Or how meet in human elf 

Coming and past eternities ? 



And such I knew, a forest seer, 30 

A minstrel of the natural year, 

Foreteller of the vernal ides, 

Wise harbinger of spheres and tides, 

A lover true, who knew by heart 

Each joy the mountain dales impart; 

It seemed that Nature could not raise 

A plant in any secret place, 

In quaking bog, on snowy hill, 

Beneath the grass that shades the rill, 

Under the snow, between the rocks, 40 

In damp fields known to bird and fox, 

But he would come in the very hour 

It opened in its virgin bower, 

1 Trifles move us more than laws. Why am I more 
curious to know the reason why the star-form is so oft 
repeated in botany, or why the number five is such a 
favorite with Nature, than to understand the circula- 
tion of the sap and the formation of buds ? (Journal, 
1835.) 



As if a sunbeam showed the place, 

And tell its long-descended race. 

It seemed as if the breezes brought him, 

It seemed as if the sparrows taught him ; 

As if by secret sight he knew 

Where, in far fields, the orchis grew. 

Many haps fall in the field 50 

Seldom seen by wishful eyes, 

But all her shows did Nature yield, 

To please and win this pilgrim wise. 

He saw the partridge drum in the woods ; 2 

He heard the woodcock's evening hymn; 

He found the tawny thrushes' broods ; 

And the shy hawk did wait for him ; 8 

What others did at distance hear, 

And guessed within the thicket's gloom, 

Was shown to this philosopher, 60 

And at his bidding seemed to come. 4 

_ 3 
In unploughed Maine he sought the lum- 
berers' gang 
Where from a hundred lakes young rivers 

sprang; 
He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon 
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone ; 
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly 

bear, 
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. 
He saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds, 
The slight Linnsea hang its twin-born heads, 
And blessed the monument of the man of 
flowers, 70 

Which breathes his sweet fame through the 

northern bowers. 
He heard, when in the grove, at intervals, 
With sudden roar the aged pine-tree falls, — 
One crash, the death-hymn of the perfect 

tree, 
Declares the close of its green century. 

2 Compare Emerson's ' Thoreau : ' ' His powers of 
observation seemed to indicate additional senses. He 
saw as with microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and 
his memory was a photographic register of all he saw 
and heard. And yet none knew better than he that it is 
not the fact that imports but the impression or effect 
of the fact on your mind. Every fact lay in glory in 
his mind, a type of the order and beauty of the whole.' 

3 Compare the ' Thoreau ' again : ' He knew how to 
sit immovable, a part of the rock he rested on, until 
the bird, the reptile, the fish, which had retired from 
him, should come back and resume its habits, — nay, 
moved by curiosity, should come to him and watch 
him.' 

4 The passages about the forest seer fit Thoreau so 
well that the general belief that Mr. Emerson had him 
in mind may be accepted, but one member of the fam- 
ily recalls his saying that a part of this picture was 
drawn before he knew Thoreau's gifts and experiences. 
(E. W. Emeeson, in the Centenary Edition.) 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



67 



Low lies the plant to whose creation went 
Sweet influence from every element; 
Whose living towers the years conspired to 

build, 
Whose giddy top the morning loved to gild. 
Through these green tents, by eldest Nature 

dressed, 80 

He roamed, content alike with man and 

beast. 
Where darkness found him he lay glad at 

night; 
There the red morning touched him with its 

light. 
Three moons his great heart him a hermit 

made, 
So long he roved at will the boundless shade. 
The timid it concerns to ask their wayj- 
And fear what foe in caves and swamps can 

stray, 
To make no step until the event is known, 
And ills to come as evils past bemoan. 
Not so the wise ; no coward watch he 

keeps 90 

To spy what danger on his pathway creeps ; 
Go where he will, the wise man is at home, 1 
His hearth the earth, — his hall the azure 

dome; 
Where his clear spirit leads him, there 's 

his road 
By God's own light illumined and fore- 
showed. 



'T was one of the charmed days 

When the genius of God doth flow; 

The wind may alter twenty ways, 

A tempest cannot blow; 

It may blow north, it still is warm; 100 

Or south, it still is clear; 

Or east, it smells like a clover-farm ; 

Or west, no thunder fear. 

The musing peasant, lowly great, 

Beside the forest water sate ; 

The rope-like pine-roots crosswise grown 

Composed the network of bis throne; 

The wide lake, edged with sand and grass, 

Was burnished to a floor of glass, 

Painted with shadows green and proud no 

Of the tree and of the cloud. 

He was the heart of all the scene; 

On him the sun looked more serene; 

To hill and cloud his face was known, — 

It seemed the likeness of their own; 

They knew by secret sympathy 

1 Cf. the note on ' Written in Naples,' p. 60. 



The public child of earth and sky. 
' You ask,' he said, ' what guide 
Me through trackless thickets led, 
Through thick-stemmed woodlands rough 
and wide. 12 o 

I found the water's bed. 
The watercourses were my guide ; 
I travelled grateful by their side, 
Or through their channel dry; 
They led me through the thicket damp, 
Through brake and fern, the beavers' camp, 
Through beds of granite cut my road, 
And their resistless friendship showed. 
The falling waters led me, 
The foodful waters fed me, 130 

And brought me to the lowest land, 
Unerring to the ocean sand. 
The moss upon the forest bark 
Was pole-star when the night was dark; 
The purple berries in the wood 
Supplied me necessary food; 
For Nature ever faithful is 
_To such as trust her faithf ulness. 
When the forest shall mislead me, 
When the night and morning lie, 140 

When sea and land refuse to feed me, 
'T will be time enough to die; 
Then will yet my mother yield 
A pillow in her greenest field, 
Nor the June flowers scorn to cover 
The clay of their departed lover.' 

1840. 

WOODNOTES 2 



11 

As sunbeams stream through liberal space 
A nd nothing jostle or displace, 
So waved the pine-tree through my thought 
And fanned the dreams it never brought. 

1 Whether is better, the gift or the donor ? 
Come to me,' 

2 The stately white pine of New England was Emer- 
son's favorite tree. . . . This poem records the actual 
fact ; nearly every day, summer or winter, when at 
home, he went to listen to its song. The pine grove by 
Walden, still standing, though injured by time and 
fire, was one of his most valued possessions. He ques- 
tioned whether he should not name his book Forest 
Essays, for, he said, 'I have scarce a day-dream on 
which the breath of the pines has not blown and their 
shadow waved.' The great pine on the ridge over 
Sleepy Hollow was chosen by him as his monument. 
When a youth, in Newton, he had written. ' Here sit 
Mother and I under the pine-trees, still almost as we 
shall lie by and by under them.' — (E. W. Emerson, in 
the Centenary Edition.) 



68 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Quoth the pine-tree, 

' I am the giver of honor. 

My garden is the cloven rock, 

And my manure the snow; 10 

And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock, 

In summer's scorching glow. 

He is great who can live by me : 

The rough and bearded forester 

Is better than the lord; 

God fills the scrip and canister, 

Sin piles the loaded board. 

The lord is the peasant that was, 

The peasant the lord that shall be; 

The lord is hay, the peasant grass, 20 

One dry, and one the living tree. 

Who liveth by the ragged pine 

Foundeth a heroic line ; 

Who liveth in the palace hall 

Waneth fast and spendeth all. 1 

He goes to my savage haunts, 

With his chariot and his care ; 

My twilight realm he disenchants, 

And finds his prison there. 

' What prizes the town and the tower ? 30 

Only what the pine-tree yields; 

Sinew that subdued the fields; 

The wild-eyed boy, who in the woods 

Chants his hymn to hills and floods, 

Whom the city's poisoning spleen 

Made not pale, or fat, or lean; 

Whom the rain and the wind purgeth, 

Whom the dawn and the day-star urgeth, 

In whose cheek the rose-leaf blusheth, 

In whose feet the lion rusheth 40 

Iron arms, and iron mould, 

That know not fear, fatigue, or cold. 

I give my rafters to his boat, 

My billets to his boiler's throat, 

And I will swim the ancient sea 

To float my child to victory, 

And grant to dwellers with the pine 

Dominion o'er the palm and vine. 

Who leaves the pine-tree, leaves his friend, 

Unnerves his strength, invites his end. 50 

Cut a bough from my parent stem, 

And dip it in thy porcelain vase ; 

A little while each russet gem 

Will swell and rise with wonted grace; 

But when it seeks enlarged supplies, 

The orphan of the forest dies. 

1 Compare the essay on 'Manners:' 'The city 
would have died out, rotted and exploded, long ago, 
but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only 
country which came to town day before yesterday that 
is city and court to-day.' 



Whoso walks in solitude 

And inhabiteth the wood, 

Choosing light, wave, rock and bird, 

Before the money-loving herd, 60 

Into that forester shall pass, 

From these companions, power and grace. 

Clean shall he be, without, within, 

From the old adhering sin, 

All ill dissolving in the light 

Of his triumphant pierchig sight: 

Not vain, sour, nor frivolous; 

Not mad, athirst, nor garrulous; 

Grave, chaste, contented, though retired, 

And of all other men desired. 70 

On him the light of star and moon 

Shall fall with purer radiance down; 

All constellations of the sky 

Shed their virtue through his eye. 

Him Nature giveth for defence 

His formidable innocence; 

The mountain sap, the shells, the sea, 

All spheres, all stones, his helpers be; 

He shall meet the speeding year, 

Without wailing, without fear; 80 

He shall be happy in his love, 

Like to like shall joyful prove ; 

He shall be happy whilst he wooes, 

Muse-born, a daughter of the Muse. 

But if with gold she bind her hair, 

And deck her breast with diamond, 

Take off thine eyes, thy heart forbear, 

Though thou lie alone on the ground. 

' Heed the old oracles, 

Ponder my spells; 90 

Song wakes in my pinnacles 

When the wind swells. 

Soundeth the prophetic wind, 

The shadows shake on the rock behind, 

And the countless leaves of the pine are 

strings 
Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings. 

Hearken ! Hearken ! 
If thou wouldst know the mystic song 
Chanted when the sphere was young. 
Aloft, abroad, the psean swells; 100 

O wise man ! hear'st thou half it tells ? 
O wise man ! hear'st thou the least part ? 
'T is the chronicle of art. 
To the open ear it sings 
Sweet the genesis of things, 
Of tendency through endless ages, 2 

2 These lines are a sort of poetic ' Doctrine of Evo- 
lution.' Compare the 1849 motto of Emerson's 'Na- 
ture ' (p. 77). It is interesting to remember Tyndall's 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



69 



Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages, 

Of rounded worlds, of space and time, 

Of the old flood's subsiding slime, 

Of chemic matter, force and form, no 

Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm: 

The rushing metamorphosis 

Dissolving all that fixture is, 

Melts things that be to things that seem, 

And solid nature to a dream. 

O, listen to the undersong, 

The ever old, the ever young; 

And, far within those cadent pauses, 

The chorus of the ancient Causes ! 

Delights the dreadful Destiny 120 

To fling his voice into the tree, 

And shock thy weak ear with a note 

Breathed from the everlasting throat. 

In music he repeats the pang 

Whence the fair flock of Nature sprang. 

mortal ! thy ears are stones; 
These echoes are laden with tones 
Which only the pure can hear; 
Thou canst not catch what they recite 

Of Fate and Will, of Want and Right, 130 

Of man to come, of human life, 

Of Death and Fortune, Growth and Strife.' 

Once again the pine-tree sung : — 

1 Speak not thy speech my boughs among : 
Put off thy years, wash in the breeze ; 
My hours are peaceful centuries. 

Talk no more with feeble tongue ; 

No more the fool of space and time, 

Come weave with mine a nobler rhyme. 

Only thy Americans 140 

Can read thy line, can meet thy glance, 

But the runes that I rehearse 

Understands the universe ; 

The least breath my boughs which tossed 

Brings again the Pentecost; 

To every soul resounding clear 

In a voice of solemn cheer, — 

" Am I not thine ? Are not these thine ? " 

And they reply, " Forever mine ! " 

My branches speak Italian, 150 

English, German, Basque, Castilian, 

Mountain speech to Highlanders, 

Ocean tongues to islanders, 

To Fin and Lap and swart Malay, 

To each his bosom-secret say. 

' Come learn with me the fatal song 
Which knits the world in music strong, 

saying : ' Whatever I have done the world owes to 
Emerson.' 



Come lift thine eyes to lofty rhymes, 

Of things with things, of times with times, 

Primal chimes of sun and shade, 160 

Of sound and echo, man and maid, 

The land reflected in the flood, 

Body with shadow still pursued. 

For Nature beats in perfect tune, 

And rounds with rhyme her every rune, 

Whether she work in land or sea, 

Or hide underground her alchemy. 

Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 

Or dip thy paddle in the lake, 

But it carves the bow of beauty there, i 7 c 

And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake. 1 

The wood is wiser far than thou; 

The wood and wave each other know 

Not unrelated, unaffied, 

But to each thought and thing allied, 

Is perfect Nature's every part, 

Rooted in the mighty Heart. 

But thou, poor child ! unbound, imrhymed, 

Whence earnest thou, misplaced, mistimed, 

Whence, O thou orphan and defrauded ? 180 

Is thy land peeled, thy realm marauded ? 

Who thee divorced, deceived and left ? 

Thee of thy faith who hath bereft, 

And torn the ensigns from thy brow, 

And sunk the immortal eye so low ? 

Thy cheek too white, thy form too slender, 

Thy gait too slow, thy habits tender 

For royal man; — they thee confess 

An exile from the wilderness, — 

The hills where health with health agrees, 

And the wise soul expels disease. i 9 i 

Hark ! in thy ear I will tell the sign 

By which thy hurt thou may'st divine. 

When thou shalt climb the mountain cliff, 

Or see the wide shore from thy skiff, 

To thee the horizon shall express 

But emptiness on emp'tiness; 

There lives no man of Nature's worth 

In the circle of the earth; 

And to thine eye the vast skies fall, 200 

Dire and satirical, 

1 ' As for beauty, I need not look beyond an oar's 
length for my fill of it.' I do not know whether he 
[William Ellery Channing] used the expression with 
design or no, but my eye rested on the charming play 
of light on the water which he was striking with his 
paddle. I fancied I had never seen such color, such 
transparency, such eddies ; it was the hue of Rhine 
wines, it was jasper and verd-antique, topaz and chalce- 
dony, it was gold and green and chestnut and hazel in 
bewitching succession and relief, without cloud or con- 
fusion. (Journal, 1846.) 

Compare also the paragraph in Emerson's ' Nature * 
beginning : ' It seems as if the day was not wholly pro- 
fane in which we have given heed to some natural 
object.' 



7° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



On clucking liens and prating fools, 
On thieves, on drudges and on dolls. 
And thou shalt say to the Most High, 
" Godhead ! all this astronomy, 
And fate and practice and invention, 
Strong art and beautiful pretension, 
This radiant pomp of sun and star, 
Throes that were, and worlds that are, 
Behold! were in vain and in vain; — 210 
It cannot be, — I will look again. 1 
Surely now will the curtain rise, 
And earth's fit tenant me surprise; — 
But the curtain doth not rise, 
And Nature has miscarried wholly 
Into failure, into folly." 

• Alas! thine is the bankruptcy, 

Blessed Nature so to see. 

Come, lay thee in my soothing shade, 

And heal the hurts which sin has made. 220 

I see thee in the crowd alone; 

I will be thy companion. 

Quit thy friends as the dead in doom, 

And build to them a final tomb; 

Let the starred shade that nightly falls 

Still celebrate their funerals, 

And the bell of beetle and of bee 

Knell their melodious memory. 

Behind thee leave thy merchandise, 

Thy churches and thy charities; 230 

And leave thy peacock wit behind; 

Enough for thee the primal mind 

That flows in streams, that breathes in wind: 

Leave all thy pedant lore apart; 

God hid the whole world in thy heart. 

Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns, 

Gives all to them who all renounce. 

The rain comes when the wind calls; 

The river knows the way to the sea; 

Without a pilot it rims and falls, 240 

Blessing all lands with its charity; 

The sea tosses and foams to find 

Its way up to the cloud and wind; 

The shadow sits close to the flying ball; 

The date fails not on the palm-tree tall; 

And thou, — go burn thy wormy pages, — 

Shalt outsee seers, and outwit sages. 

Oft didst thou thread the woods in vain 

To find what bird had piped the strain: — 

1 What has the imagination created to compare with 
the science of Astronomy ? What is there in Paradise 
Jjost to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somer- 
ville ? The contrast between the magnitude and dura- 
tion of the things, and the animalcule observer ! . . . 
I hope the time will come when there will be a tele- 
scope in every street. {Journal, May, 1832.) 



Seek not, and the little eremite 250 

Flies gayly forth and sings in sight. 

' Hearken once more ! 

I will tell thee the mundane lore. 

Older am I than thy numbers wot, 

Change I may, but I pass not. 

Hitherto all things fast abide, 

And anchored in the tempest ride. 

Trenchant time behoves to hurry 

All to yean and all to bury: 

All the forms are fugitive, 260 

But the substances survive. 

Ever fresh the broad creation, 

A divine improvisation, 

From the heart of God proceeds, 

A single will, a million deeds. 

Once slept the world an egg of stone, 

And pulse, and sound, and light was none ; 

And God said, " Throb ! " and there was 

motion 
And the vast mass became vast ocean. 
Onward and on, the eternal Pan, 270 

Who layeth the world's incessant plan, 
Halteth never in one shape, 
But forever doth escape, 
Like wave or flame, mto new forms 
Of gem, and air, of plants, and worms. 
I, that to-day am a pine, 
Yesterday was a bundle of grass. 
He is free and libertine, 
Pouring of his power the wine 
To every age, to every race; 280 

Unto every race and age 
He emptieth the beverage ; 
Unto each, and unto all, 
Maker and original. 
The world is the ring of his spells, 
And the play of his miracles. 
As he giveth to all to drink, 
Thus or thus they are and think. 
With one drop sheds form and feature; 
With the next a special nature; 290 

The third adds heat's indulgent spark; 
The fourth gives light which eats the dark; 
Into the fifth himself he flings, 
And conscious Law is King of kings. 
As the bee through the garden ranges, 
From world to world the godhead changes; 
As the sheep go feeding in the waste, 
From form to form He maketh haste; 
This vault which glows immense with light 
Is the inn where he lodges for a night. 300 
What recks such Traveller if the bowers 
Which bloom and fade like meadow flowers 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



7i 



A bunch of fragrant lilies be, 
Or the stars of eternity ? 
Alike to him the better, the worse, — 
The glowing a igel, the outcast corse. 
Thou metest inm by centuries, 
And lo ! he passes like the breeze ; 
Thou seek'st in globe and galaxy, 
He hides in pure transparency; 310 

Thou askest in fountains and in fires, 
He is the essence that inquires. 
He is the axis of the star; 
He is the sparkle of the spar; 
He is the heart of every creature ; 
He is the meaning of each feature; 
And his mind is the sky, 
Than all it holds more deep, more high.' 

1841. 

THE SPHINX 1 

The Sphinx is drowsy, 

Her wings are furled: 
Her ear is heavy, 

She broods on the world. 

And I think it no di?£ 
upy my place. 

you, 
mall as I, 









THE INI 



the Soul that ma 
orueth ever] 



• of the spl 

ir's hand, and 
• Christ's heart, 









' The waves, unashamed, 

In difference sweet, 
Play glad with the breezes, 

Old playfellows meet; 
The journeying atoms, 

Primordial wholes, 30 

Firmly draw, firmly drive, 

By their animate poles. 

' Sea, earth, air, sound, silence, 

Plant, quadruped, bird, 
By one music enchanted, 

One deity stirred, — 
Each the other adorning, 

Accompany still; 
Night veUeth the morning, 

The vapor the bill. 40 

1 The babe by its mother 

Lies bathed in joy; 
Glide its hours uncounted, — 

The sun is its toy; 
Shines the peace of all being, 

Without cloud, in its eyes; 
And the sum of the world 

In soft miniature lies. 

' But man crouches and blushes, 

Absconds and conceals; 50 

He creepeth and peepeth, 

He palters and steals; 
Infirm, melancholy, 

Jealous glancing around, , 
An oaf, an accomplice, 

He poisons the ground. 2 

' Out spoke the great mother, 

Beholding his fear ; — 
At the sound of her accents 

Cold shuddered the sphere : — 60 
" Who has drugged my boy's cup ? 

Who has mixed my boy's bread ? 
Who, with sadness and madness, 

Has turned my child's head ? " ' 

I heard a poet answer 

Aloud and cheerfully, 
' Say on, sweet Sphinx ! thy dirges 

2 Compare Emerson's essay on ' Self-Reliance : ' 
' Let a man then know his worth, and keep things 
under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up 
and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an 
interloper in the world which exists for him. . . Man 
is timid and apologetic ; he is no longer upright; he 
dares not say " I think," "I am," but quotes some 
saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass 
or the blowing rose.' 



7 2 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 






Are pleasant songs to me. 
Deep love lieth under 
" These pictures of time; 
They fade in the light of 
Their meaning sublime. 

« The fiend that man harries 

Is love of the Best; 
Yawns the pit of the Dragon, 

Lit by rays from the Blest. 
\The Lethe of Nature 
\ Can't trance him again, 
Whose soul sees the perfect^ 

Which his eyes seek in vain. 

« To vision prof ounder, 

Man's spirit must dive; 
His aye-rolling orb 

At no goal will arrive; 
The heavens that now draw him 

With sweetness untold, 
Once found, — for new heavens 

He spurneth the old. 1 

' Pride ruined the angels, 

Their shame them restores; 
Lurks the joy that is sweetest 

In stings of remorse. 
Have I a lover 

Who is noble and free ? — 
I would he were nobler 

Than to love me. 

' Eterne alternation 

Now follows, now flies; 
And under pain, pleasure, — 

Under pleasure, pain lies. 
Love works at the centre, 

Heart-heaving alway; 
Forth speed the strong pulses 

To the borders of day. 

'Dull Sphinx, Jove keep thy five wit 

Thy sight is growing blear; 
Rue, myrrh and cummin for the Spl 

Her muddy eyes to clear ! ' 
The old Sphinx bit her thick lip, — 

Said, 'Who taught thee me to naint 
I am thy spirit, yoke-fellow; 

Of thine eye I am eyebeam. 

i Compare Emerson's address on 'The An 
Scholar,' the paragraph beginning : First on. 
another, we drain all cisterns, and waxing greate 
these supplies, we crave a better and more ao 
food.' 



« Thou art the unanswered question; 

Couldst see thy proper eye, 
Alway it asketh, asketh; 

And each answer is a lie. 
So take thy quest through nature, 

It through thousand natures ply; 
Ask on, thou clothed eternity; 

Time is the false reply.' 

Uprose the merry Sphinx, 

And crouched no more in stone; 
She melted into purple cloud, 

She silvered in the moon; 
She spired into a yellow flame; 

She flowered in blossoms red; 
She flowed into a foaming wave: 

She stood Monadnoc's head. 

Thorough a thousand voices 
Spoke the universal dame; 

j Who telleth one of my meanings 
To .«n S t P r of all I am.' 



:■" 



>rms 



and age 



280 






shed: . feature; 

,:! nature; 290 

heat's indulgent spark; 

its the dark; 









1 




.■hinges; 










. 








h light 




, 


- 


lant 




low flowei'3 



RALPH WALDO MERSON 



73 



ter than Jai 

Whispered the M 
' O gentle Saadi, 



FABLE 

The mountain and the squirrel 

Had a quarrel, 

And the former called the latter 'Little 

Prig;' 
Bun replied, 

' You are doubtless very big; 
But all sorts of things and weather 
Must be taken in together, 
To make up a year 
And a sphere. 
And I think it no disgrace 
To occupy my place. 
If I 'in not so large as you, 
You are not so small as I, 
And not half so spry. 
I '11 not deny you make 
A very pretty squirrel track; 
Talents differ!; all is well and wisely put; 
If I cannot carry forests on my back, 
Neither can you crack a nut.' 
1840 ? 1846. 



THE INFORMING SPIRIT 1 



There is no great and no small 
To the Soul that maketh all: 
And where it cometh, all things are; 
And it cometh everywhere. 



I am owner of the sphere, 
Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
Of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, 
Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakspeare's 
strain. 

1841. 

1 First printed, without title, as motto to the essay 
on ' History.' 



FRIENDSHIP 2 

A ruddy drop of manly blood 

urging sea outweighs, 
The world uncertain comes and goes ; 
The lover rooted stays. 
i fancied he was fled, — 
And., after many a year, 

ed unexhausted kindliness, 
Like daily sunrise there. 
My careful heart was free again, 
O friend, my bosom said, 
Through thee alone the sky is arched, 
Through thee the rose is red; 
ah things through thee take nobler form, 
And look beyond the earth, 
The mill-round of our fate appears 
A sun-path in thy worth. 
Me too thy nobleness has taught 
To master my despair; 
The fountains of my hidden life 
Are through thy friendship fair. 

1841. 



FORBEARANCE 

Hast thou named all the birds without a 
gun ? 

Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its 
stalk ? 

At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse ? 

Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of 
trust ? 

And loved so well a high behavior, 

In man or maid, that thou from speech re- 
frained, 

Nobility more nobly to repay ? 

O, be my friend, and teach me to be 
thine ! 

1842. 



HOLIDAYS 

From fall to spring, the russet acorn, 
Fruit beloved of maid and boy, 

Lent itself beneath the forest, 
To be the children's toy. 

Pluck it now ! In vain, — thou canst not; 

Its root has pierced yon shady mound; 
Toy no longer — it has duties ; 

It is anchored in the ground. 

2 First printed as motto to the essay on ' Friend- 
ship.' 



74 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Year by year the rose-lipped maiden, 
Playfellow of young and old, 

Was frolic sunshine, dear to all men, 
More dear to one than mines of gold. 

Whither went the lovely hoyden ? 

Disappeared in blessed wife; 
Servant to a wooden cradle, 

Living in a baby's life. 

Still thou playest; — short vacation 
Fate grants each to stand aside; 

Now must thou be man and artist, — 
'T is the turning of the tide. 

1842. 



SAADI 1 

Trees in groves, 
Kine in droves, 

In ocean sport the scaly herds, 
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds, 
To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks, 
Browse the mountain sheep hi flocks, 
Men consort in camp and town, 
But the poet dwells alone. 

God, who gave to him the lyre, 
Of all mortals the desire, 10 

For all breathing men's behoof, 
Straitly charged him, ' Sit aloof; ' 
Annexed a warning, poets say, 
To the bright premium, — 
Ever, when twain together play, 
Shall the harp be dumb. 

Many may come, 

But one shall sing; 

Two touch the string, 

The harp is dumb. 20 

Though there come a million, 

Wise Saadi dwells alone. 

Yet Saadi loved the race of men, — 
No churl, immured in cave or den; 
In bower and hall 
He wants them all, 
Nor can dispense 

1 It does not appear in what year Mr. Emerson first 
read in translation the poems of Saadi, but although in 
later years he seems to have been strangely stimulated 
by Hafiz, whom he names ' the prince of Persian poets,' 
yet Saadi was his first love ; indeed, he adopted his 
name, in its various modifications, for the ideal poet, 
and under it describes his own longings and his most 
intimate experiences. (E. W. Emeeson.) 



i ure, 



■ 



• the mem 

! 

byivaii IteAJB, le 

And simple maids and noble youth 

Are welcome to the man of truth. 40 

Most welcome they who need him most, 

They feed the spring which they exhaust; 

For greater need 

Draws better deed: 

But, critic, spare thy vanity, 

Nor show thy pompous parts, 

To vex with odious subtlety 

The cheerer of men's hearts. 

Sad-eyed Fakirs swiftly say 

Endless dirges to decay, 50 

Never in the blaze of light 

Lose the shudder of midnight; 

Pale at overflowing noon 

Hear wolves barking at the moon; 

In the bower of dalliance sweet 

Hear the far Avenger's feet: 

And shake before those awful Powers, 

Who in their pride forgive not ours. 

Thus the sad-eyed Fakirs preach: 

' Bard, when thee would Allah teach, 60 

And lift thee to his holy mount, 

He sends thee from his bitter fount 

Wormwood, — saying, " Go thy ways; 

Drink not the Malaga of praise, 

But do the deed thy fellows hate, 

And compromise thy peaceful state ; 

Smite the white breasts which thee fed, 

Stuff sharp thorns beneath the head 

Of them thou shouldst have comforted; 

For out of woe and out of crime 70 

Draws the heart a lore sublime." ' 

And yet it seemeth not to me 

That the high gods love tragedy; 

For Saadi sat in the sun, 

And thanks was his contrition; 

For haircloth and for bloody whips, 

Had active bands and smiling lips; 

And yet his runes he rightly read, 

And to his folk his message sped. 

Sunshine in his heart transferred 80 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



75 



Lighted each transparent word, 
And well could honoring Persia learn 
What Saadi wished to say ; 
For Saadi's nightly stars did burn 
Brighter than Jami's day. 

Whispered the Muse in Saadi's cot: 

' O gentle Saadi, listen not, 

Tempted by thy praise of wit, 

Or by thirst and appetite 

For the talents not thine own, 90 

To sons of contradiction. 

Never, son of eastern morning, 

Follow falsehood, follow scorning. 

Denounce who will, who will deny, 

And pile the hills to scale the sky ; 

Let theist, atheist, pantheist, 

Define and wrangle how they list, 

Fierce conserver, fierce destroyer, — 

But thou, joy-giver and enjoyer, 

Unknowing war, unknowing crime, 100 

Gentle Saadi, mind thy rhyme ; 

Heed not what the brawlers say, 

Heed thou only Saadi's lay. 1 

' Let the great world bustle on 
With war and trade, with camp and town; 
A thousand men shall dig and eat; 
At forge and furnace thousands sweat; 
And thousands sail the purple sea, 
And give or take the stroke of war, 
Or crowd the market and bazaar; no 

Oft shall war end, and peace return, 
And cities rise where cities burn, 
Ere one man my hill shall climb, 
Who can turn the golden rhyme. 
Let them manage how they may, 
Heed thou only Saadi's lay. 
'Seek thg living among the dead, — 
Man in man is imprisoned; 
■ Barefooted Dervish is not poor, 
If fate unlock his bosom's door, 120 

So that what his eye hath seen 
His tongue can paint as bright, as keen; 
And what his tender heart hath felt 



1 Compare the essay on ' Experience ' : 'So many 
things are unsettled . . . the debate goes forward . . . 
much is to say on both sides . . . Eight to hold land, 
right of property, is disputed . . . Dig away in your 
garden, and spend your earnings as a waif or a god- 
send, to all serene and beautiful purposes. Life itself 
is a bubble and a scepticism and a sleep within a 
sleep. Grant it, and as much more as they will, — but 
thou, God's darling, heed thy private dream ; thou 
wilt not be missed in the scorning and scepticism ; 
there are enough of them ; stay thou in thy closet and 
toil . . .' 



With equal fire thy heart shalt melt. 

For, whom the Muses smile upon, 

And touch with soft persuasion, 

His words like a storm-wind can bring 

Terror and beauty on their wing; 

In his every syllable 

Lurketh Nature veritable; 130 

And though he speak in midnight dark, — 

In heaven no star, on earth no spark, — 

Yet before the listener's eye 

Swims the world in ecstasy, 

The forest waves, the morning breaks, 

The pastures sleep, ripple the lakes, 

Leaves twinkle, flowers like persons be, 

And life pulsates in rock or tree. 

Saadi, so far thy words shall reach : 

Sims rise and set in Saadi's speech ! ' 140 

And thus to Saadi said the Muse: 

1 Eat thou the bread which men refuse ; 

Flee from the goods which from thee flee; 

Seek nothing, — Fortune seeketh thee. 

Nor mount, nor dive ; all good things keep 

The midway of the eternal deep. 

Wish not to fill the isles with eyes 

To fetch the birds of paradise: 

On thine orchard's edge belong 

All the brags of plume and song; 150 

Wise Ali's sunbright sayings pass 

For proverbs in the market-place : 

Through mountains bored by regal art, 

Toil whistles as he drives his cart. 

Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind, 

A poet or a friend to find: 

Behold, he watches at the door ! 

Behold his shadow on the floor ! 

Open innumerable doors 

The heaven where unveiled Allah pours 160 

The flood of truth, the flood of good, 

The Seraph's and the Cherub's food. 

Those doors are men: the Pariah hind 

Admits thee to the perfect Mind. 

Seek not beyond thy cottage wall 

Redeemers that can yield thee all: 

While thou sittest at thy door 

On the desert's yellow floor, 

Listening to the gray-haired crones, 

Foolish gossips, ancient drones, 170 

Saadi, see ! they rise in stature 

To the height of mighty Nature, 

And the secret stands revealed 

Fraudulent Time in vain concealed, — 

That blessed gods in servile masks 

Plied for thee thy household tasks.' 

1842. 



7 6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



ODE TO BEAUTY 

Who gave thee, O Beauty, 

The keys of this breast, — 

Too credulous lover 

Of blest and unblest ? 

Say, when in lapsed ages 

Thee knew I of old ? 

Or what was the service 

For which I was sold ? 

When first my eyes saw thee, 

I found me thy thrall, 10 

By magical drawings, 

Sweet tyrant of all ! 

I drank at thy f ountain 

False waters of thirst; 

Thou ultimate stranger, 

Thou latest and first ! 

Thy dangerous glances 

Make women of men; 

New-born, we are melting 

Into nature again. 20 

Lavish, lavish promiser, 

Nigh persuading gods to err ! • 

Guest of million painted forms, 

Which in turn thy glory warms ! 

The frailest leaf, the mossy bark, 

The acorn's cup, the raindrop's arc, 

The swinging spider's silver line, 

The ruby of the drop of wine, 

The shining pebble of the pond, 

Thou inscribest with a bond, 30 

In thy momentary play, 

Would bankrupt nature to repay. 

Ah, what avails it 

To hide or to shun 

Whom the Infinite One 

Hath granted his throne ? 

The heaven high over 

Is the deep's lover; 

The sun and sea, 

Informed by thee, 40 

Before me run 

And draw me on, 

Yet fly me still, 

As Fate refuses 

To me the heart Fate for me chooses. 

Is it that my opulent soul 

Was mingled from the generous whole ; 

Sea-valleys and the deep of skies 

Furnished several supplies; 

And the sands whereof I 'm made 50 



Draw me to them, self-betrayed ? 

I turn the proud portfolio 

Which holds the grand designs 

Of Salvator, of Guercino, 

And Piranesi's lines. 

I hear the lofty paeans 

Of the masters of the shell, 

Who heard the starry music 

And recount the numbers well; 

Olympian bards who sung 1 

Divine Ideas below, 

Which always find us young 

And always keep us so. 

Oft, in streets or humblest places, 

I detect far-wandered graces, 

Which, from Eden wide astray, 

In lowly homes have lost their way. 

Thee gliding through the sea of form, 1 
Like the lightning through the storm, 
Somewhat not to be possessed, 
Somewhat not to be caressed, 
No feet so fleet could ever find, 
No perfect form could ever bind. 
Thou eternal fugitive, 
Hovering over all that live, 
Quick and skilful to inspire 
Sweet, extravagant desire, 
Starry space and lily-bell 
Filling with thy roseate smell, 
Wilt not give the lips to taste 
Of the nectar which thou hast. 

All that 's good and great with thee 
Works in close conspiracy; 
Thou hast bribed the da'rk and lonely 
To report thy features only, 
And the cold and purple morning 
Itself with thoughts of thee adorning ; 
The leafy dell, the city mart, 
Equal trophies of thine art; 
E'en the flowing azure air 90 

Thou hast touched for my despair; 
And, if I languish into dreams, 
Again I meet the ardent beams. 
Queen of things ! I dare not die 
In Being's deeps past ear and eye; 
Lest there I find the same deceiver 
And be the sport of Fate forever. 
Dread Power, but deari! if God thou be, 
Unmake me quite,or give thyself tome! 

im. 

1 Compare Emerson's ' Nature : ' ' Nature is a sea of 
forms. . . . What is common to them all, — that per- 
fectness and harmony, — is Beauty.' 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



77 



NATURE* 

The rounded world is fair to see, 

Nine times folded in mystery: 

Though baffled seers cannot impart 

The secret of its laboring heart, 

Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, 

And all is clear from east to west. 

Spirit that lurks each form within 

Beckons to spirit of its kin; 

Self-kindled every atom glows 

And hints the future which it owes. 

1844. 

EXPERIENCE 

The lords of life, the lords of life, — 
I saw them pass 
In their own guise, 
Like and unlike, 
Portly and grim, — 
Use and Surprise, 
Surface and Dream, 
Succession swift and spectral Wrong, 
Temperament without a tongue, 
And the inventor of the game 
Omnipresent without name ; — 
Some to see, some to be guessed, 
They marched from east to west: 
Little man, least of all, 
Among the legs of his guardians tall, 
Walked about with puzzled look. 
Him by the hand dear Nature took, 
Dearest Nature, strong and kind, 
Whispered, ' Darling, never mind ! 
To-morrow they will wear another face, 
The founder thou; these are thy race ! ' 

1844. 

THRENODY 2 

The South- wind brings 

Life, sunshine and desire, 

And on every mount and meadow 

Breathes aromatic Are; 

1 This and the following poem were first used as mot- 
toes for the essays 'Nature ' and ' Experience.' 

2 Emerson wrote to Carlyle, February 28, 1842 : 
'■ My dear friend, you should have had this letter and 
these messages by the last steamer ; but when it sailed, 
my son, a perfect little boy of five years and three 
months, had ended his earthly life. You can never sym- 
pathize with me ; you can never know how much of me 
such a young child can take away. A few weeks ago I 
accounted myself a very rich man, and now the poor- 
est of all. What would it avail to tell you anecdotes 
of a sweet and wonderful boy, such as we solace and 



But over the dead he has no power, 
The lost, the lost, he cannot restore; 
And, looking over the hills, I mourn 
The darling who shall not return. 

I see my empty house, 

I see my trees repair their boughs; io 

And he, the wondrous child, 

Whose silver warble wild 

Outvalued every pulsing sound 

Within the air's cerulean round, — 

The hyacinthine boy, for whom 

Morn well might break and April bloom, 

The gracious boy, who did adorn 

The world whereinto he was born, 

And by his countenance repay 

The favor of the loving Day, — 20 

Has disappeared from the Day's eye ; 

Far and wide she cannot find him; 

My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him. 

Returned this day, the South-wind searches, 

And finds young pines and budding birches ; 

But finds not the budding man; 

Nature, who lost, cannot remake him; 

Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him; 

Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain. 

And whither now, my truant wise and 
sweet, 30 

O, whither tend thy feet ? 
I had the right, few days ago, 
Thy steps to watch, thy place to know: 
How have I forfeited the right ? 
Hast thou forgot me in a new delight ? 
I hearken for thy household cheer, 
O eloquent child ! 
Whose voice, an equal messenger, 
Conveyed thy meaning mild. 
What though the pains and joys 40 

Whereof it spoke were toys 
Fitting his age and ken, 
Yet fairest dames and bearded men, 
Who heard the sweet request, 
So gentle, wise and grave, 
Bended with joy to his behest 
And let the world's affairs go by, 

sadden ourselves with at home every morning and even- 
ing ? From a perfect health and as happy a life and as 
happy influences as ever child enjoyed, he was hurried 
out of my arms in three short days.' {Carlyle-Emer- 
son Correspondence, vol. i, pp. 389, 390.) 

In his Journal, January 30, he wrote : ' This boy, in 
whose remembrance I have both slept and awaked so 
oft, decorated for me the morning star and the evening 
cloud, — how much more all the particulars of daily 
economy. ... A boy of early wisdom, of a grave and 
even majestic deportment, of a perfect gentleness. . . .' 

See also Cabot's Life of Emerson, vol. ii, pp. 481-489. 



7 8 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



A while to share his cordial game, 

Or mend his wicker wagon-frame, 

Still plotting how their hungry ear 50 

That winsome voice again might hear; 

For his lips could well pronounce 

Words that were persuasions. 

Gentlest guardians marked serene 

His early hope, his liberal mien; 

Took counsel from his guiding eyes 

To make this wisdom earthly wise. 

Ah, vainly do these eyes recall 

The school-march, each day's festival, 

When every morn my bosom glowed 60 

To watch the convoy on the road; 

The babe in willow wagon closed, 

With rolling eyes and face composed; 

With children forward and behind, 

Like Cupids studiously inclined; 

And he the chieftain paced beside, 

The centre of the troop allied, 

With sunny face of sweet repose, 

To guard the babe from fancied foes. 

The little captain innocent 7 o 

Took the eye with him as he went; 

Each village senior paused to scan 

And speak the lovely caravan. 

From the window I look out 

To mark thy beautiful parade, 

Stately marching in cap and coat 

To some tune by fairies played ; — 

A music heard by thee alone 

To works as noble led thee on. 

Now Love and Pride, alas ! in vain, 80 

Up and down their glances strain. 

The painted sled stands where it stood; 

The kennel by the corded wood; 

His gathered sticks to stanch the wall 

Of the snow-tower, when snow should fall; 

The ominous hole be dug in the sand, 

And childhood's castles built or planned; 

His daily haunts I well discern, — 

The poultry-yard, the shed, the barn, — 

And every inch of garden ground 90 

Paced by the blessed feet around, 

From the roadside to the brook 

Whereinto he loved to look. 

Step the meek fowls where erst they 

ranged; 
The wintry garden lies unchanged; 
The brook into the stream runs on; 
But the deep-eyed boy is gone. 1 

1 The chrysalis which he brought in with care and 
tenderness and gave to his mother to keep is still alive, 



On that shaded day, 

Dark with more clouds than tempests are, 

When thou didst yield thy innocent 

breath 100 

In birdlike heavings unto death, 
Night came, and Nature had noj; thee; 
I said, ' We are mates in misery.' 
The morrow dawned with needless glow ; 
Each snowbird chirped, each fowl must 

crow; 
Each tramper started; but the feet 
Of the most beautiful and sweet 
Of human youth had left the hill 
And garden, — they were bound and still. 
There 's not a sparrow or a wren, no 

There 's not a blade of autumn grain, 
Which the four seasons do not tend 
And tides of life and increase lend; 
And every chick of every bird, 
And weed and rock-moss is preferred. 
O ostrich-like forgetfulness ! 
O loss of larger in the less ! 
Was there no star that could be sent, 
No watcher in the firmament, 
No angel from the countless host 120 

That loiters round the crystal coast, 
Could stoop to heal that only child, 
Nature's sweet marvel undefiled, 
And keep the blossom of the earth, 
Which all her harvests were not worth ? 
Not mine, — I never called thee mine, 
But Nature's heir, — if I repine, 
And seeing rashly torn and moved 
Not what I made, but what I loved, 
Grow early old with grief that thou 130 
Must to the wastes of Nature go, — 
'T is because a general hope 
Was quenched, and all must doubt and 

grope. 
For flattering planets seemed to say 
This child should ills of ages stay, 
By wondrous tongue, and guided pen, 
Bring the flown Muses back to men. 
Perchance not he but Nature ailed, 
The world and not the infant failed. 
It was not ripe yet to sustain i 40 

A genius of so fine a strain, 
Who gazed upon the sun and moon 
As if he came unto his own, 
And, pregnant with his grander thought, 
Brought the old order into doubt. 
His beauty once their beauty tried ; 
They could not feed him, and he died, 

and he, most beautiful of the children of men, is not 
here. {Journal, 1842.) 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



79 



And wandered backward as in scorn, 

To wait an seon to be born. 

Ill day wbicb made this beauty waste, 150 

Plight broken, this high face defaced ! 

Some went and came about the dead; 

And some in books of solace read; 

Some to their friends the tidings say; 

Some went to write, some went to pray; 

One tarried here, there hurried one; 

But their heart abode with none. 

Covetous death bereaved us all, 

To aggrandize one funeral. 

The eager fate which carried thee 160 

Took the largest part of me: 

For this losing is true dying; 

This is lordly man's down-lying, 

This his slow but sure reclining, 

Star by star his world resigning. 

child of paradise, 

Boy who made dear his father's home, 

In whose deep eyes 

Men read the welfare of the times to come, 

1 am too much bereft. 170 
The world dishonored thou hast left. 

O truth's and nature's costly lie ! 
O trusted broken prophecy ! 

richest fortune sourly crossed ! 
Born for the future, to the future lost ! 

The deep Heart answered, ' Weepest thou ? 

Worthier cause for passion wild 

If I had not taken the child. 

And deemest thou as those who pore, 

With aged eyes, short way before, — 180 

Think'st Beauty vanished from the coast 

Of matter, and thy darling lost ? 

Taught he not thee — the man of eld, 

Whose eyes within his eyes beheld 

Heaven's numerous hierarchy span 

The mystic gulf from God to man ? 

To be alone wilt thou begin 

When worlds of lovers hem thee in ? 

To-morrow, when the masks shall fall 

That dizen Nature's carnival, 190 

The pure shall see by their own will, 

Which overflowing Love shall fill, 

'T is not within the force of fate 

The fate-conjoined to separate. 

But thou, my votary, weepest thou ? 

1 gave thee sight — where is it now ? 
I taught thy heart beyond the reach 
Of ritual, bible, or of speech; 
Wrote in thy mind's transparent table, 

As far as the incommunicable ; 200 



Taught thee each private sign to raise 
Lit by the supersolar blaze. 
Past utterance, and past belief, 
And past the blasphemy of grief, ' 
The mysteries of Nature's heart; 
And though no Muse can these impart, 
Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, 
And all is clear from east to west. 

1 1 came to thee as to a friend ; 

Dearest, to thee I did not send 210 

Tutors, but a joyfid eye, 

Innocence that matched the sky, 

Lovely locks, a form of wonder, 

Laughter rich as woodland thunder, 

That thou might'st entertain apart 

The richest flowering of all art: 

And, as the great all-loving Day 

Through smallest chambers takes its way, 

That thou might'st break thy daily bread 

With prophet, savior and head; 220 

That thou might'st cherish for thine own 

The riches of sweet Mary's Son, 

Boy-Rabbi, Israel's paragon. 

And thoughtest thou such guest 

Would in thy hall take up his rest ? 

Would rushing life forget her laws, 

Fate's glowing revolution pause ? 

High omens ask diviner guess; 

Not to be conned to tediousness. 

And know my higher gifts unbind 230 

The zone that girds the incarnate mind. 

When the scanty shores are full 

With Thought's perilous, whirling pool; 

When frail Nature can no more, 

Then the Spirit strikes the hour : 

My servant Death, with solving rite, 

Pours finite into infinite. 

Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow, 

Whose streams through Nature circling go ? 

Nail the wild star to its track 240 

On the half -climbed zodiac ? 

Light is light which radiates, 

Blood is blood which circulates, 

Life is lif e which generates, 

And many-seeming life is one, — 

Wilt thou transfix and make it none ? 

Its onward force too starkly pent 

In figure, bone and lineament ? 

Wilt thou, uncalled, interrogate, 

Talker ! the unreplying Fate ? 250 

Nor see the genius of the whole 

Ascendant in the private soul, 

Beckon it when to go and come, 

Self-announced its hour of doom ? 



8o 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Fair the soul's recess and shrine, 

Magic-built to last a season; 

Masterpiece of love benign, 

Fairer that expansive reason 

Whose omen 't is, and sign. 

Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know 260 

What rainbows teach, and sunsets show ? 

Verdict which accumulates 

From lengthening scroll of human fates, 

Voice of earth to earth returned, 

Prayers of saints that inly burned, — 

Saying, What is excellent, 

As God lives, is permanent ■ 

Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain • 

Heart's love will meet thee again. 

Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye 270 

Up to his style, and manners of the sky. 

Not of adamant and gold 

Built he heaven stark and cold; 

No, but a nest of bending reeds, 

Flowering grass and scented weeds; 

Or like a traveller's fleeing tent, 

Or bow above the tempest bent ; 

Built of tears and sacred flames, 

And virtue reaching to its aims ; 

Built of furtherance and pursuing, 280 

Not of spent deeds, but of doing. 

Silent rushes the swift Lord 

Through ruined systems still restored, 

Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless, 

Plants with worlds the wilderness; 

Waters with tears of ancient sorrow 

Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow. 

House and tenant go to ground, 

Lost in God, in Godhead found.' 

1846. 

TO J. W.i 

Set not thy foot on graves; 
Hear what wine and roses say ; 
The mountain chase, the summer waves, 
The crowded town, thy feet may well de- 
lay. 

Set not thy foot on graves; 

Nor seek to unwind the shroud 

Which charitable Time 

And Nature have allowed 

To wrap the errors of a sage sublime. 

Set not thy foot on graves; 
Care not to strip the dead 

1 To John Weiss, who had written a severe judgment 
of Coleridge. 



Of his sad ornament, 

His myrrh, and wine, and rings, 

His sheet of lead, 

And trophies buried: 

Go, get them where he earned them 

when alive; 
As resolutely dig or dive. 

Life is too short to waste 

In critic peep or cynic bark, 

Quarrel or reprimand: 

'T will soon be dark; 

Up ! mind thine own aim, and 

God speed, the mark ! 

1846. 

ODE 2 

INSCRIBED TO W. H. CHANNING 

Though loath to grieve 

The evil tune's sole patriot, 

I cannot leave 

My honeyed thought 

For the priest's cant, 

Or statesman's rant. 

If I refuse 

My study for their politique, 
Which at the best is trick, 
The angry Muse 10 

Puts confusion in my brain. 

But who is he that prates 
Of the culture of mankind, 
Of better arts and life? 
Go, blindworm, go, 
Behold the famous States 
Harrying Mexico 
With rifle and with knife ! 

2 The circumstance which gave rise to this poem, 
though not known, can easily be inferred. Rev. William 
Henry Channing, nephew of the great Unitarian divine, 
a man most tender in his sympathies, with an apostle's 
zeal for right, had, no doubt, been urging his friend to 
join the brave band of men who were dedicating their 
lives to the destruction of human slaver}' in the United 
States. To these men Mr. Emerson gave honor and 
sympathy and active aid by word and presence on im- 
portant occasions. He showed his colors from the first, 
and spoke fearlessly on the subject in his lectures, but 
his method was the reverse of theirs, affirmative not 
negative ; he knew his office and followed his genius. 
He said, ' I have quite other slaves to free than those ne- 
groes, to wit, imprisoned spirits, imprisoned thoughts.' 
(E. W. Emerson.) 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



81 



Or who, with accent bolder, 
Dare praise the freedom-loving mountain- 
eer ? 20 
I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook ! 
And in thy valleys, Agiochook ! 
The jackals of the negro-holder. 

The God who made New Hampshire 

Taunted the lofty land 

With little men; — 

Small bat and wren 

House in the oak : — 

If earth-fire cleave 

The upheaved land, and bury the folk, 30 

The southern crocodile would grieve. 

Virtue palters ; Right is hence; 

Freedom praised, but hid; 

Funeral eloquence 

Rattles the coffin-lid. 

What boots thy zeal, 

O glowing friend, 

That would indignant rend 

The northland from the south ? 

Wherefore ? to what good end ? 40 

Boston Bay and Bunker Hill 

Would serve things still ; — 

Things are of the snake. 1 

The horseman serves the horse, 

The neatherd serves the neat, 

The merchant serves the purse, 

The eater serves his meat; 

'T is the day of the chattel, 

Web to weave, and corn to grind; 

Things are in the saddle, 50 

And ride mankind. 

There are two laws discrete, 

Not reconciled, — 

Law for man, and law for thing; 

The last builds town and fleet, 

But it runs wild, 

And doth the man unking. 

'T is fit the forest fall, 

The steep be graded, 

The mountain tunnelled, 60 

The sand shaded, 

The orchard planted, 

The glebe tilled, 

1 Compare the essay on ' Self-Reliance : ' ' Let a 
man then know his worth, and keep things under his 

feet.' 



The prairie granted, 
The steamer built. 

Let man serve law for man; 

Live for friendship, live for love, 

For truth's and harmony's behoof; 

The state may follow how it can, 

As Olympus follows Jove. 7 o 

Yet do not I implore 
The wrinkled shopman to my sounding 

woods, 
Nor bid the unwilling senator 
Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes. 
Every one to his chosen work; — 
Foolish hands may mix and mar; 
Wise and sure the issues are. 
Roimd they roll till dark is light, 
Sex to sex, and even to odd ; — 
The over-god 80 

Who marries Right to Might, 
Who peoples, unpeoples, — 
He who exterminates 
Races by stronger races, 
Black by white faces, — 
Knows to bring honey 
Out of the lion; 
Grafts gentlest scion 
On pirate and Turk. 

The Cossack eats Poland, go 

Like stolen fruit ; 
Her last noble is ruined, 
Her last poet mute : 
Straight, into double band 
The victors divide; 
Half for freedom strike and stand; — 
The astonished Muse finds thousands at her 

side. 

1846. 

MERLIN 

Thy trivial harp will never please 

Or fill my craving ear; 

Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, 

Free, peremptory, clear. 

No jingling serenader's art, 

Nor tinkle of piano strings, 

Can make the wild blood start 

In its mystic springs. 

The kingly bard 

Must smite the chords rudely and hard, 10 

As with hammer or with mace ; 

That they may render back 

Artful thunder, which conveys 



82 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Secrets of the solar track, 

Sparks of the supersolar blaze. 

Merlin's blows are strokes of fate, 

Chiming with the forest tone, 

When boughs buffet boughs in the wood; 

Chiming with the gasp and moan 

Of the ice-imprisoned flood; 20 

With the pulse of manly hearts; 

With the voice of orators; 

With the din of city arts; 

With the cannonade of wars; 

With the marches of the brave; 

And prayers of might from martyrs' cave. 

Great is the art, 

Great be the manners, of the bard. 

He shall not his brain encumber 

With the coil of rhythm and number; 30 

But, leaving rule and pale forethought, 

He shall aye climb 

For his rhyme. 

'Pass in, pass in,' the angels say, 

1 In to the upper doors, 

Nor count compartments of the floors, 

But mount to paradise 

By the stairway of surprise.' 

Blameless master of the games, 

King of sport that never shames, 4< 

He shall daily joy dispense 

Hid in song's sweet influence. 

Forms more cheerly live and go, 

What time the subtle mind 

Sings aloud the tune whereto 

Their pulses beat, 

And march their feet, 

And their members are combined. 

By Sybarites beguiled, 

He shall no task decline. 50 

Merlin's mighty line 

Extremes of nature reconciled, — 

Bereaved a tyrant of his will, 

And made the lion mild. 

Songs can the tempest still, 

Scattered on the stormy air, 

Mould the year to fair increase, 

And bring in poetic peace. 

He shall not seek to weave, 

In weak, unhappy times, 60 

Efficacious rhymes; 

Wait his returning strength. 

Bird that from nadir's floor 

To the zenith's top can soar, — 



The soaring orbit of the muse exceeds that 

journey's length. 
Nor profane affect to hit 
Or compass that, by meddling wit, 
Which only the propitious mind 
Publishes when 't is inclined. 
There are open hours 70 

When the God's will sallies free, 
And the dull idiot might see 
The flowing fortunes of a thousand years; — 
Sudden, at unawares, 
Self-moved, fly-to the doors, 
Nor sword of angels could reveal 
What they conceal. 
1845-46. 1846. 



THE WORLD-SOUL 

Thanks to the morning light, 

Thanks to the foaming sea, 
To the uplands of New Hampshire, 

To the green-haired forest free; 
Thanks to each man of courage, 

To the maids of holy mind, 
To the boy with his games undaunted 

Who never looks behind. 

Cities of proud hotels, 

Houses of rich and great, 
Vice nestles in your chambers, 

Beneath your roofs of slate. 
It cannot conquer folly, — 

Time-and-space-conquering steam, - 
And the light-outspeeding telegraph 

Bears nothing on its beam. 

The politics are base ; 

The letters do not cheer; 
And 't is far in the deeps of history, 

The voice that speaketh clear. 
Trade and the streets ensnare us, 

Our bodies are weak and worn; 
We plot and corrupt each other, 

And we despoil the unborn. 

Yet there in the parlor sits 

Some figure of noble guise, — 
Our angel, hi a stranger's form, 

Or woman's pleading eyes; 
Or only a flashing sunbeam 

In at the window-pane ; 
Or Music pours on mortals 

Its beautiful disdain. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



83 



The inevitable morning 

Finds them who in cellars be; 
And be snre the all-loving Nature 

Will smile in a factory. 
Yon ridge of purple landscape, 

Yon sky between the walls, 
Hold all the hidden wonders 

In scanty intervals. 40 

Alas ! the Sprite that haunts us 

Deceives our rash desire ; 
It whispers of the glorious gods, 

And leaves us in the mire. 
We cannot learn the cipher 

That 's writ upon our cell; 
Stars taunt us by a mystery 

Which we could never spell. 

If but one hero knew it, 

The world would blush in flame; 50 
The sage, till he hit the secret, 

Would hang bis head for shame. 
Our brothers have not read it, 

Not one has found the key; 
And henceforth we are comforted, — 

We are but such as they. 1 

Still, still the secret presses; 

The nearing clouds draw down; 
The crimson morning flames into 

The fopperies of the town. 60 

Within, without the idle earth, 

Stars weave eternal rings; 
The sim himself shines heartily, 

And shares the joy he brings. 

And what if Trade sow cities 

Like shells along the shore, 
And thatch with towns the prairie broad 

With railways ironed o'er ? — 
They are but sailing foam-bells 

Along Thought's causing stream, 7 o 
And take their shape and sun-color 

From him that sends the dream. 

For Destiny never swerves 
Nor yields to men the helm ; 

He shoots his thought, by hidden nerves, 
Throughout the solid realm. 

The patient Daemon sits, 
With roses and a shroud ; 



1 There is something — our brothers over the sea 
do not know it or own it — . . . which is setting them 
all aside, and the whole world also, and planting itself 
forever and ever. {Journal, 1851.) 



He has his way, and deals his gifts, — 
But ours is not allowed. 80 

He is no churl nor trifler, 

And his viceroy is none, — 
Love-without- weakness, — 

Of Genius sire and son. 
And his will is not thwarted; 

The seeds of land and sea 
Are the atoms of his body bright, 

And his behest obey. 

He serveth the servant, 

The brave he loves amain; 90 

He kills the cripple and the sick, 

And straight begins again; 
For gods delight in gods, 

And thrust the weak aside; 
To him who scorns their charities 

Their arms fly open wide. 

When the old world is sterile 

And the ages are effete, 
He will from wrecks and sediment 

The fairer world complete. 100 

He forbids to despair; 

His cheeks mantle with mirth; 
And the unimagined good of men 

Is yeaning at the birth. 

Spring still makes spring in the mind 

When sixty years are told; 
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, 

And we are never old; 
Over the winter glaciers 

I see the summer glow, no 

And through the wild-piled snow-drift 

The warm rosebuds below. 

1846. 

HAMATREYA 

Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meri- 

am, Flint 2 
Possessed the land which rendered to their 

toil 
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool 

and wood. 
Each of these landlords walked amidst his 

farm, 
Saying, ' 'T is mine, my children's and my 

name's. 
How sweet the west wind sounds in my 

own trees ! 

2 All names of early settlers in the town of Concord. 



84 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 




How graceful climb those shadows on my 

hill! 
I fancy these pure waters and the flags 
Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize; 
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the 

soil.' 10 

Where are these men ? Asleep beneath 
their grounds: 

And strangers, fond as they, their furrows 
plough. 

Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful 
boys 

Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is 
not theirs; 

Who steer the plough, but cannot steer 
their feet 

Clear of the grave. 

They added ridge to valley, brook to pond, 

And sighed for all that bounded their do- 
main; 

' This suits me for a pasture ; that 's my 
park; 

We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite- 
ledge, 20 

And misty lowland, where to go for peat. 

The land is well, — lies fairly to the south. 

'T is good, when you have crossed the sea 
and back, 

To find the sitfast acres where you left 
them.' 

Ah ! the hot owner sees not Death, who 
adds 

Him to his land, a lump of mould the more. 

Hear what the Earth says : — 

EARTH-SONG 



' Mine and yours; 
Mine, not yours. 
Earth endures; 
Stars abide — 
Shine down in the old sea; 
Old are the shores; 
But where are old men ? 
I who have seen much, 
Such have I never seen. 

' The lawyer's deed 

Ran sure, 

In tail, 

To them, and to their heirs 

Who shall succeed, 

Without fail, 

Forevermore. 



' Here is the land, 
Shaggy with wood, 
With its old valley, 
Mound and flood. 
But the heritors ? — 
Fled like the flood's foam. 
The lawyer, and the laws, 
And the kingdom, 
Clean swept herefrom. 

' They called me theirs, 

Who so controlled me; 

Yet every one 

Wished to stay, and is gone, 

How am I theirs, 

If they cannot hold me, 

But I hold them ? ' 

When I heard the Earth-song 

I was no longer brave; 

My avarice cooled 

Like lust in the chill of the grave. 



FORERUNNERS 



1846. 



Long I followed happy guides, 

I could never reach their sides; 

Their step is forth, and, ere the day 

Breaks up their leaguer, and away. 

Keen my sense, my heart was young, 

Right good-will my sinews strung, 

But no speed of mine avails 

To hunt upon their shining trails. 

On and away, their hasting feet 

Make the morning proud and sweet; io 

Flowers they strew, — I catch the scent ; 

Or tone of silver instrument 

Leaves on the wind melodious trace; 

Yet I could never see their face. 

On eastern hills I see their smokes, 

Mixed with mist by distant lochs. 

I met many travellers 

Who the road had surely kept; 

They saw not my fine revellers, — i 9 

These had crossed them while they slept. 

Some had heard their fair report, 

In the country or the court. 

Fleetest couriers alive 

Never yet could once arrive, 

1 Compare Lowell's ' Envoi, To the Muse,' and Whit- 
tier's 'The Vanishers;' and also, in Emerson's essay 
on ' Nature ' {Essays, Second Series), the third para- 
graph from the end, beginning ' Quite analogous to the 
deceits in life.' 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



85 



As they went or they returned, 

At the house where these sojourned. 

Sometimes their strong speed they slacken, 

Though they are not overtaken; 

In sleep their jubilant troop is near, — 

I tuneful voices overhear; 30 

It may be in wood or waste, — 

At unawares 't is come and past. 

Their near camp my spirit knows 

By signs gracious as rainbows. 

I thenceforward and long after 

Listen for their harp-like laughter, 

And carry in my heart, for days, 

Peace that hallows rudest ways. 



1846. 



GIVE ALL TO LOVE 

Give all to love ; 

Obey thy heart; 

Friends, kindred, days, 

Estate, good-fame, 

Plans, credit and the Muse, — 

Nothing refuse. 

' T is a brave master; 

Let it have scope : 

Follow it utterly, 

Hope beyond hope : 

High and more high 

It dives into noon, 

With wing unspent, 

Untold intent; 

But it is a god, 

Knows its own path 

And the outlets of the sky. 

It was never for the mean; 
It requireth courage stout. 
Souls above doubt, 
Valor unbending, 
It will reward, — 
They shall return 
More than they were, 
And ever ascending. 

Leave all for love; 

Yet, hear me, yet, 

One word more thy heart behoved, 

One pulse more of firm endeavor, — 

Keep thee to-day, 

To-morrow, forever, 

Free as an Arab 

Of thy beloved. 



Cling with life to the maid; 

But when the surprise, 

First vague shadow of surmise 

Flits across her bosom young, 

Of a joy apart from thee, 

Free be she, fancy-free; 

Nor thou detain her vesture's hem, 

Nor the palest rose she flung 

From her summer diadem. 

Though thou loved her as thyself, 

As a self of purer clay, 

Though her parting dims the day, 

Stealing grace from all alive; 

Heartily know, 

When half -gods go, 

The gods arrive. 



1846. 



THE DAY'S RATION * 

When I was born, 
From all the seas of strength Fate filled a 

chalice, 
Saying, 'This be thy portion, child; this 

chalice, 
Less than a lily's, thou shalt daily draw 
From my great arteries, — nor less, nor 

more.' 
All substances the cunning chemist Time 
; Melts down into that liquor of my life, — 
Friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty and 

disgust. 
And whether I am angry or content, 
Indebted or insulted, loved or hurt, 10 

All he distils into sidereal wine 
v And brims my little cup; heedless, alas ! 
/Of all he sheds how little it will hold, 
How much runs over on the desert sands. 
If a new Muse draw me with splendid ray, 
And I uplift myself into its heaven, 
The needs of the first sight absorb my 

blood, 
And all the following hours of the day 
Drag a ridiculous age. 
To-day, when friends approach, and every 

hour 20 

Brings book, or starbright scroll of genius, 
The little cup will hold not a bead more, 
And all the costly liquor runs to waste ; 

1 Compare the essay on ' Montaigne,' in Representa- 
tive Men : ' To each man is administered a single drop, 
a bead of dew of vital power, per day, — a cup as large 
as space, and one drop of the water of life in it.' See 
the whole passage. 



~v. 



pL*.*st 



86 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Nor gives the jealous lord one diamond 

drop 
So to be husbanded for poorer days. 
I Why need I volumes, if one word suffice ? 
Why need I galleries, when a pupil's 

draught 
After the master's sketch fills and o'erfills 
My apprehension ? Why seek Italy, 
Who cannot circumnavigate the sea 30 

Of thoughts and things at home, but still 

adjourn 
The nearest matters for a thousand days ? 1 

1846. 

MEROPS 

What care I, so they stand the same, — 
Things of the heavenly niind, — 

How long the power to give them name 
Tarries yet behind ? 

Thus far to-day your favors reach, 
O fair, appeasing presences ! 

Ye taught my lips a single speech, 
And a thousand silences. 

Space grants beyond his fated road 

No inch to the god of day; 
And copious language still bestowed 

One word, no more, to say. 



1846. 



MUSKETAQUID 



Because I was content with these poor 

fields, 
Low, open meads, slender and sluggish 

streams, 
And f ound a home in haunts which others 

scorned, 
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love, 
And granted me the freedom of their 

state, 
And in their secret senate have prevailed 
With the dear, dangerous lords that rule 

our life, 13 
Made moon and planets parties to their 

bond, 
And through my rock-like, solitary wont 
Shot million rays of thought and tender- 



1 See the poems ' Written at Rome ' and ' Written 
in Naples,' with the notes on them ; and compare also 
Whittier's ' Xo ,' and ' The Last Walk in Autumn.' 

3 Compare the poem ' Experience.' 



For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, 

the Spring 
Visits the valley ; — break away the 

clouds, — 
I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air, 
And loiter willing by yon loitering stream. 
Sparrows far off, and nearer, April's bird, 
Blue-coated, — flying before from tree to 

tree, 
Courageous sing a delicate overture 
To lead the tardy concert of the year. 
Onward and nearer rides the sun of May; 
And wide around, the marriage of the 

plants 20 

Is sweetly solemnized. Then flows amain 
The surge of siunmer's beauty; dell and 

crag, 
Hollow and lake, hillside and pine arcade, 
Are touched with genius. Yonder ragged 

cliff 
Has thousand faces in a thousand hours. 

Beneath low hills, in the broad interval 
Through which at will our Indian rivulet 
Winds mindful still of sannup and of 

squaw, 
Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough un- 

buries, 
Here in pine houses built of new-fallen 

trees, 30 

Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell. 
Traveller, to thee, perchance, a tedious 

road, 
Or, it may be, a picture ; to these men, 
The landscape is an armory of powers, 
Which, one by one, they know to draw and 

use. 
They harness beast, bird, insect, to their 

work; 
They prove the virtues of each bed of 

rock, 
And, like the chemist 'mid his loaded jars, 
Draw from each stratum its adapted use 
To drug their crops or weapon their arts 

withal. 40 

They turn the frost upon their chemic heap, 
They set the wind to winnow pulse and 

grain, 
They thank the spring-flood for its fertile 

slime, 
And, on cheap summit-levels of the snow, 
Slide with the sledge to inaccessible woods 
O'er meadows bottomless. So, year by 

year, 
They fight the elements with elements \ 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



87 



(That one would say, meadow and forest 

walked, 
Transmuted in these men to rule their like), 
And by the order in the field disclose 50 
The order regnant in the yeoman's brain. 

What these strong masters wrote at large 

in miles, 
I followed in small copy in my acre; 
For there 's no rood has not a star above it; l 
The cordial quality of pear or plum 
Ascends as gladly in a single tree 
As in broad orchards resonant with bees; 
And every atom poises for itself, 
And for the whole. The gentle deities 
Showed me the lore of colors and of sounds, 
The innumerable tenements of beauty, 61 
The miracle of generative force, 
Far-reaching concords of astronomy 
Felt in the plants and in the punctual birds ; 
Better, the linked purpose of the whole, 
And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty 
In the glad home plain-dealing Nature gave. 
The polite found me impolite ; the great 
Would mortify me, but in vain; for still 
I am a willow of the wilderness, 70 

Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts 
My garden spade can heal. A woodland 

walk, 
A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush, 
A wild-rose, or rock-loving columbine, 
Salve my worst wounds. 
For thus the wood-gods murmured in my 

ear: 
• Dost love our manners ? Canst thou silent 

lie? 
Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like Nature 

pass 
Into the winter night's extinguished mood ? 
Canst thou shine now, then darkle, 80 

And being latent, feel thyself no less ? 
As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts 

the eye, 
The river, hill, stems, foliage are obscure, 
Yet envies none, none are unenviable.' 

1846. 

NATURE 

A subtle chain of countless rings 
The next unto the farthest brings; 

1 Over every chimney is a star: in every field is an 
oaken garland or a wreath of parsley, laurel or wheat- 
ears. Nature waits to decorate every child. (Journal, 
1840.) 



The eye reads omens where it goes, 
And speaks all languages the rose; 
And, striving to be man, the worm i 

Mounts through all the spires of form. 2 \ 

1849. 



DAYS 8 

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, 
Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, 
And marching single in an endless file, 
Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. 
To each they offer gifts after his will, 
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds 

them all. 
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, 
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 
Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day 
Turned and departed silent. I, too late, 

• 
1857. 



1851? 



TWO RIVERS 4 



Thy summer voice, Musketaquit, 
Repeats the music of the rain; 

2 Prefixed to Emerson's ' Nature,' in the second edi- 
tion (1849), ten years before the publication of Darwin's 
Origin 0/ Species. 

3 Compare Emerson's expression in prose of the same 
idea in his ' Works and Days ' : ' The days are ever 
divine, as to the first Aryans. They come and go like 
muffled and veiled figures, sent from a distant friendly 
party ; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the 
gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.' 
See Holmes's comparison of this passage with the poem, 
as typical of the essential differences between prose and 
poetry, in his Life of Emerson, pp. 310-314. 

Lowell calls this poem ' as limpid and complete as a 
Greek epigram.' (Life of Lowell, vol. i, p. 414.) 

4 The Journal of 1856 shows the 'Two Rivers,' per- 
haps the most musical of his poems, as the thought first 
came to him by the river-bank and was then brought 
into form. 

' Thy voice is sweet, Musketaquid, and repeats the 
music of the rain, but sweeter is the silent stream which 
flows even through thee, as thou through the land. 

' Thou art shut in thy banks, but the stream I love 
flows in thy water, and flows through rocks and through 
the air and through rays of light as well, and through 
darkness, and through men and women. 

'I hear and see the inundation and the eternal spend- 
ing) of the stream in winter and in summer, in men and 
animals, in passion and thought. Happy are they who 
can hear it.' 

' I eee thy brimming, eddying stream 
And thy enchantment. 
For thou changest every rock in thy bed 
Into a gem, 
Ail is opal and agate, 
And at will thou pavest with diamonds; 
Take them away from the stream 
And they are poor, shreds and flints. 
So is it with me to-day.' 

(E. W. Esubeson, Emerson in Concord, pp. 232-233). 



88 



■ 
CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



- /t v-vvt>. 






But sweeter rivers pulsing flit 
Through thee, as thou through Concord 
Plain. 

Thou in thy narrow banks art pent: 
The stream I love unbounded goes 
Through flood and sea and firmament; 
Through light, through life, it forward flows. 

I see the inundation sweet, 
I hear the spending of the stream 
Through years, through men, through Na- 
ture fleet, 
Through love and thought, through power 
and dream. 

Musketaquit, a goblin strong, 
Of shard and flint makes jewels gay; 
They lose their grief who hear his song, 
And where he winds is the day of day. 

So forth and brighter fares my stream, — 
Who drink it shall not thirst again; 
No darkness stains its equal gleam 
And ages drop in it like ram. 

1856-57. 







1858. 



BRAHMA 1 



If the red slayer think he slays, 
Or if the slain think he is slain, 

They know not well the subtle ways 
I keep, and pass, and turn again. 

1 This simple and condensed figurative statement of 
one of the commonplaces of any idealistic philosophy, 
whether Hindu, Platonist, Berkeleian, or Hegelian, 
greatly astonished the matter-of-fact Americans of 1857, 
and aroused more ridicule and parody than any other 
of Emerson's poems. J. T. Trowbridge describes its 
effect as follows : ' It was more talked about and 
puzzled over and parodied than any other poem of six- 
teen lines published within my recollection. " What 
does it mean?" was the question readers everywhere 
asked ; and if one had the reputation of seeing a little 
way into the Concord philosophy, he was liable at any 
time to be stopped on the street by some perplexed 
inquirer, who would drpw him into the nearest door- 
way, produce a crumpled newspaper clipping from the 
recesses of a waistcoat pocket, and, with knitted brows, 
exclaim, " Here ! you think you understand Emerson ; 
now tell me what all this is about, — If the red slayer 
think he slays, 1 '' and so forth.' (Quoted in Scudder's 
Life of Lowell, vol. i, p. 415.) 

Somewhat wiser was the little school-girl in the story 
vouched for by Mr. E. W. Emerson. She ' was bidden 
by her teacher to learn some verses of Emerson. Next 
day she recited "Brahma." The astonished teacher 
asked why she chose that poem. The child answered 
that she tried several, but could n't understand them 
at all, so learned this one, " for it was so easy. It just 
means ' God everywhere.' 1 " ' 

Lowell wrote to Emerson after the poem had appeared 
in the first number of the Atlantic Monthly, of which 



Far or forgot to me is near; 

Shadow and sunlight are the same ; 
The vanished gods to me appear; 

And one to me are shame and fame. 

They reckon ill who leave me out; 

When me they fly, I am the wings; 
I am the doubter and the doubt, 

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. 

The strong gods pine for my abode, 
And pine in vain the sacred Seven; 

But thou, meek lover of the good ! 
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven. 

1857. 

ODE 

SUNG IN THE TOWN HALL, CONCORD, 
JULY 4, 1857 

O tenderly the haughty day 

Fills his blue urn with fire; 
One morn is in the mighty heaven, 

And one in our desire. 

The cannon booms from town to town, 

Our pulses beat not less, 
The joy-bells chime their tidings down, 

Which children's voices bless. 

For He that flung the broad blue fold 
O'er-mantling land and sea, 10 

One third part of the sky unrolled 
For the banner of the free. 

The men are ripe of Saxon kind 

To build an equal state, — 
To take the statute from the mind 

And make of duty fate. 

Lowell was editor : * You have seen, no doubt, how the 
Philistines have been parodying your " Brahma," and 
showing how they still believe in their special god Baal, 
and are unable to arrive at a conception of an omni- 
present Deity. . . . Let me thank you in especial for 
one line in " Brahma," which abides with me as an 
intimate — 

' When me they fly, I am the wings. 

You have crammed meaning there with an hydraulic 
press.' It is this condensation of meaning which makes 
the great effectiveness of the poem, and also its diffi- 
culty, if difficulty there be. 

The direct source of this particular expression of 
Emerson's idealism seems to be Krishna's song in the 
Bhagavat-Gita, which in Edwin Arnold's translation is 
as follows : — 

He who shall say, ' Lo ! I have slain a man,' 

He who shall think, ' Lo ! I am slain ! ' thoEe both 

Know naught ! Life cannot slay. Life is not slain I 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



89 



United States ! the ages plead, — 
Present and Past in under-song, — 

Go put your creed into your deed, 

Nor speak with double tongue. 2c 

For sea and land don't understand, 

Nor skies without a frown 
See rights for which the one hand fights 

By the other cloven down. 

Be just at home; then write your scroll 

Of honor o'er the sea, 
And bid the broad Atlantic roll, 

A ferry of the free. 

And henceforth there shall be no chain, 
Save underneath the sea 30 

The wires shall murmur through the main 
Sweet songs of liberty. 

The conscious stars accord above, 

The waters wild below, 
And under, through the cable wove, 

Her fiery errands go. 

For He that worketh bigh and wise, 

Nor pauses hi his plan, 
Will take the sun out of the skies 

Ere freedom out of man. d o 



1857. 



1857. 



SEASHORE* 



I heard or seemed to hear the ebiding Sea 
Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come ? 

1 In July, 1857, Mr. Emerson, induced by Dr. Bar- 
tol, took bis family to spend two weeks at Pigeon Cove, 
on Cape Ann. The day after our return to Concord, be 
came into our . mother's room, where we were all 
sitting, with his journal in his hand, and said, ' I came 
in yesterday from walking on the rocks and wrote down 
what the sea had said to me ; and to-day, when I 
open my book, I find it all reads as blank verse, with 
scarcely a change.' 

Here is the passage from that journal, as he read it 
to us : July 23. ' Returned from Pigeon Cove, where 
we have made acquaintance with the sea, for seven 
days. 'T is a noble, friendly power, and seemed to say to 
me, Why so late and slow to come to me ? Am I not 
here always, thy proper summer home ? Is not my voice 
thy needful music ; my breath thy healthful climate in 
the heats ; my touch thy cure ? Was ever building like 
my terraces ? Was ever couch so magnificent as mine? 
lie down on my warm ledges and learn that a very 
little hut is all you need. I have made this architecture 
superfluous, and it is paltry beside mine. Here are 
twenty Romes and Ninevehs and Karnacs in ruins 
together, obelisk and pyramid and Giant's Causeway ; 
here they all are prostrate or half piled. And behold 
the sea, the opaline, plentiful and strong, yet beautiful as 
the rose or the rainbow, full of food, nourisher of men, 
purger of the world, creating a sweet climate and in its 



Am I not always here, thy summer home ? 
Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve ? 
My breath thy healthful climate in the heats, 
My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath ? 
Was ever building like my terraces ? 
Was ever couch magnificent as mine ? 
Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn 
A little hut suffices like a town. 10 

I make your sculptured architecture vain, 
Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home, 
And carve the coastwise mountain into caves. 
Lo ! here is Rome and Nineveh and Thebes, 
Karnak and Pyramid and Giant's Stairs 
Half piled or prostrate; and my newest 

slab 
Older than all thy race. 

Behold the Sea, 
The opaline, the plentiful and strong, 
Yet beautiful as is the rose in June, 
Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July; 20 
Sea full of food, the nourisher of kinds, 
Purger of earth, and medicine of men; 
Creating a sweet climate by my breath, 
Washing out harms and griefs from mem- 

. or y» 

And, in my mathematic ebb and flow, 
Givmg a hint of that which changes not. 
Rich are the sea-gods : — who gives gifts 

but they ? 
They grope the sea for pearls, but more 

than pearls : f 
They pluck Force thence, and give it to the 

wise. 
For every wave is wealth to Dsedalus, 30 
Wealth to the cunning artist who can work 
This matchless strength. Where shall he 

find, O waves ! 
A load your Atlas shoulders cannot lift ? 

I with my hammer pounding evermore 
The rocky coast, smite Andes into dust, 
Strewing my bed, and, in another age, 
Rebuild a continent of better men. 
Then I unbar tbe doors: my paths lead out 
The exodus of nations: I disperse 
Men to all shores that front the hoary mam. 

I too have arts and sorceries; 41 

Illusion dwells forever with the wave. 
I know what spells are laid. Leave me to 
deal 

unchangeable ebb and flow, and in its beauty at a few 
furlongs, giving a hint of that which changes not, and 
is perfect.' (E. W. Emehson, in the Centenary Edi- 
tion.) 



9° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



With credulous and imaginative man; 
For, though he scoop my water in his palm, 
A few rods off he deems it gems and clouds. 
Planting strange fruits and sunshine on the 

shore, 
I make some coast alluring, some lone isle, 
To distant men, who must go there, or die. 
1857. 1867. 



WALDEINSAMKEIT 

I DO not count the hours I spend 
In wandering by the sea; 
The forest is my loyal friend, 
Like God it useth me. 

In plains that room for shadows make 
Of skirting hills to lie, 
Bound in by streams which give and take 
Their colors from the sky; 

Or on the mountain-crest sublime, 

Or down the oaken glade, io 

O what have I to do with time ? 

For this the day was made. 

Cities of mortals woe-begone 
Fantastic care derides, 
But in the serious landscape lone 
Stern benefit abides. 

Sheen will tarnish, honey cloy, 

And merry is only a mask of sad, 

But, sober on a fund of joy, 

The woods at heart are glad. 20 

There the great Planter plants 
Of fruitful worlds the grain, 
And with a million spells enchants 
The souls that walk in pain. 

Still on the seeds of all he made 

The rose of beauty burns; 

Through times that wear and forms that 

fade, 
Immortal youth returns. 

The black ducks mounting from the lake, 
The pigeon in the pines, 30 

The bittern's boom, a desert make 
Which no false art refines. 



Down in yon watery nook, 
Where bearded mists divide, 



The gray old gods whom Chaos knew, 
The sires of Nature, hide. 

Aloft, in secret veins of air, 
Blows the sweet breath of song, 
O, few to scale those uplands dare, 
Though they to all belong ! 40 

See thou bring not to field or stone 
The fancies found in books; 
Leave authors' eyes, and fetch your own, 
To brave the landscape's looks. 

Oblivion here thy wisdom is, 
Thy thrift, the sleep of cares; 
For a proud idleness like this 
Crowns all thy mean affairs. 
1857. 1858. 



FRAGMENTS ON NATURE AND 
LIFE 

NATURE 

Daily the bending skies solicit man, 
The seasons chariot him from this exile, 
The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing 

wheels, 
The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks 

along, 
Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights 
Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home. 



For Nature, true and like in every place, 
Will hint her secret in a garden patch, 
Or in lone corners of a doleful heath, 
As in the Andes watched by fleets at sea, 
Or the sky-piercing horns of Himmaleh; 
And, when I would recall the scenes I 

dreamed 
On Adirondac steeps, I know 
Small need have I of Turner or Daguerre, 
Assured to find the token once again 
In silver lakes that unexhausted gleam 
And peaceful woods beside my cottage door* 



But never yet the man was found 

Who could the mystery expound, 

Though Adam, born when oaks were 

young, 
Endured, the Bible says, as long; 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



9 1 



But when at last the patriarch died 
The Gordian noose was still untied. 
He left, though goodly centuries old, 
Meek Nature's secret still untold. 



Atom from atom yawns as far 

As moon from earth, or star from star. 



Teach me your mood, O patient stars ! 

Who climb each night the ancient sky, 
Leaving on space no shade, no scars, 

No trace of age, no fear to die. 



The sun athwart the cloud thought it no 

sin 
To use my land to put his rainbows in. 



Day by day for her darlings to her much 
she added more; 

In her hundred-gated Thebes every cham- 
ber was a door, 

A door to something grander, — loftier 
walls, and vaster floor. 



She paints with white and red the moors 
To draw the nations out of doors. 



NIGHT IN JUNE 

I LEFT my dreary page and sallied forth, 
Received the fair inscriptions of the night; 
The moon was making amber of the world, 
Glittered with silver every cottage pane, 
The trees were rich, yet ominous with 

gloom. 

The meadows broad 
From ferns and grapes and from the folded 

flowers 
Sent a nocturnal fragrance ; harlot flies 
Flashed their small fires in air, or held their 

court 
In fairy groves of herds-grass. 



But Nature whistled with all her winds, 
Did as she pleased and went her way. 



LIFE 

(A train of gay and clouded days 
| Dappled with joy and grief and praise, 
(Beauty to fire us, saints to save, 
Escort us to a little grave. 

_ 

No fate, save by the victim's fault, is low, 
For God hath writ all dooms magnificent, 
So guilt not traverses his tender will. 



-VY> 



■ 



t*J 



This shining moment is an edifice 
Which the Omnipotent cannot rebuild. 



Koomy Eternity 

Casts her schemes rarely, 

And an seon allows 

For each quality and part 

Of the multitudinous 

And many-chambered heart. 






ry *L 



Be of good cheer, brave spirit ; steadfastly 
Serve that low whisper thou hast served; 

for know, 
God hath a select family of sons 
Now scattered wide thro' earth, and each 

alone, 
Who are thy spiritual kindred, and each one 
By constant service to that inward law, 
Is weaving the sublime proportions 
Of a true monarch's soul. Beauty and 

strength, 
The riches of a spotless memory, 
The eloquence of truth, the wisdom got 
By searching of a clear and loving eye 
That seeth as God seeth, — these are their 

gifts ; 
And Time, who keeps God's word, brings 

on the day 
To seal the marriage of these minds with 

thine, 
Thine everlasting lovers. Ye shall be 
The salt of all the elements, world of the 

world. 



Love 

Asks nought his brother cannot give; 
Asks nothing, but does all receive. 
Love calls not to his aid events; 



9 2 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



He to his wants can well suffice: 
Asks not of others soft consents, 
Nor kind occasion without eyes; 
Nor plots to ope or bolt a gate, 
Nor heeds Condition's iron walls, — 
Where he goes, goes before him Fate; 
Whoni he uniteth, God installs; 
Instant and perfect his access 
To the dear object of his thought, 
Though foes and land and seas between 
Himself and his love intervene. 



Tell men what they knew before; 
Paint the prospect from their door. 



Him strong Genius urged to roam, 
Stronger Custom brought him home. 



That each should in his house abide, 
Therefore was the world so wide. 1 



Yes, sometimes to the sorrow-stricken 
Shall his own sorrow seem impertinent, 
A thing that takes no more root in the world 
Than doth the traveller's shadow on the 
rock. , 



The bard and mystic held me for their own, 
I filled the dream of sad, poetic maids, 
I took the friendly noble by the hand, 
I was the trustee of the hand-cart man, 
The brother of the fisher, porter, swain, 
And these from the crowd's edge well 

pleased beheld 
The service done to me as done to them. 



Shun passion, fold the hands of thrift, 

Sit still, and Truth is near : 
Suddenly it will uplift 

Your eyelids to the sphere : 

1 A common thought with Emerson (see ' Written 
in Naples,' ' Written at Rome,' ' The Day's Ration,' 
and the essay ' Self-Reliance '), but, as here expressed, 
evidently meant for a direct answer to the last words 
of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, so often quoted by Car- 
lyle : — 

To give space for wandering is it 
That the world was made so wide. 



Wait a little, you shall see 
The portraiture of things to be. 



Oh, what is Heaven but the fellowship 
Of mmds that each can stand against the 

world 
By its own meek and incorruptible will ? 



On bravely through the sunshine and the 

showers! 
Time hath his work to do and we have ours. 
1830-60. 1883. 

FRAGMENTS ON THE POET AND 
THE POETIC GIFT 

The gods talk in the breath of the woods, 

They talk in the shaken pine, 

And fill the long reach of the old seashore 

With dialogue divine; 

And the poet who overhears 

Some random word they say 

Is the fated man of men 

Whom the ages must obey. 



The sun set, but set not his hope : — 
Stars rose, his faith was earlier up : 
Fixed on the enormous galaxy, 
Deeper and older seemed his eye, 
And matched his sufferance sublime 
The taciturnity of Time. 2 
He spoke, and words more soft than rain 
Brought the Age of Gold again: 
His action won such reverence sweet 
As hid all measure of the feat. 



The Dervish whined to Said, 

' Thou didst not tarry while I prayed. 

Beware the fire that Eblis burned.' 

But Saadi coldly thus returned, 

* Once with manlike love and fear 

I gave thee for an hour my ear, 

I kept the sun and stars at bay, 

And love, for words thy tongue could say. 

I camiot sell my heaven again 

For all that rattles in thy brain.' 



2 The first six lines were originally written as part of 
' The Poet,' but were first printed, with the four follow- 
ing, as motto to the essay on ' Character'. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



93 



The free winds told him what they knew, 

Discoursed of fortune as they blew ; « 

Omens and signs that filled the air 

To him authentic witness bare; 

The birds brought auguries on their wings, 

And carolled undeceiving things 

Him to beckon, him to warn; 

Well might then the poet scorn 

To learn of scribe or courier 

Things writ in vaster character; 

And on his mind at dawn of day 

Soft shadows of the evening lay. 



Pale genius roves alone, 
No scout can track his way, 
None credits him till he have shown 
His diamonds to the day. 

Not his the feaster's wine, 
Nor land, nor gold, nor power, 
By want and pain God screeneth him 
Till his elected hour. 

Go, speed the stars of Thought 
On to their shining goals: — 
The sower scatters broad his seed, 
The wheat thou strew'st be souls. 



For thought, and not praise; 

Thought is the wages 

For which I sell days, 

Will gladly sell ages 

And willing grow old 

Deaf, and dumb, and blind, and cold, 

Melting matter into dreams, 

Panoramas which I saw 

And whatever glows or seems 

Into substance, into Law. 



A dull uncertain brain, 

But gifted yet to know 

That God has cherubim who go 

Singing an immortal strain, 

Immortal here below. 

I know the mighty bards, 

I listen when they sing, 

And now I know 

The secret store 

Which these explore 

When they with torch of genius pierce 

The tenfold clouds that cover 



The riches of the universe 

From God's adoring lover. 

And if to me it is not given 

To fetch one ingot thence 

Of the unfading gold of Heaven 

His merchants may dispense, 

Yet well I know the royal mine, 

And know the sparkle of its ore, 

Know Heaven's truth from lies that 

shine — 
Explored they teach us to explore. 



For Fancy's gift 

Can mountains lift; 

The Muse can knit 

What is past, what is done, 

With the web that 's just begun; 

Making free with time and size, 

Dwindles here, there magnifies, 

Swells a rain-drop to a tun; 

So to repeat 

No word or feat 

Crowds in a day the sum of ages, 

And blushing Love outwits the sages. 



Try the might the Muse affords 
And the balm of thoughtful words ; 
Bring music to the desolate; 
Hang roses on the stony fate. 



And as the light divides the dark 
Through with living swords, 

So shalt thou pierce tbe distant age 
With adamantine words. 



I framed his tongue to music, 
I armed his hand with skill, 

I moulded his face to beauty 

And his heart the throne of Will. 



That book is good 
Which puts me in a working mood. 1 
Unless to Thought is added Will, 
Apollo is an imbecile. 



1 Compare the essay ' Inspiration : ' ' Every book is 
good to read which sets the reader in a working mood.' 
. . . ' Fact-books, if the facts be well and thoroughly 
told, are much more nearly allied to poetry than many 
books that are written in rhyme.' 



94 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



What parts, what gems, what colors shine, ■ 
Ah, but I miss the grand design. 



For what need I of book or priest, 
Or sibyl from the mummied East, 
When every star is Bethlehem star ? 
I count as many as there are 
Cinquefoils or violets in the grass, 
So many saints and saviors, 
So many high behaviors 
Salute the bard who is alive 
And only sees what he doth give. 



Coin the day-dawn into lines 
In which its proper splendor shines; 
Coin the moonlight into verse 
Which all its marvel shall rehearse, 

Chasing with words fast-flowing things; 

nor try 
To plant thy shrivelled pedantry 
On the shoulders of the sky. 



His instant thought a poet spoke, 
And filled the age his fame ; 
An inch of ground the lightning strook 
But lit the sky with flame. 1 

1840-1860. 1883. 



QUATRAINS AND TRANSLA- 
TIONS 

POET 

Ever the Poet from the land 
Steers his bark and trims his sail; 
Right out to sea his courses stand, 
New worlds to find in pinnace frail. 



To clothe the fiery thought 
In simple words succeeds, 
For still the craft of genius is 
To mask a king in weeds. 2 

1 Compare Emerson's ' Address at the Hundredth 
Anniversary of the Concord Fight : ' ' The thunder- 
bolt falls on an inch of ground, but the light of it fills 
the horizon.' 

2 Compare the essay on ' Beauty,' in The Conduct of 
Life : ' This art of omission is a chief secret of power, 
and, in general, it is a proof of high culture to say the 
greatest matters in the simplest way.' 



BOTANIST 

Go thou to thy learned task, 
I stay with the flowers of Spring: 
Do thou of the Ages ask 
What me the Hours will bring. 

GARDENER 

True Brahmin, in the morning meadows 

wet, 
Expound the Vedas of the violet, 
Or, hid in vines, peeping through many a 

loop, 
See the plum redden, and the beurre' stoop 

NORTHMAN 

The gale that wrecked you on the sand, 
It helped my rowers to row; 
The storm is my best galley hand 
And drives me where I go. 

FROM ALCUIN 

The sea is the road of the bold, 
Frontier of the wheat-sown plains, 
The pit wherein the streams are rolled 
And fountain of the rains. 

EXCELSIOR 

Over his head were the maple buds, 
And over the tree was the moon, 
And over the moon were the starry studs 
That drop from the angels' shoon. 
(May 1, 1838.) 

BORROWING 

(FROM THE FRENCH) 

Some of your hurts you have cured, 
And the sharpest you still have survived, 
But what torments of grief you endured 
From evils which never arrived ! 

NATURE 

Boon Nature yields each day a brag which 

we now first behold, 
And trains us on to slight the new, as if it 

were the old: 

3 Go to the forest, if God has made thee a poet, and 
make thy life clean and fragrant as thy office. 

True Brahmin, in the morning meadows wet, 
Expound the Vedas in the violet. 

Thy love must be thy art. . . . Nature also must teach 
thee rhetoric. She can teach thee not only to speak 
truth, but to speak it truly. (Journal, July, 1840.) 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



95 



But blest is he, who, playing deep, yet haply 

asks not why, 
Too busied with the crowded hour to fear 

to live or die. 

NATURE IN LEASTS 

As sings the pine-tree in the wind, 
So sings in the wind a sprig of the pine; 
Her strength and soul has laughing France 
Shed in each drop of wine. 

CLIMACTERIC 

I AM not wiser for my age, 

Nor skilful by my grief; 

Life loiters at the book's first page, — 

Ah ! could we turn the leaf. 

HERI, CRAS, HODIE 

Shines the last age, the next with hope is 

seen, 
To-day slinks poorly off unmarked between: 
Future or Past no richer secret folds, 
friendless Present ! than thy bosom holds. 

SACRIFICE 

Though love repine, and reason chafe, 
There came a voice without reply, — 
' 'T is man's perdition to be safe, 
When for the truth he ought to die.' 1 

CASELLA 2 

Test of the poet is knowledge of loVe, 
For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove ; 
Never was poet, of late or of yore, 
Who was not tremulous with love-lore. 

1 This quatrain was chosen by James Russell Lowell 
to be inscribed on the simple monument at Soldiers' 
Field in Cambridge, which was given as an athletic 
ground by Col. Henry Lee Higginson, in memory of his 
classmates and friends, Charles Russell Lowell, James 
Jackson Lowell, Robert Gould Shaw, James Savage, Jr., 
Edward Barry Dalton, and Stephen George Perkins, 
who died in the war or soon after. 

Compare Emerson's two addresses referred to in the 
note on 'Voluntaries.' The best commentary, how- 
ever, is Colonel Higginson's story of the lives and 
deaths of his comrades, in his addresses on the presen- 
tation of Soldiers' Field, 1890, and on Robert Gould 
Shaw, 1897 {Four Addresses, Boston, 1902.) 

2 A famous singer of Florence. Dante tells of meet- 
ing him (Purgatory, Canto n, lines 70-133) and beg- 
ging him to sing : ' If a new law take not from thee 
memory or practice of the song of love which was wont 
to quiet all my longings, may it please thee therewith 
somewhat to comfort my soul.' (Norton's Translation.) 
Casella then sings Dante's Amor che nella mtnle mi 
ragiona (' Love, that within my mind discourses with 
me'), 'so sweetly, that the sweetness still within me 
sounds. My Master, and I, and the folk who were with 



SHAKSPEARE 

I SEE all human wits 
Are measured but a few; 
Unmeasured still my Shakspeare sits, 
Lone as the blessed Jew. 

HAFIZ 

Her passions the shy violet 
From Hafiz never hides; 
Love-longings of the raptured bird 
The bird to him confides. 

AAAKPTN NEMONTAI AlflNA 

'A new commandment,' said the smiling 

Muse, 
' I give my darling son, Thou shalt not 

preach ' ; — 
Luther, Fox, Behmen, Swedenborg, grew 

pale, 
And, on the instant, rosier,clouds upbore 
Hafiz and Shakspeare with their shining 

choirs. 

FRIENDSHIP 

Thou foolish Hafiz! Say, do churls 
Know the worth of Oman's pearls ? 
Give the gem which dims the moon 
To the noblest, or to none. 



On prince or bride no diamond stone 
Half so gracious ever shone, 
As the light of enterprise 
Beaming from a young man's eyes. 



Unbar the door, since thou the Opener art, 
Show me the forward way, since thou art 

guide, 
I put no faith in pilot or in chart, 
Since they are transient, and thou dost 

abide. 



If Thought unlock her mysteries, 
If Friendship on me smile, 

I walk in marble galleries, 
I talk with kings the while. 
1850-60 ? 1883. 

him, appeared so content as if naught else could touch 
the mind of any.' 

Milton speaks of Casella in his ' Sonnet to Mr. Henry 
Lawes : ' — 

Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher 
Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing, 
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory. 



9 6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



THE BOHEMIAN HYMN 1 

In inany forms we try 

To utter God's infinity, 

But the boundless hath no form, 

And the Universal Friend 

Doth as far transcend 

An angel as a worm. 

The great Idea baffles wit 
Language falters under it, 
It leaves the learned in the lurch; 
Nor art, nor power, nor toil can find 
The measure of the eternal Mind, 
Nor hymn, nor prayer, nor church. 

1883. 

PAN 

O what are heroes, prophets, men, 

But pipes through which the breath of Pan 

doth blow 
A momentary music. Being's tide 
Swells hitherward, and myriads of forms 
Live, robed with beauty, painted by the 

sun; 
Their dust, pervaded by the nerves of God, 
Throbs with an overmastering energy 
Knowing and doing. Ebbs the tide, they 

lie 
White hollow shells upon the desert shore, 
But not the less the eternal wave rolls on 
To animate new millions, and exhale 
Races and planets, its enchanted foam. 2 

1883. 

THE ENCHANTER 

In the deep heart of man a poet dwells 
Who all the day of life his summer story 

tells; 
Scatters on every eye dust of his spells, 
Scent, form and color; to the flowers and 

shells 
Wins the believing child with wondrous 

tales; 
Touches a cheek with colors of romance, 
And crowds a history into a glance; 

1 Compare the essay on ' Plato : ' ' Plato appre- 
hended the cardinal facts. He could prostrate himself 
on the earth and cover his eyes whilst he adored that 
which cannot be numbered, or gauged, or known, or 
named . . . He even stood ready, as in the Parmen- 
ides, to demonstrate . . . that this Being exceeded the 
limits of intellect. No man ever more fully acknow- 
ledged the Ineffable.' 

2 Compare Bryant's ' Flood of Years.' 



Gives beauty to the lake and fountain, 
Spies oversea the fires of the mountain; 
When thrushes ope their throat, 't is he 

that sings, 
And he that paints the oriole's fiery wings. 
The little Shakspeare in the maiden's 

heart 
Makes Romeo of a plough-boy on his cart; 
Opens the eye to Virtue's starlike meed 
And gives persuasion to a gentle deed. \ 

1883. 

EROS 

They put their finger on their lip, 
The Powers above: 

The seas their islands clip, 

The moons in ocean dip, 
They love, but name not love. 



1883. 



MUSIC 3 



Let me go where'er I will, 

I hear a sky-born music still: 

It sounds from all things old, 

It sounds from all things young, 

From all that 's fair, from all that 's foul, 

Peals out a cheerful song. 

It is not only in the rose, 

It is not only in the bird, 

Not only where the rainbow glows, 

Nor in the song of woman heard, 

But in the darkest, meanest things 

There alway, alway something sings. 

'T is not in the high stars alone, 
Nor in the cup of budding flowers, 
Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone, 
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers, 
But in the mud and scum of things 
There alway, alway something sings. 

1883. 

THE TITMOUSE 4 

You shall not be overbold 
When you deal with arctic cold, 

3 In 1883 this poem was printed among the ' Frag- 
ments on Nature and Life,' in an Appendix. It first 
appears as a separate poem, with title, in the Centenary 
Edition of 1904. 

* The snow still lies even with the tops of the walls 
across the Walden road, and, this afternoon, I waded 
through the woods to my grove. A chickadee came 
out to greet me, flew about within reach of my hands, 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



97 



As late I found niy lukewarm blood 
Chilled wading in the snow-choked wood. 
How shoidd I fight ? my f oeman fine 
Has million arms to one of mine : 
East, west, for aid I looked in vain, 
East, west, north, south, are his domain. 
Miles off, three dangerous miles, is home; 
Must borrow his winds who there would 
come. 10 

Up and away for life ! be fleet ! — 
The frost-king ties my fumbling feet, 
Sings in my ears, my hands are stones, 
Curdles the blood to the marble bones, 
Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense, 
And hems in life with narrowing fence. 
Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep, — 
The punctual stars will vigil keep, — 
Embalmed by purifying cold; 
The winds shall sing their dead-march old, 20 
The snow is no ignoble shroud, 
-wThe moon thy mourner, and the cloud. 

Softly, — but this way fate was pointing, 
'T was coming fast to such anointing, 
When piped a tiny voice hard by, 
Gay and polite, a cheerful cry, 
Chic-chic-a-dee-dee ! saucy note 
Out of sound heart and merry throat, 
As if it said, ' Good day, good sir ! 
Fine afternoon, old passenger ! 30 

Happy to meet you in these places, 
Where January brings few faces.' 

This poet, though he live apart, 
Moved by his hospitable heart, 
Sped, when I passed his sylvan fort, 
To do the honors of his court, 
As fits a feathered lord of land ; 
Flew near, with soft wing grazed my 
hand, 

perched on the nearest bough, flew down into the snow, 
rested there two seconds, then up again just over my 
head, and busied himself on the dead bark. I whis- 
tled to him through my teeth, and (I think, in re- 
sponse) he began at once to whistle. I promised him 
crumbs, and must not go again to these woods without 
them. I suppose the best food to carry would be the 
meat of shagbarks or Castile nuts. Thoreau tells me 
that they are very sociable with wood-choppers, and 
will take crumbs from their hands. {Journal, March 
3, 1862.) 

Compare Holmes's characteristic comment on this 
poem, in his Pages from an Old Volume of Life: ' The 
moral of the poem is as heroic as the verse is exquisite ; 
but we must not forget the non-conducting quality of 
fur and feathers, and remember, if we are at all deli- 
cate, to go 

Wrapped in our virtue, and a good surtout, 

by way of additional security.' 



Hopped on the bough, then, darting low, 
Prints his small impress on the snow, 4 o 
Shows feats of his gymnastic play, 
Head downward, clinging to the spray. 

Here was this atom in full breath, 
Hurling defiance at vast death; 
This scrap of valor just for play 
Fronts the north-wind in waistcoat gray, 
As if to shame my weak behavior; 
I greeted loud my little savior, 
' You pet ! what dost here ? and what for ? 
In these woods, thy small Labrador, 50 

At this pinch, wee San Salvador ! 
What fire burns hi that little chest 
So frolic, stout and self-possest ? 
Henceforth I wear no stripe but thine; 
Ashes and jet all hues outshine. 
Why are not diamonds black and gray, 
To ape thy dare-devil array ? 
And I affirm, the spacious North 
Exists to draw thy virtue forth. 
I think no virtue goes with size ; 60 

The reason of all cowardice 
Is, that men are overgrown, 
And, to be valiant, must come down 
To the titmouse dimension.' 

'T is good will makes intelligence, 
And I began to catch the sense 
Of my bird's song: ' Live out of doors 
In the great woods, on prairie floors. 
I dine in the sun; when he sinks in the sea, , 
I too have a hole in a hollow tree; 70 

And I like less when Summer beats 
With stifling beams on these retreats, 
Than noontide twilights which snow makes - 
With tempest of the blinding flakes. 
For well the soul, if stout within, 
Can arm impregnably the skin; 
And polar frost my frame defied, 
Made of the air that blows outside.' 

With glad remembrance of my debt, 
I homeward turn; farewell, my pet ! 80 
When here again thy pilgrim comes, 
He shall bring store of seeds and crumbs. 
Doubt not, so long as earth has bread, 
Thou first and foremost shalt be fed ; 
The Providence that is most large 
Takes hearts like thine in special charge, 
Helps who for their own need are strong, 
And the sky doats on cheerful song. 
Henceforth I prize thy wiry chant 
O'er all that mass and minster vaunt; 9 -> 



9 8 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



For men mis-hear thy call in Spring, 
As 't would accost some frivolous wing, 
Crying out of the hazel copse, Phe-be ! 
And, in winter, Chic-a-dee-dee ! 
I think old Csesar must have heard 
In northern Gaul my dauntless bird, 
And, echoed in some frosty wold, 
Borrowed thy battle-numbers bold. 
And I will write our annals new, 
And thank thee for a better clew, ioo 
I, who dreamed not when I came here 
To find the antidote of fear, 
Now hear thee say in Roman key, 
Pcean ! Veni, vidi, vici. 
1862. 1862. 

BOSTON HYMN 

READ IN MUSIC HALL, JANUARY I, 1 863 1 

The word of the Lord by night 
To the watching Pilgrims came, 
As they sat by the seaside, 
And filled their hearts with flame. 

God said, I am tired of kings, 
I suffer them no more; 
Up to my ear the morning brings 
The outrage of the poor. 

Think ye I made this ball 
A field of havoc and war, 10 

Where tyrants great and tyrants small 
.Might harry the weak and poor ? 

My angel, — his name is Freedom, — 
Choose him to be your king; 
He shall cut pathways east and west 
And fend you with his wing. 

Lo ! I uncover the land 
Which I hid of old time in the West, 
As the sculptor uncovers the statue 
When he has wrought his best; 20 

I show Columbia, of the rocks 
Which dip their foot in the seas 
And soar to the air-borne flocks 
Of clouds and the boreal fleece. 

I will divide my goods; 
Call in the wretch and slave : 

1 The day when the Emancipation Proclamation went 
into effect. The Proclamation was issued on September 
22, 1862. 



None shall rule but the humble, 
\ And none but Toil shall have, t 

I will have never a noble, 
No lineage counted great; 
Fishers and choppers and ploughmen 
Shall constitute a state. 

Go, cut down trees in the forest 
And trim the straightest boughs; 
Cut down trees in the forest 
And build me a wooden house. 

Call the people together, 
The young men and the sires, 
The digger in the harvest-field, 
Hirehng and him that hires; 

And here in a pine state-house 
They shall choose men to rule 
In every needful faculty, 
In church and state and school. 

Lo, now ! if these poor men 
Can govern the land and sea 
And make just laws below the sun, 
As planets faithful be. 



And ye shall succor men; 

'T is nobleness to serve ; 

Help them who cannot help again: 

Beware from right to swerve. 



„ 



I break your bonds and masterships, 
And I unchain the slave: 
Free be his heart and hand henceforth 
As wind and wandering wave. 

I cause from every creature 
His proper good to flow: 
As much as he is and doeth, 
So much he shall bestow. 

But, laying hands on another 
To coin his labor and sweat, 
He goes in pawn to his victim 
For eternal years in debt. 

To-day unbind the captive, 
So only are ye unbound; 
Lift up a people from the dust, 
Trump of their rescue, sound ! 

Pay ransom to the owner 
And fill the bag to the brim. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



99 



Who is the owner ? The slave is owner, 
And ever was. Pay him. 

North ! give him beauty for rags, 
And honor, O South ! for his shame; 
Nevada ! coin thy golden crags 
With Freedom's image and name. 

Up ! and the dusky race 

That sat in darkness long, — 

Be swift their feet as antelopes, 

And as behemoth strong. 80 

Come, East and West and North, 
By races, as snow-flakes, 
And carry my purpose forth, 
Which neither halts nor shakes. 

My will fulfilled shall be, 
For, in daylight or in dark, v 
My thunderbolt has eyes to see 
His way home to the mark. 
1862. .f__. 1863. 

VOLUNTARIES 

I 

Low and mournful be the strain, 
Haughty thought be far from me; 
Tones of penitence and pain, 
Moanings of the tropic sea; 
Low and tender in the cell 
Where a captive sits in chains, 
Crooning ditties treasured well 
From his Afrie's torrid plains. 
Sole estate his sire bequeathed, — 
Hapless sire to hapless son, — 10 

Was the wailing song he breathed, 
And his chain when life was done. 

What his fault, or what his crime ? 
Or what ill planet crossed his prime ? 
Heart too soft and will too weak 
To front the fate that crouches near, — 
Dove beneath the vulture's beak ; — 
Will song dissuade the thirsty spear ? 
Dragged from his mother's arms and 

breast, 
Displaced, disfurnished here, 20 

His wistful toil to do his best 
Chilled by a ribald jeer. 

Great men in the Senate sate, 
Sage and hero, side by side, 



Building for their sons the State, 

Which they shall rule with pride. 

They forbore to break the chain 

Which bound the dusky tribe, 

Checked by the owners' fierce disdain, 

Lured by ' Union ' as the bribe. 30 

Destiny sat by, and said, 

' Pang for pang your seed shall pay, 

Hide in false peace your coward head, 

I bring round the harvest day.' 

II 

Freedom all winged expands, 
Nor perches in a narrow place ; 
Her broad van seeks unplanted lands; 
She loves a poor and virtuous race. 
Clinging to a colder zone 
Whose dark sky sheds the snowflake 
down, 40 

The snowflake is her banner's star, 
Her stripes the boreal streamers are. 
Long she loved the Northman well; 
Now the iron age is done, 
She will not refuse to dwell 
With the offspring of the Sun; 
Foundling of the desert far, 
Where palms plume, siroccos blaze, 
He roves unhurt the burning ways 
In climates of the summer star. 50 

He has avenues to God 
Hid from men of Northern brain, 
Far beholding, without cloud, 
What these with slowest steps attain. 
If once the generous chief arrive 
To lead him willing to be led, 
For freedom he will strike and strive, 
And drain his heart till he be dead. 

Ill 

In an age of fops and toys, 

Wanting wisdom, void of right, 60 

Who shall nerve heroic boys 

To hazard all in Freedom's fight, — 

Break sharply off their jolly games, 

Forsake their comrades gay 

And quit proud homes and youthful dames 

For famine, toil and fray ? 

Yet on the nimble air benign 

Speed nimbler messages, 

That waft the breath of grace divine 

To hearts in sloth and ease. 7 o 

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 

So near is God to man, 

V 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



When Duty whispers low, Thou must, 
The youth replies, / can. 1 

IV 

Oh, well for the fortunate soul 

Which Music's wings infold, 

Stealing away the memory 

Of sorrows new and old ! 

Yet happier he whose inward sight, 

Stayed on his subtile thought, 80 

Shuts his sense on toys of time, 

To vacant bosoms brought. 

But best befriended of the God 

He who, in evil times, 

Warned by an inward voice, 

Heeds not the darkness and the dread, 

Biding by his rule and choice, 

Feeling only the fiery thread 

Leading over heroic ground, _. 

Walled with mortal terror round, 90 

To the aim which him allures, 

And the sweet heaven his deed secures. 

Peril around, all else appalling, 

Cannon in front and leaden rain 

Him duty through the clarion calling 

To the van called not in vain. 

Stainless soldier on the walls, 
Knowing this, — and knows no more, — 
Whoever fights, whoever falls, 
Justice conquers evermore, 100 

Justice after as before, — 
And he who battles on her side, 
God, though he were ten times slain, 
Crowns him victor glorified, 
Victor over death and pain. 



Blooms the laurel which belongs 
To the valiant chief who fights; 
I see the wreath, I hear the songs 
Lauding the Eternal Rights, 
Victors over daily wrongs : 
Awful victors, they misguide 
Whom they will destroy, 
And their coming triumph hide 
In our downfall, or our joy: 



1 These lines, a moment after they were written, 
seemed as if they had been carved on marble for a 
thousand years. (Holmes, Life of Emerson.) 

Compare Emerson's ' Address at the Dedication of 
the Soldiers' Monument in Concord,' especially the 
paragraph beginning : ' All sorts "of men went to the 
war ; ' and his ' Harvard Commemoration Speech, July 
21, 1865.' 



They reach no term, they never sleep, 
In equal strength through space abide; 
Though, feigning dwarfs, they crouch and 

creep, 
The strong they slay, the swift outstride : 
Fate's grass grows rank in valley clods, 
And rankly on the castled steep, — 120 

Speak it firmly, these are gods, 
All are ghosts beside. 

1863. 

MY GARDEN 2 

If I could put my woods in song 
And tell what 's there enjoyed, 
All men would to my gardens throng, 
And leave the cities void. 

In my plot no tulips blow, — 
Snow-loving pines and oaks instead; 
And rank the savage maples grow 
From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red. 

My garden is a forest ledge 
Which older forests bound; 10 

The banks slope down to the blue lake- 
edge, 
Then plunge to depths profound. 

Here once the Deluge ploughed, 
Laid the terraces, one by one ; 
Ebbing later whence it flowed, 
They bleach and dry in the sun. 

The sowers make haste to depart, — 
The wind and the birds which sowed it; 
Not for fame, nor by rules of art, 
Planted these, and tempests flowed it. 20 

Waters that wash my garden-side 
Play not in Nature's lawful web, 
They heed not moon or solar tide, — 
Five years elapse from flood to ebb. 

Hither hasted, in old time, Jove, 
And every god, — none did refuse ; 
And be sure at last came Love, 
And after Love, the Muse. 



2 Emerson wrote to Carlyle, May 14, 1846 : ' I, too, 
have a new plaything, the best I ever had, — a wood- 
lot. Last fall I bought a piece of more than forty acres, 
on the border of a little lake half a mile wide and more, 
called Walden Pond ; — a place to which my feet have ■ 
for years been accustomed to bring me once or twice 
a week at all seasons.' See the whole letter, in the 
Carlyle- Emerson Correspondence, vol. ii, pp. 123-125. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



IOI 



Keen ears can catch a syllable, 

As if one spake to another, 3c 

In the hemlocks tall, untamable, 

And what the whispering grasses smother. 

iEolian harps in the pine 
Ring with the song of the Fates; 
Infant Bacchus in the vine, — 
Far distant yet his chorus waits. 

Canst thou copy in verse one chime 

Of the wood-bell's peal and cry, 

Write in a book the morning's prune, 

Or match with words that tender sky ? 4c 

Wonderful verse of the gods, 
Of one import, of varied tone; 
They chant the bliss of their abodes 
To man imprisoned in his own. 

Ever the words of the gods resound; 
But the porches of man's ear 
Seldom in this low life's round 
Are unsealed, that he may hear. 

Wandering voices in the air 

And murmurs in the wold 5c 

Speak what I cannot declare, 

Yet cannot all withhold. 

When the shadow fell on the lake, 
The whirlwind in ripples wrote 
Air-bells of fortune that shine and break, 
And omens above thought. 

But the meanings cleave to the lake, 

Cannot be carried in book or urn; 

Go thy ways now, come later back, 

On waves and hedges still they burn. 6c 

These the fates of men forecast, 
Of better men than live to-day; 
If who can read them comes at last 
He will spell in the sculpture, ' Stay.' 



1866. 



TERMINUS 1 

It is time to be old, 
To take in sail : — 



1 In the last days of the year 1866, when I was re- 
turning from a long stay in the Western States, I met 
my father in New York just starting for his usual win- 



The god of bounds, 

Who sets to seas a shore, 

Came to me in his fatal rounds, 

And said : ' No more ! 

No farther shoot 

Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root. 

Fancy departs: no more invent; 

Contract thy firmament 10 

To compass of a tent. 

There 's not enough for this and that, 

Make thy option which of two; 

Economize the failing river, 

Not the less revere the Giver, 

Leave the many and hold the few. 

Timely wise accept the terms, 

Soften the fall with wary foot; 

A little while 

Still plan and smile, 20 

And, — fault of novel germs, — 

Mature the unfallen fruit. 

Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires, 

Bad husbands of their fires, 

Who, when they gave thee breath, 

Failed to bequeath 

The needful sinew stark as once, 

The Baresark marrow to thy bones, 

But left a legacy of ebbing veins, 

Inconstant heat and nerveless reins, — 30 

Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, 

Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.' 

As the bird trims her to the gale, 
I trim myself to the storm of time, 
I man the rudder, reef the sail, 
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: 
' Lowly faithful, banish fear, 
Right onward drive unharmed; 
The port, well worth the cruise, is near, 
And every wave is charmed.' 40 

1866. 1867. 



ter lecturing trip, in those days extending beyond the 
Mississippi. We spent the night together at the St. 
Denis Hotel, and as we sat by the fire, he read me two 
or three of his poems for the new May-Day volume, 
among them 'Terminus.' It almost startled me. No 
thought of his ageing had ever come to me, and there 
he sat, with no apparent abatement of bodily vigor, and 
young in spirit, recognizing with serene acquiescence 
his failing forces ; I think he smiled as he read. He 
recognized, as none of us did, that his working days 
were nearly done. They lasted about five years longer, 
although he lived, in comfortable health, yet ten years 
beyond those of his activity. Almost at the time when 
he wrote ' Terminus ' he wrote in his journal : — 

' Within I do not find wrinkles and used heart, but 
unspent youth.' (E. W. Emerson, in the Centenary 
Edition.) 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



THE SPIRIT OF POETRY 

There is a quiet spirit in these woods, 
That dwells where'er the gentle south- wind 

blows; 
Where, underneath the white-thorn hi the 

glade, 
The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft 

air, 
The leaves above their sunny palnis out- 
spread. 
With what a tender and impassioned voice 
It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought, 
When the fast ushering star of morning 

comes 
O'er-riding the gray hills with golden 

scarf; 
Or when the cowled and dusky-sandalled 

Eve, 10 

In mourning weeds, from out the western 

gate. 
Departs with silent pace ! That spirit 

moves 
In the green valley, where the silver brook, 
From its full laver, pours the white cas- 
cade; 
And, babbling low amid the tangled woods, 
Slips down through moss-grown stones with 

endless laughter. 
And frequent, on the everlasting hills, 
Its feet go forth, when it doth wrap itself 
In all the dark embroidery of the storm, 
And shouts the stern, strong wind. And 

here, amid 20 

The silent majesty of these deep woods, 
Its presence shall uplift thy thoughts from 

earth, 
As to the sunshine and the pure, bright 

air 
Their tops the green trees lift. Hence 

gifted bards 
Have ever loved the calm and quiet shades. 
For them there was an eloquent voice hi 

all 
The sylvan pomp of woods, the golden 

sun, 
The flowers, the leaves, the river on its 

way, 



Blue skies, and silver clouds, and gentle 

winds, 
The swelling upland, where the sidelong 

sun 30 

Aslant the wooded slope, at evening, goes, 
Groves, through whose broken roof the sky 

looks hi, 
Mountain, and shattered cliff, and sunny 

vale, 
The distant lake, fountains, and mighty 

trees, 
In many a lazy syllable, repeating 
Their old poetic legends to the wind. 

And this is the sweet spirit, that doth fill 
The world; and, in these wayward days of 

youth, 
My busy fancy oft embodies it, 
As a bright image of the light and beauty 40 
That dwell in nature; of the heavenly 

forms 
We worship in our dreams, and the soft 

hues 
That stain the wild bird's wing, and flush 

the clouds 
When the sun sets. Within her tender 

eye 
The heaven of April, with its changing 

light, 
And when it wears the blue of May, is 

hung, 
And on her lip the rich, red rose. Her 

hair 
Is like the summer tresses of the trees, 
When twilight makes them brown, and on 

her cheek 
Blushes the richness of an autumn sky, 50 
With ever-shifting beauty. Then her 

breath, 
It is so like the gentle air of Spring, 
As, from the morning's dewy flowers, it 

comes 
Full of their fragrance, that it is a joy 
To have it round us, and her silver voice 
Is the rich music of a summer bird, 
Heard in the still night, with its passionate 

cadence. 
1825. 1826. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



103 



BURIAL OF THE MINNISINK 1 

On sunny slope and beechen swell, 
The shadowed light of evening fell; 
And, where the maple's leaf was brown, 
With soft and silent lapse came down 
The glory that the wood receives, 
At sunset, in its golden leaves. 

Far upward in the mellow light 

Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white, 

Around a far uplifted cone, 

In the warm blush of evening shone; 10 

An image of the silver lakes, 

By which the Indian's soul awakes. 

But soon a funeral hymn was heard 
Where the soft breath of evening stirred 
The tall, gray forest; and a band 
Of stern in heart, and strong in hand, 
Came winding down beside the wave, 
To lay the red chief in his grave. 

They sang, that by bis native bowers 

He stood, in the last moon of flowers, 20 

And thirty snows had not yet shed 

Their glory on the warrior's head; 

But, as the summer fruit decays, 

So died he hi those naked days. 

A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin 

Covered the warrior, and within 

Its heavy folds the weapons, made 

For the hard toils of war, were laid; 

The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds, 

And the broad belt of shells and beads. 30 

Before, a dark-haired virgin train 
Chanted the death dirge of the slain; 
Behind, the long procession came 
Of hoary men and chiefs of fame, 
With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief, 
Leading the war-horse of their chief. 

Stripped of his proud and martial dress, 
Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless, 

1 This poem, written when Longfellow was eighteen 
years old, is interesting as an early example of that 
love for Indian subjects which later produced ' Hiawa- 
tha.' It should be compared with Whittier's early 
poems on Indian subjects, ' Pentucket,' ' The Funeral 
Tree of the Sokokis,' ' Mary Garvin,' ' Mogg Megone,' 
etc ; with Lowell's ' Chippewa Legend ; ' and with 
Bryant's ' The Indian Girl's Lament,' ' Monument 
Mountain,' etc. 



With darting eye, and nostril spread, 
And heavy and impatient tread, 4 o 

He came; and oft that eye so proud 
Asked for his rider in the crowd. 

They buried the dark chief; they freed 
Beside the grave bis battle steed; 
And swift an arrow cleaved its way 
To his stern heart ! One piercing neigh 
Arose, and, on the dead man's plain, ! 



The rider grasps his steed again 
1825, 



1826. 



THE RETURN OF SPRING 

FROM CHARLES D'ORLEANS 2 

Now Time throws off his cloak again 
Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain, 
And clothes him in the embroidery 
Of guttering sun and clear blue sky. 
With beast and bird the forest rings, 
Each in his jargon cries or sings; 
And Time throws off his cloak again 
Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain. 

River, and fount, and tinkling brook 
Wear in their dainty livery 
Drops of silver jewelry; 
In new-made suit they merry look; 
And Time throws off his cloak again 
Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain. 
1830. 1831. 



2 Longfellow's work as a translator extended from 
almost the beginning to the end of his poetical career, 
included versions from the French, Spanish, Italian, 
Portuguese, Latin, German, Danish, and Anglo-Saxon, 
and culminated in his rendering of Dante's Divine 
Comedy. This work unquestionably played an impor- 
tant part in his development, increasing the range and 
suppleness of his powers, and keeping the poet alive in 
him during the long period when he was completely 
absorbed by teaching, lecturing, prose writing, the 
composition and editing of text-books, and foreign 
travel. For twelve or thirteen years, between his early 
poems and the new beginning of his poetical work in 
the ' Psalm of Life,' he wrote practically nothing in 
verse except translations. 

Toward the end of his life (in a letter of March 7, 
1879) he said of translation : ' And what a difficult 
work ! There is evidently a great and strange fascina- 
tion in translating. It seizes people with irresistible 
power, and whirls them away till they are beside them- 
selves. It is like a ghost beckoning one to follow.' 
(Life, vol. iii, p. 298.) (In all notes on Longfellow's 
poems, the ' Life ' referred to is Samuel Longfellow's 
Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 3 volumes, 
1887.) 



io4 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



ART AND NATURE 

FROM FRANCISCO DE MEDRANO 

The works of human artifice soon tire 
The curious eye; the fountain's sparkling 

rill, 
And gardens, when adorned by human 

skill, 
Reproach the feeble hand, the vain desire. 
But oh ! the free and wild magnificence 
Of Nature, in her lavish hours, doth steal, 
In admiration silent and intense, 
The soul of him who hath a soul to feel. 
The river moving on its ceaseless way, 
The verdant reach of meadows fair and 

green, 
And the blue hills, that bound the sylvan 

scene, 
These speak of grandeur, that defies 

decay, — 
Proclaim the Eternal Architect on high. 
Who stamps on all his works his own 

eternity. 
1832. 1832. 

A PSALM OF LIFE 1 

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN 
SAID TO THE PSALMIST 

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 
Life is but an empty dream ! — 

For the soul is dead that slumbers, 
And things are not what they seem. 

1 This poem has been called l the very heart-beat of 
the American conscience.' When it was first published, 
anonymously, in the Knickerbocker magazine for 
October, 1838, it at once attracted attention. Whittier 
wrote of it in the Freeman : ' We know not who the 
author may be, but he or she is no common man or 
woman. These nine simple verses are worth more than 
all the dreams of Shelley, and Keats, and Wordsworth. 
They are alive and vigorous with the spirit of the day in 
which we live, — the moral steam enginery of an age of 
action.' (Quoted by Professor Carpenter in his Life 
of Whittier.) 

The writing of the ' Psalm ' is recorded in Longfel- 
low's Journal under the date of July 2G, 1838. He after- 
wards said of it, ' I kept it some time m manuscript, 
unwilling to show it to any one, it being a voice from my 
inmost heart at a time when J was rallying from de- 
pression.' (Life of Longfellow, vol. i, p. 301.) In other 
passages of his Journal he speaks of writing ' another 
psalm,' ' a psalm of death,' etc. The ' psalmist ' to 
whom the young man speaks, is therefore the poet him- 
self. ' It was the young man's better heart answering 
and refuting his own mood of despondency.' (Life, vol. 
i, pp. 283-284.) See further the Life of Longfellow, vol. 
i, pp. 281-284 ; and vol. ii, pp. 186, 283. The poem has 
been translated into many languages, including Chinese 
and Sanscrit. (Life, vol. i, p. 376 ; vol. iii, pp. 43, 64.) 



Life is real ! Life is earnest ! 

And the grave is not its goal; 
Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 

Was not spoken of the soul. 

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 

Is our destined end or way; io 

But to act, that each to-morrow 

Find us farther than to-day. 

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 

And our hearts, though stout and brave, 

Still, like muffled drums, are beating 
Funeral marches to the grave. 

In the world's broad field of battle, 

In the bivouac of Life, 
Be not like dumb, driven cattle ! 

Be a hero in the strife ! 20 

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant ! 

Let the dead Past bury its dead ! 
Act, — act in the living Present ! 

Heart within, and God o'erhead ! 

Lives of great men all remind us 
We can make our lives sublime, 

And, departing, leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time; 

Footprints, that perhaps another, 

Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 30 

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 
Seeing, shall take heart again. 

Let us, then, be up and doing, 

With a heart for any fate; 
Still achieving, still pursuing, 

Learn to labor ancl to wait. 



1838. 



1838. 



THE LIGHT OF STARS 2 

The night is come, but not too soon; 

And shaking silently, 
All silently, the little moon 

Drops down behind the sky. 

2 ' This poem was written on a beautiful summer 
night. The moon, a little strip of silver, was just set- 
ting behind the grove at Mount Auburn, and the planet 
Mars blazing in the southeast. There was a singular 
light in the sky.' (H. W. L.) It was published in the 
same number of the Knickerbocker as the last, where 
it was headed A Second Psalm of Life. (Cambridge 
Edition of Longfellow's Poetical Works.) 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



i°5 



There is no light in earth or heaven 

But the cold light of stars; 
And the first watch of night is given 

To the red planet Mars. 

Is it the tender star of love ? 

The star of love and dreams ? ic 

Oh no ! from that blue tent above 

A hero's armor gleams. 

And earnest thoughts within me rise, 

When I behold afar, 
Suspended hi the evening skies, . 

The shield of that red star. 

star of strength ! I see thee stand 
And smile upon my pahi; 

Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand, 
And I am strong again. 20 

Within my breast there is no light 
But the cold light of stars; 

1 give the first watch of the night 
To the red planet Mars. 

The star of the unconquered will, 

He rises in my breast, 
Seeene, and resolute, and still, 

And calm, and self-possessed. 

And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art, 

That readest this brief psalm, 30 

As one by one thy hopes depart, 
Be resolute and calm. 

Oh, fear not in a world like this, 
And thou shalt know erelong, 

Know how sublime a thing it is 
To suffer and be strong. 

i38. 1838. 



HYMN TO THE NIGHT* 

'Ao-irao-iy, rpiXAicrros 

I heard the trailing garments of the Night 
Sweep through her marble halls ! 

I saw her sable skirts all fringed with 
light 
From the celestial walls ! 

1 ' No poem ever opened with a beauty more august,' 
says Poe in his early review of the Voices of the Night 
CFebruary, 1840). See his further criticism of the poem, 
line by line, in the Virginia Edition of his Works, vol. 
x, pp. 72-7C. 



I felt her presence, by its spell of might, 

Stoop o'er me from above; 
The calm, majestic presence of the Night, 

As of the one I love. 

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight, 

The manifold, soft chimes, 
That fill the haunted chambers of the 
Night, 

Like some old poet's rhymes. 

From the cool cisterns of the midnight 
air 
My spirit drank repose; 
The fountain of perpetual peace flows 
there, — 
From those deep cisterns flows. 

O holy Night ! from thee I learn to bear 

What man has borne before ! 
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, 

And they complain no more. 

Peace ! Peace ! Orestes-like I breathe this 



prayer 



Descend with broad-winged flight, 
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the 
most fair, 

The best-beloved Night ! 
1839. 1839. 



FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS 2 

When the hours of Day are numbered, 
And the voices of the Night 

Wake the better soul, that slumbered, 
To a holy, calm delight; 

Ere the evening lamps are lighted, 
And, like phantoms grim and tall, 

Shadows from the fitful firelight 
Dance upon the parlor wall ; 

2 A slightly different version of the first, second, 
third, sixth, seventh and eighth stanzas, with the title 
' Evening Shadows,' is to be found in Longfellow's 
Journal under the date of February 27, 1838. (Life, vol. 
i, pp. 287-288). The poem was finished March 2G, 1839 
{Life, vol. i, pp. 327-328). The fourth stanza alludes 
to his brother-in-law and closest friend, George W. 
Pierce, of whose death he had heard in Germany on 
Christmas Eve of 1835, and of whom he wrote nearly 
twenty years later : ' I have never ceased to feel that 
in his death something was taken from my own life 
which could never be restored. I have constantly in 
my memory his beautiful and manly character, frank, 
generous, impetuous, gentle.' The sixth and following 
stanzas allude to Mrs. Longfellow, who died at Rotter- 
dam, November 29, 1835. 



io6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Then the forms of the departed 

Enter at the open door ; 10 

The beloved, the true-hearted, 
Come to visit me once more; 

He, the young and strong, who cherished 
Noble longings for the strife, 

By the roadside fell and perished, 
Weary with the march of life ! 

They, the holy ones and weakly, 
Who the cross of suffering bore, 

Folded their pale hands so meekly, 
Spake with us on earth no more ! 20 

And with them the Being Beauteous, 
Who unto my youth was given, 

More than all things else to love me, 
And is now a saint in heaven. 

With a slow and noiseless footstep 
Comes that messenger divme, 

Takes the vacant chair beside me, 
Lays her gentle hand in mine. 

And she sits and gazes at me 

With those deep and tender eyes, 30 
Like the stars, so still and saint-like, 

Looking downward from the skies. 

Uttered not, yet comprehended, 
Is the spirit's voiceless prayer, 

Soft rebukes, in blessings ended, 
Breathing from her lips of air. 

Oh, though oft depressed and lonely, 

All my fears are laid aside, 
If I but remember only 

Such as these have lived and died ! 40 
1838, 1839. 1839. 



THE BELEAGUERED CITY 

I have read, in some old, marvellous 
tale, 1 
Some legend strange and vague, 

1 During his visit to his friend Ward, in New York, 
in August, strolling into the library one day after break- 
fast, he took carelessly from the shelf a volume of 
Scott's Border 3IinstreI$i/, and opened at one of the 
notes, containing the tradition about the city of Prague 
upon which this poem is founded : ' Similar to this was 
the Naeht Lager, or midnight camp, which seemed 
nightly to beleaguer the walls of Prague, but which dis- 
appeared upon the recitation of certain magical words.' 
(Life, vol. i, p. 344, note.) 



That a midnight host of spectres pale 
Beleaguered the walls of Prague. 

Beside the Moldau's rushing stream, 

With the wan moon overhead, 
There stood, as in an awful dream, 

The army of the dead. 

White as a sea-fog, landward bound, 

The spectral camp was seen, 10 

And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, 
The river flowed between. 

No other voice nor sound was there, 

No drum, nor sentry's pace; 
The mist-like banners clasped the air 

As clouds with clouds embrace. 

But when the old cathedral bell 
Proclaimed the morning prayer, 

The white pavilions rose and fell 

On the alarmed air. 2 o 

Down the broad valley fast and far 

The troubled army fled; 
Up rose the glorious morning star, 

The ghastly host was dead. 

I have read, in the marvellous heart of man, 
That strange and mystic scroll, 

That an army of phantoms vast and wan 
Beleaguer the human soul. 

Encamped beside Life's rushing stream, 
In Fancy's misty light, 30 

Gigantic shapes and shadows gleam 
Portentous through the night. 

Upon its midnight battle-ground 

The spectral camp is seen, 
And, with a sorrowful, deep sound, 

Flows the River of Life between. 

No other voice nor sound is there, 

In the army of the grave; 
No other challenge breaks the air, 

But the rushing of Life's wave. 40 

And when the solemn and deep church-bell 

Entreats the soul to pray, 
The midnight phantoms feel the spell, 

The shadows sweep away. 

Down the broad Vale of Tears afar 
The spectral camp is fled; 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



107 



Faith shineth as a morning star, 

Our ghastly fears are dead. 

1839. 1839. 

THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS » 

It was the schooner Hesperus, 

That sailed the wintry sea; 
And the skipper had taken his little daugh- 
ter, 

To bear him company. 

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, 
Her cheeks like the dawn of day, 

And her bosom white as the hawthorn 
buds, 
That ope in the month of May. 

The skipper he stood beside the helm, 

His pipe was in his mouth, 10 

And he watched how the veering flaw did 
blow 
The smoke now West, now South. 

Then up and spake an old Sail6r, 

Had sailed to the Spanish Main, 

' I pray thee, put into yonder port, 
For I fear a hurricane. 

' Last night, the moon had a golden ring, 
And to-night no moon we see ! ' 

The skipper, he blew a whiff from his 
pipe, 
And a scornful laugh laughed he. 20 

Colder and louder blew the wind, 

A gale from the Northeast, 
The snow fell hissing in the brine, 

And the billows frothed like yeast. 



1 Longfellow wrote in his Journal on December 17, 
1839 : ' News of shipwrecks horrible on the coast. 
Twenty bodies washed ashore near Gloucester, one 
lashed to a piece of the wreck. There is a reef called 
Norman's Woe where many of these took place; among 
others the schooner Hesperus. Also the Sea-flower on 
Black Rock. I must write a ballad upon this.' 

The ballad was actually written twelve days later, on 
the night of December 29 : 'I wrote last evening a no- 
tice of Allston's poems. After which I sat till twelve 
o'clock by my fire, smoking, when suddenly it came into 
my mind to write the " Ballad of the Schooner Hes- 
perus ; " which I accordingly did. Then I went to bed, 
but could not sleep. New thoughts were running in 
my mind, and I got up to add them to the ballad. It 
was three by the clock. I then went to bed and fell 
asleep. I feel pleased with the ballad. It hardly cost 
me an effort. It did not come into my mind by lines 
but by stanzas.' {Journal, December 30.) 



Down came the storm, and smote amain 

The vessel in its strength; 
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted 
steed, 

Then leaped her cable's length. 

' Come hither ! come hither ! my little 
daughter, 

And do not tremble so; 30 

For I can weather the roughest gale 

That ever wind did blow.' 

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat 
Against the stinging blast; 
He cut a rope from a broken spar, 
And bound her to the mast. 

' father ! I hear the church-bells ring, 

Oh say, what may it be ? ' 
' 'T is a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast ! ' — 

And he steered for the open sea. 40 

' O father ! I hear the sound of guns, 

Oh say, what may it be ? ' 
' Some ship in distress, that cannot live 

In such an angry sea ! ' 

1 O father ! I see a gleaming light, 

Oh say, what may it be ? ' 
But the father answered never a word, 

A frozen corpse was he. 

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark, 

With his face turned to the skies, 50 

The lantern gleamed through the gleaming 
snow 
On his fixed and glassy eyes. 

Then the maiden clasped her hands and 
prayed 
That saved she might be; 
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the 
wave, 
On the Lake of Galilee. 

And fast through the midnight dark and 
drear, 

Through the whistling sleet and snow, 
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept 

Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe. 60 

And ever the fitful gusts between 
A sound came from the land; 

It was the sound of the trampling surf 
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand. 



ioS 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



The breakers were right beneath her bows, 
She drifted a dreary wreck, 

And a whooping billow swept the crew 
Like icicles from her deck. 

She struck where the white and fleecy waves 
Looked soft as carded wool, 70 

But the cruel rocks, they gored her side 
Like the horns of an angry bull. 

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice, 
With the masts went by the board; 

Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank, 
Ho ! ho ! the breakers roared ! 

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, 

A fisherman stood aghast. 
To see the form -of a maiden fair, 

Lashed close to a drifting mast. So 

The salt sea was frozen on her breast, 

The salt tears hi her eyes; 
And he saw her hah', like the brown sea- 
weed, 

On the billows fall and rise. 

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, 
In the midnight and the snow ! 

Christ save us all from a death like this, 
On the reef of Norman's Woe ! 

1S39. 1S40. 

THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH « 

Uxdek a spreading chestnut-tree 

The village smithy stands; 
The smith, a mighty man is he, 

With large and sinewy hands; 
And the muscles of his brawny arms 

Are strong as iron bands. 

His hair is crisp, and black, and long, 

His face is like the tan; 
His brow is wet with honest sweat, 

He earns whate'er he can, 10 

And looks the whole world in the face, 

For he owes not anv man. 



1 Longfellow at first called 'The Village Black- 
smith ' a new Psalm of Life,' but later it was included 
among the Ballads. See the Life, vol. i. pp. 345, 374 
and note. 

In 1ST6 the ' spreading chestnut-tree ' was cut dowu 
to give room for the widening of Brattle Street, and 
from its wood was made the armchair presented to 
Longfellow by the schoolchildren of Cambridge. See 
p. xxx. 



Week in, week out, from morn till night, 
You can hear his bellows blow; 

You can hear him swing his heavy sledge, 
With measured beat and slow. 

Like a sexton ringing the village bell. 
When the evening sun is low. 

And children coming home from school 

Look in at the open door; 
They love to see the flaming forge, 

And hear the bellows roar, * 

And catch the burning sparks that fly 

Like chaff from a threshing-floor. 

He goes on Sunday to the church. 

And sits among his boys : 
He hears the parson pray and preach, 

He hears his daughter's voice, 
Singing in the village choir, 

And it makes his heart rejoice. s< 

It sounds to him like her mother's voice, 

Singing in Paradise ! 
He needs must think of her once more 

How hi the grave she lies ; 
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes 

A tear out of his eyes. 

Toiling, — rejoicing, — sorrowing, 

Onward through life he goes; 
Each morning sees some task begin. 

Each evening sees it close: 41 

Something attempted, something done, 

Has earned a night's repose. 

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy 
friend, 

For the lesson thou hast taught ! 
Thus at the flaming forge of life 

Our fortunes must be wrought; 
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 

Each burning deed and thought. 
2*39. 1S40. 

THE SKELETON IN ARMOR 2 

Speak ! speak ! thou fearful guest ! 
Who, with thy hollow breast 
Still in rude armor drest, 
Comest to damit me ! 

2 Longfellow wrote in his Journal on May 3. 1S3S : 
'I have been looking at tbe old Northern Sagas, and 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



109 



Wiapt not in Eastern halms, 

But with thy fleshless palms 

Stretched, as if asking alms, 

Why dost thou haunt me ? 

Then, from those cavernous eyes 
Pale flashes seemed to rise, 10 

As when the Northern skies 
Gleam in December; 

thinking of a series of ballads or a romantic poem on the 
deeds of the first bold viking who crossed to this west- 
ern world, with storm-spirits and devil-machinery under 
water. New England ballads I have long thought of. 
This seems to be an introduction. I will dream more of 
this.' 

A few months later, returning to Cambridge from 
Newport, where he had doubtless seen the ' Round 
Tower.' he passed through Fall River just after the 
skeleton in armor had been unearthed. These two 
things fitted in with his previous conception, and on 
May 24, 1 830, he speaks of his ' plan for a heroic poem 
on the Discovery of America by the Northmen, in which 
the Round Tower at Newport and the Skeleton in Armor 
have a part to play.' In a letter to his father, of De- 
cember 13, 1840, after the ballad was written, bespeaks 
of having himself seen the skeleton: 'I suppose it to 
be the remains of one of the old Northern sea rovers 
who came to this country in the tenth century. Of 
course I make the tradition myself.' 

For a full account of the finding of the skeleton, see 
the Ammcuii Monthly Magazine of January, 183G, from 
which the following description is taken : — 

' In digging down a hill near the village, a large mass 
of earth slid off, leaving in the bank and partially 
uncovered a human skull, which on examination was 
found to belong to a body buried in a sitting posture; 
the head being about one foot below what had been for 
many years the surface of the ground. The surround- 
ing earth was carefully removed, and the body found 
to be enveloped in a covering of coarse bark of a dark 
color. Within this envelope were found the remains of 
another of coarse cloth, made of fine bark, and about 
the texture of a Manilla coffee bag. On the breast was 
a plate of brass, thirteen inches long, six broad at the 
upper end, and five in the lower. This plate appears to 
have been cast, and is from one eighth to three thirty- 
seconds of an inch in thickness. It is so much corroded 
that whether or not anything was engraved upon it has 
not yet been ascertained. It is oval in form, the edges 
being irregular, apparently made so by corrosion. 
Below the breastplate, and entirely encircling the body, 
was a belt composed of brass tubes, each four and a 
half inches in length, and three sixteenths of an inch in 
diameter, arranged longitudinally and close together, 
the length of the tube being the width of the belt. The 
tubes are of thin brass, cast upon hollow reeds, and 
were fastened together by pieces of sinew. Near the 
right knee was a quiver of arrows. The arrows are of 
brass, thin, flat, and triangular in shape, with a round 
hole cut through near the base. The shaft was fastened 
to the head by inserting the latter in an opening at the 
end of the wood and then tying with a sinew through 
the round hole, a mode of constructing the weapon 
never practised by the Indians, not even with their 
arrows of thin shell. Parts of the shaft still remain on 
some of them. When first discovered, the arrows were 
in a sort of quiver of bark, which fell to pieces when 
exposed to the air.' 

Poe calls ' The Skeleton in Armor ' ' a pure and 
perfect thesis artistically treated.' See his review of 
Ixmgfellow's Ballads and Other Poems, April, 1842, in 
the Virginia Edition of his Works, vol. xi. 



And, like the water's flow 
Under December's snow, 
Came a dull voice of woe 
From the heart's chamber. 

' I was a Viking old ! 

My deeds, though manifold, 

No Skald in song has told, 

No Saga taught thee ! 
Take heed, that in thy verse 
Thou dost the tale rehearse, 
Else dread a dead man's curse ; 

For this I sought thee. 

' Far in the Northern Land, 
By the wild Baltic's strand, 
I, with my childish hand, 

Tamed the gerfalcon; 
And, with my skates fast-bound, 
Skimmed the half-frozen Sound, 
That the poor whimpering hound 

Trembled to walk on. 

1 Oft to his frozen lair 
Tracked I the grisly bear, 
While from my path the hare 

Fled like a shadow; 
Oft through the forest dark 
Followed the were-wolf 's bark, 
Until the soaring lark 

Sang from the meadow. 

' But when I older grew, 
Joining a corsair's crew, 
O'er the dark sea I flew 

With the marauders. 
Wild was the life we led; 
Many the souls that sped, 
Many the hearts that bled, 

By our stern orders. 

' Many a wassail-bout 
Wore the long Winter out; 
Often our midnight shout 

Set the cocks crowing, 
As we the Berserk's tale 
Measured in cups of ale, 
Draining the oaken pail, 

Filled to o'erflowing. 

' Once as I told in glee 
Tales of the stormy sea, 
Soft eyes did gaze on me, 
Burning yet tender; 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And as the white stars shine 
On the dark Norway pine, 
On that dark heart of mine 
Fell their soft splendor. 

' I wooed the blue-eyed maid, 
Yielding, yet half afraid, 
And in the forest's shade 

Our vows were plighted. 
Under its loosened vest 
Fluttered her little breast, 70 

Like birds within their nest 

By the hawk frighted. 

1 Bright in her father's hall 
Shields gleamed upon the wall, 
Loud sang the minstrels all, 

Chanting his glory ; 
When of old Hildebrand 
I asked his daughter's hand, 
Mute did the minstrels stand 

To hear my story. 80 

' While the brown ale he quaffed, 
Loud then the champion laughed, 
And as the wind-gusts waft 

The sea-foam brightly, 
So the loud laugh of scorn, 
Out of those lips unshorn, 
From the deep drinking-horn 

Blew the foam lightly. 

' She was a Prince's child, 

I but a Viking wild, 90 

And though she blushed and smiled, 

I was discarded ! 
Should not the dove so white 
Follow the sea-mew's flight, 
Why did they leave that night 

Her nest unguarded ? 

• Scarce had I put to sea, 
Bearing the maid with me, 
Fairest of all was she 

Among the Norsemen ! 100 

When on the white sea-strand, 
Waving his armed hand, 
Saw we old Hildebrand, 

With twenty horsemen. 

' Then launched they to the blast, 
Bent like a reed each mast, 
Yet we were gaining fast, 
When the wind failed us; 



And with a sudden flaw 
Came round the gusty Skaw, no 

So that our foe we saw 
Laugh as he hailed us. 

• And as to catch the gale 
Bound veered the flapping sail, 

" Death ! " was the helmsman's hail, 
" Death without quarter ! " 

Mid-ships with iron keel 

Struck we her ribs of steel; 

Down her black hulk did reel 

Through the black water ! 120 

' As with his wings aslant, 
Sails the fierce cormorant, 
Seeking some rocky haunt, 

With his prey laden, — 
So toward the open main, 
Beating to sea again, 
Through the wild hurricane, 

Bore I the maiden. 

' Three weeks we westward bore, 
And when the storm was o'er, 130 

Cloud-like we saw the shore 

Stretching to leeward; 
There for my lady's bower 
Built I the lofty tower, 
Which, to this very hour, 

Stands looking seaward. 

* There lived we many years; 
Time dried the maiden's tears ; 
She had forgot her fears, 

She was a mother; i 40 

Death closed her mild blue eyes, 
Under that tower she lies; * 
Ne'er shall the sun arise 

On such another ! 

' Still grew my bosom then, 
Still as a stagnant fen ! 
Hateful to me were men, 

The sunlight hateful ! 
In the vast forest here, 
Clad in my warlike gear, 150 

Fell I upon my spear, 

Oh, death was grateful ! 

1 The ' Round Tower ' at Newport, sometimes called 
the Old Mill, is of a style of architecture belonging to 
the eleventh century, and is thought by some to have 
been built by the Northmen. This is exceedingly doubt- 
ful, however. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



' Thus, seamed with many scars, 
Bursting these prison bars, 
Up to its native stars 

My soul ascended ! 
There from the flowing bowl 
Deep drinks the warrior's soul, 
Skoal ! to the Northland ! skoal ! ' 1 

Thus the tale ended. 160 

1840. 1841. 



SERENADE 

FROM 'THE SPANISH STUDENT' 

Stars of the summer night ! 

Far in yon azure deeps, 
Hide, hide your golden light! 

She sleeps ! 
My lady sleeps ! 

Sleeps ! 

Moon of the summer night ! 

Far down yon western steeps, 
Sink, sink in silver light ! 

She sleeps ! 
My lady sleeps ! 

Sleeps ! 

Wind of the summer night ! 

Where yonder woodbine creeps, 
Fold, fold thy pinions light ! 

She sleeps ! 
My lady sleeps ! 

Sleeps ! 

Dreams of tbe summer night ! 

Tell her, her lover keeps 
Watch ! while in slumbers light 

She sleeps ! 
My lady sleeps ! 

Sleeps ! 
1840. 1842. 



ENDYMION 

The rising moon has hid the stars; 

Her level rays, like golden bars, 
Lie on the landscape green, 
With shadows brown between. 



1 In Scandinavia, this is the customary salutation 
when drinking a health. I have slightly . changed the 
orthography of the word [ikaat] in order to preserve 
the correct pronunciation. (Lonofellow.) 



And silver white the river gleams, 
As if Diana, in her dreams 

Had dropt her silver bow 

Upon the meadows low. 

On such a tranquil night as this, 
She woke Endymion with a kiss, io 

Wheu, sleeping in the grove, 
He dreamed not of her love. 

Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought, 
Love gives itself, but is not bought; 
Nor voice, nor sound betrays 
Its deep, impassioned gaze. 

It comes, — the beautiful, the free, 
The crown of all humanity, — 

In silence and alone 

To seek the elected one. 20 

It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep 
Are Life's oblivion, the soul's sleep, 
And kisses the closed eyes 
Of him who slumbering lies. 

O weary hearts ! O slumbering eyes ! 
drooping souls, whose destinies 

Are fraught with fear and pain, 

Ye shall be loved again ! 

No one is so accursed by fate, 

No one so utterly desolate, 30 

But some heart, though unknown, 

Responds unto his own. 

Responds, — as if with unseen wings, 
An angel touched its quivering strings; 
And whispers, in its song, 
1 Where hast thou stayed so long ? ' 
1841. 1841. 



THE RAINY DAY 

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; 
It rains, and the wind is never weary; 
The vine still clings to the mouldering 

wall, 
But at every gust the dead leaves fall, 
And the day is dark and dreary. 

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; 
It rains, and the wind is never weary; 
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering 
Past, 



112 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



But the hopes of youth fall thick in the 
blast, 
And the days are dark and dreary. 

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; 
Behind the clouds is the sun still shin- 
ing; 
Thy fate is the common fate of all, 
Into each life some rain must fall, 

Some days must be dark and dreary. 
1841. 1841. 



MAIDENHOOD 1 

Maiden ! with the meek, brown eyes, 
In whose orbs a shadow lies 
Like the dusk in evening skies ! 

Thou whose locks outshine the sun, 
Golden tresses, wreathed in one, 
As the braided streamlets run ! 

Standing, with reluctant feet, 
Where the brook and river meet, 
Womanhood and childhood fleet ! 

Gazing, with a timid glance, io 

On the brooklet's swift advance, 
On the river's broad expanse ! 

Deep and still, that gliding stream 
Beautiful to thee must seem, 
As the river of a dream. 

Then why pause with indecision, 
When bright angels in thy vision 
Beckon thee to fields Elysian ? 

Seest thou shadows sailing by, 

As the dove, with startled eye, 20 

Sees the falcon's shadow fly ? 

Hearest thou voices on the shore, 
That our ears perceive no more, 
Deafened by the cataract's roar ? 

Oh, thou child of many prayers ! 

Life hath quicksands, — Life hath snares ! 

Care and age come unawares ! 

1 Longfellow wrote to his father on December 18, 
1841 : ' The Ballads .and Other Poems will be published 
to-morrow. ... I think the last two pieces [' ' Maiden- 
hood " and "Excelsior"] the best, — perhaps as good 
as anything I have written.' {Life, vol. i, p. 109.) 



Like the swell of some sweet tune, 

Morning rises into noon, 

May glides onward into June. 30 

Childhood is the bough, where slumbered 
Birds and blossoms many-numbered; — 
Age, that bough with snows encumbered. 

Gather, then, each flower that grows, 
When the young heart overflows, 
To embalm that tent of snows. 

Bear a lily in thy hand; 

Gates of brass cannot withstand 

One touch of that magic wand. 

Bear through sorrow, wrong, and ruth, 40 
In thy heart the dew of youth, 
On thy lips the smile of truth. 

Oh, that dew, like balm, shall steal 
Into wounds that cannot heal, 
Even as sleep our eyes doth seal ; 

And that smile, like sunshine, dart 
Into many a sunless heart, 
For a smile of God thou art. 
1841. 1841. 



EXCELSIOR 2 

The shades of night were falling fast, 
As through an Alpine village passed 

2 ' Excelsior ' was inspired by the motto on the shield 
of New York State, which Longfellow happened to see 
copied as the heading of a newspaper. The significance 
of the poem is well expressed by Poe at the end of his 
review of Longfellow's Ballads and Other Poems, in a 
passage beginning, ' It depicts the earnest upward im- 
pulse of the soul, — an impulse not to be subdued even 
in death.' Longfellow himself has described his pur- 
pose fully in a letter to C. K. Tuckerman : — 

' I have had the pleasure of receiving your note in re- 
gard to the poem " Excelsior," and very willingly give 
you my intention in writing it. This was no more than 
to display, in a series of pictures, the life of a man of 
genius, resisting all temptations, laying aside all fears, 
heedless of all warnings, and pressing right on to 
accomplish his purpose. His motto is Excelsior, 
" higher." He passes through the Alpine village — 
through the rough, cold paths of the world — where the 
peasants cannot understand him, and where the watch- 
word is an " unknown tongue." He disregards the happi- 
ness of domestic peace and sees the glaciers — his fate — 
before him. He disregards the warning of the old man's 
wisdom and the fascinations of woman's love. He an- 
swers to all, " Higher yet ! " The monks of St. Bernard 
are the representatives of religious forms and ceremo- 
nies, and with their oft-repeated prayer mingles the 
sound of his voice, telling them there is something 
higher than forms and ceremonies. Filled with these 
aspirations, he perishes ; without having reached the 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



JI 3 



A youth, who bore, 'niid snow and ice, 
A banner with the strange device, 
Excelsior ! 

His brow was sad; his eye beneath, 
Flashed Like a falchion from its sheath, 
And like a silver clarion rung 
The accents of that unknown tongue, 
Excelsior! 

In happy homes he saw the light 
Of household fires gleam warm and bright; 
Above, the spectral glaciers shone, 
And from his lips escaped a groan, 
Excelsior ! 

' Try not the Pass ! ' the old man said ; 
' Dark lowers the tempest overhead, 
The roaring torrent is deep and wide ! ' 
And loud that clarion voice replied, 
Excelsior ! 

' Oh stay,' the maiden said, ' and rest 
Thy weary head upon this breast ! ' 
A tear stood in his bright blue eye, 
But still he answered, with a sigh, 
Excelsior ! 

' Beware the pine-tree's withered branch ! 
Beware the awful avalanche ! ' 
This was the peasant's last Good-night, 
A voice replied, far up the height, 
Excelsior ! 

At break of day, as heavenward 
The pious monks of Saint Bernard 
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer, 
A voice cried through the startled air, 
Excelsior ! 

A traveller, by the faithful hound, 
Half-buried in the snow was found, 
Still grasping in his hand of ice 
That banner with the strange device, 
Excelsior ! 

There in the twilight cold and gray, 
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay, 

perfection he longed for ; and the voice heard in the 
air is the promise of immortality and progress ever up- 
ward.' 

The manuscript of the poem, containing many altera- 
tions, is kept on exhibition in the Art Room of the 
Harvard University Library It is written on the back 
of a letter from Charles Sumner, and dated ' September 
28, 1841. Half-past three o'clock, morning.' See H. E. 
Scudder's Men and Letters, pp. 137-146 : ' The Shaping 
of Excelsior.' 



And from the sky, serene and far, 
A voice fell, like a falling star, 
Excelsior ! 
1841. 1841. 



MEZZO CAMMING 

Half of my life is gone, and I have let 
The years slip from me and have not ful- 
filled 
The aspiration of my youth, to build 
Some tower of song with lofty parapet. 
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret 
Of restless passions that would not be 

stilled, 
But sorrow, and a care that almost killed, 
Kept me from what I may accomplish yet; 
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past 
Lying beneath me with its sounds and 

sights, — 
A city in the twilight dim and vast, 
Witb smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleam- 
ing lights, — 
And hear above me on the autumnal blast 
The cataract of Death far thundering from 

the heights. 
1842. 1842. 

THE SLAVE'S DREAM 2 

Beside the ungathered rice he lay, 

His sickle in his hand; 
His breast was bare, his matted hair 

Was buried in the sand. 
Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, 

He saw his Native Land. 

Wide through the landscape of his dreams 
The lordly Niger flowed; 

1 Longfellow's health was so seriously impaired by 
his close work as teacher, lecturer, editor, and author, 
that in the spring of 1842 he took six months' leave of 
absence, and spent most of the time at the 'water- 
cure ' of Marienberg. While there he wrote no verse 
except this sonnet, dated August 25, just before leav- 
ing for England on his way home. It was first pub- 
lished in the Life. 

2 Longfellow wrote all his Poems on Slavery during 
his voyage home in 1842, and they were published 
in a small volume of thirty-one pages in December of 
that year. The intense sincerity of Whittier's poems 
against slavery is lacking in Longfellow's sentimental 
and ' romantic ' treatment of the subject ; but it 
meant much for him to take the side which he did, so 
early as 1842. See the Life, vol. i, pp. 443-453, vol. ii, 
pp. 7-10, 20-21 ; and T. W. Higginson's Life of Long- 
fellow, pp. 163-167. Compare the notes on Lowell's 
' Stanzas on Freedom ' and on Whittier's ' To William 
Lloyd Garrison.' 



H4 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Beneath the palm-trees on the plain 

Once more a king he strode ; 10 

And heard the tinkling caravans 
Descend the mountain road. 

He saw once more his dark-eyed queen 

Among her children stand; 
They clasped his neck, they kissed his 
cheeks, 

They held him by the hand ! — 
A tear burst from the sleeper's Lids 

And fell into the sand. 

And then at furious speed he rode 

Along the Niger's bank; 20 

His bridle-reins were golden chains, 
And, with a martial clank, 

At each leap he could feel his scabbard of 
steel 
Smiting his stallion's flank. 

Before him, like a blood-red flag, 

The bright flamingoes flew; 
From morn till night he followed their 
flight, 

O'er plains where the tamarind grew, 
Till he saw the roofs of Caffre huts, 

And the ocean rose to view. 30 

At night he heard the lion roar, 

And the hyena scream, 
And the river-horse, as he crushed the 
reeds 
Beside some hidden stream; 
And it passed, like a glorious roll of 
drums, 
Through the triumph of his dream. 

The forests, with their myriad tongues, 

Shouted of Liberty; 
And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud, 

With a voice so wild and free, 40 

That he started in his sleep and smiled 

At their tempestuous glee. 

He did not feel the driver's whip, 

Nor the burning heat of day ; 
For Death had illumined the Land of 
Sleep, 

And his lifeless body lay 
A worn-out fetter, that the soul 

Had broken and thrown away ! 
1842. 1842. 



THE ARSENAL AT SPRING- 
FIELD 1 

This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceil- 
ing, 
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished 
arms; 
But from their silent pipes no anthem peal- 
ing 
Startles the villages with strange alarms. 

Ah ! what a sound will rise, how wild and 
dreary, 
When the death-angel touches those 
swift keys ! 
What loud lament and dismal Miserere 
Will mingle with their awful sympho- 
nies ! 

I hear even now the infinite fierce cho- 
rus, 
The cries of agony, the endless groan, IO 
Which, through the ages that have gone 
before us, 
In long reverberations reach our own. 

On helm and harness rings the Saxon ham- 
mer, 
Through Cimbric forest roars the Norse- 
man's song, 
And loud, amid the universal clamor, 
O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar 
gong. 

1 hear the Florentine, who from his pal- 
ace 
Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful 
din, 
And Aztec priests upon their teocallis 
Beat the wild war-drums made of ser- 
pent's skin; 20 

1 Longfellow was married to Frances Appleton in 
1843. On their wedding journey Mr. and Mrs. Long- 
fellow visited the Arsenal at Springfield, in company 
with Charles Sumner. This visit, and the origin of the 
poem, are described in the Life : ' While Mr. Sumner 
was endeavoring to impress upon the attendant that 
the money expended upon these weapons of war would 
have been much better spent upon a great library, Mrs. 
Longfellow pleased her husband by remarking how 
like an organ looked the ranged and shining gun-barrels 
which covered the walls from floor to ceiling, and sug- 
gesting what mournful music Death would bring from 
them. " We grew quite warlike against war," she wrote,. 
" and I urged H. to write a peace poem. ' ' From this hint 
came "The Arsenal at Springfield," written some 
months later.' See also Lowell's Letters, vol. i, p. 140, 
letter of Aug. 13, 1845. (Vol. ii. pp. 2, 3.) 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



The tumult of each sacked and burning 
village; 
The shout that every prayer for mercy 
drowns ; 
The soldiers' revels in the midst of pil- 
lage; 
The wail of famine in beleaguered 
towns; 

The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched 
asunder, 
The rattling musketry, the clashing 
blade; 
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder 
The diapason of the cannonade. 

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, 
With such accursed instruments as 
these, 30 

Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly 
voices, 
And jarrest the celestial harmonies ? 

Were half the power that fills the world 
with terror, 
Were half the wealth bestowed on 
camps and courts, 
Given to redeem the human mind from 
error, 
There were no need of arsenals or forts : 

The warrior's name would be a name ab- 
horred ! 
And every nation, that should lift again 
Its hand against a brother, on its fore- 
head 
Would wear forevermore the curse of 
Cain ! 4 o 

Down the dark future, through long gener- 
ations, 
The echoing sounds grow fainter and 
then cease; 
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibra- 
tions, 
I hear once more the voice of Christ sav, 
« Peace ! ' 

Peace ! and no longer from its brazen por- 
tals 
The blast of War's great organ shakes 
the skies ! 
But beautiful as songs of the immortals, 

The holy melodies of love arise. 
1844. 1844. 



THE DAY IS DONE J 

The day is done, and the darkness 
Falls from the wings of Night, 

As a feather is wafted downward 
From an eagle in his flight. 

I see the lights of the village 

Gleam through the rain and the mist, 

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me 
That my soul cannot resist: 

A feeling of sadness and longing, 

That is not akin to pain, 10 

And resembles sorrow only 

As the mist resembles the rain. 

Come, read to me some poem, 
Some simple and heartfelt lay, 

That shall soothe this restless feeling, 
And banish the thoughts of day. 

Not from the grand old masters, 
Not from the bards sublime, 

Whose distant footsteps echo 

Through the corridors of Time. 20 

For, like strains of martial music, 
Their mighty thoughts suggest 

Life's endless toil and endeavor; 
And to-night I long for rest. 

Read from some humbler poet, 

Whose songs gushed from his heart, 

As showers from the clouds of summer, 
Or tears from the eyelids start; 

Who, through long days of labor, 

And nights devoid of ease, 30 

Still heard in his soul the music 
Of wonderful melodies. 

Such songs have power to quiet 

The restless pulse of care, 
And come like the benediction 

That follows after prayer. 

Then read from the treasured volume 

The poem of thy choice, 
And lend to the rhyme of the poet 

The beauty of thy voice. 40 

1 Originally written as the proem to a volume of se- 
lections from minor poets, called Ite Waif, and edited 
by Longfellow. 



n6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And the night shall be filled with music. 

And the eaves, that infest the day. 
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, 
And as silently steal away. 
1844, 1S44. 



SEAWEED 

When deseends on the Atlantic 

The gigantic 
Storm-wind of the equinox, 
Landward in his wrath he scourges 

The toiling surges, 
Laden with seaweed from the rocks: 

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges 

Of sunken ledges. 
In some far-off, bright Azore; 
From Bahama, and the dashing, 10 

Silver-flashing 
Surges of San Salvador; 

From the tumbling surf, that buries 

The Orkneyan skerries. 
Answering the hoarse Hebrides; 
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting 

Spars, uplifting 
On the desolate, rainy seas ; — 

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 

On the shifting 20 

Currents of the restless main; 

Till in sheltered coves, and reaches 
Of sandy beaches. 

All have found repose again. 

So when storms of wild emotion 

Strike the ocean 
Of the poet's soul, erelong 
From each cave and rocky fastness, 

In its vastness, 
Floats some fragment of a song: 30 

From the far-off isles enchanted, 

Heaven has planted 
With the golden fruit of Truth ; 
From the Hashing siu-f, whose vision 

Gleams Elvsian 
In the tropic clime of Youth; 

From the strong Will, and the Endeavor 

That forever 
Wrestle with the tides of Fate; 



From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered. 
Te m pest-shattered, 41 

Floating waste and desolate; — 

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting 

On the shifting 
Currents of the restless heart; 
Till at length in books recorded, 

They, like hoarded 
Household words, no more depart. 
1844, 



1845. 



NUREMBERG 1 



In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across 
broad meadow-lands 

Rise the bine Franoonian mountains, Nu- 
remberg, the ancient, stands. 

Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint 

old town of art and song, 
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like 

the rooks that round them throng: 

Memories of the Middle Ages, when the 
emperors, rough and bold, 

Had their dwelling in thy castle, time- 
defying, centuries old; 

And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, 

in their uncouth rhyme. 
That their great imperial city stretched its 

hand through every clime. s 

In the court-yard of the castle, bound with 

many an iron band, 
Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen 

Cunigunde's hand; 10 

1 This poem is typical of the impressions which Long- 
fellow received from travel in Europe, as expressed in 
the Belfry °f Bruges volume and elsewhere. The prose 
material of the poem is to be found in a letter of Sep- 
tember "24, 1S4'2, to the German poet Froiligrath : — 

•Without any doubt, I am in the ancient city of 
Niirnberg. I arrived last night at ten o'clock, and took 
my first view by moonlight, strolling alone through 
the broad, silent streets, and listening to the musical 
bells that ever and anou gave a hint that it was bed- 
time. 

' To-day has been a busy, exciting day. I have seen 
the best works of Albreciit Purer, Feter Vischer, and 
other worthies of Nurnberg. I have seen Purer's house 
and his grave ; also those of Hans Sachs. The old shoe- 
maker's house is now an ale-house. His portrait is on 
the sign of the door, with this inscription : ' Oast/iaus 
sum Hans Sachs.' . . . 

2 An old popular proverb of the town runs thus : — 



Nuremberg's hand 

Goo through every land. (Longfellow, 






HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



117 



On the square the oriel window, where in 
old heroic days 

Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maxi- 
milian's praise. 1 

Everywhere I see around me rise the won- 
drous world of Art: 

Fountains wrought with richest sculpture 
standing in the common mart; 

And above cathedral doorways saints and 

bishops carved in stone, 
By a former age commissioned as apostles 

to our own. 

In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps en- 
shrined his holy dust, 2 

And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard 
from age to age their trust; 

In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a 

pix of sculpture rare,'* 
Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising 

through the painted air. 20 

Here, when Art was still religion, with a 

simple, reverent heart, 
Lived and labored Albrecht Diirer, the 

Evangelist of Art; 

Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still 

with busy hand, 
Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for 

the Better Land. 

Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb- 
stone where he lies; 

Dead he is not, but departed, — for the 
artist never dies. 

Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sun- 
shine seems more fair, 

That he once has trod its pavement, that 
he once has breathed its air ! 



1 Melchior Pfinzing was one of the most celebrated 
German poets of the sixteenth century. The hero of 
his Tmerdank was the reigning Emperor, Maximilian ; 
and the poem was to the Germans of that day what the 
Orlando Furioso was to the Italians. (Longfellow.) 

'- The tomb of Saint Sebald, in the church which 
bears his name, is one of the richest works of art in 
Nuremberg. It is of bronze, and was cast by Peter 
Vischer and his sons, who labored upon it thirteen 
years. It is adorned with nearly one hundred figures, 
among which those of the Twelve Apostles are con- 
spicuous for size and beauty. (Longfellow.) 

3 This pix, or tabernacle for the vessels of the sacra- 
ment, is by the hand of Adam Kraft. It is an exquisite 



Through these streets so broad and stately, 
these obscure and dismal lanes, 

Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chant- 
ing rude poetic strains. 30 

From remote and sunless suburbs came 
they to the friendly guild, 

Building nests in Fame's great temple, as 
in spouts the swallows build 

As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he 

too the mystic rhyme, 
And the smith his iron measures hammered 

to the anvil's chime; 

Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom 
makes the flowers of poesy bloom 

In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tis- 
sues of the loom. 

Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate 

of the gentle craft, 
Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in 

huge folios sang and laughed. 4 

But his house is now an ale-house, with a 

nicely sanded floor, 
And a garland in the window, and his face 

above the door; 40 

Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam 

Puschman's song,' 
As the old man gray and dove-like, with 

his great beard white and long. 

And at night the swart mechanic comes to 

drown his cark and care, 
Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the 

master's antique chair. 

piece of sculpture in white stone, and rises to the 
height of sixty-four feet. It stands in the choir, whose 
richly painted windows cover it with varied colors. 
(Longfellow.) 

4 The Twelve Wise Masters was the title of the 
original corporation of the Mastersingers. Hans Sachs, 
the cobbler of Nuremberg, though not one of the origi- 
nal Twelve, was the most renowned of the Mastersing- 
ers, as well as the most voluminous. He flourished 
in the sixteenth century; and left behind him thirty- 
four folio volumes of manuscript, containing two hun- 
dred and eight plays, one thousand and seven hundred 
comic tales, and between four and five thousand lyric 
poems. (Longfellow.) 

• r ' Adam Puschman, in his poem on the death of 
Hans Sachs, describes him as he appeared in a vision : — 

An old man, 
Gray and white, and dove-like. 
Who had, in Booth, a (;reat beard. 
And read in a l'uir. great book, 
Beautiful with golden clasps. 

(Longfellow.) 



nS 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Vanished is the ancient splendor, and be- 
fore my dreamy eye 

Wave these mingled shapes and figures, 
like a faded tapestry. 

Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for 

thee the world's regard; 
But thy printer, Albreeht Diirer, and Hans 

Sachs thy cobbler bard. 

Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a 

region far away. 
As he paced thy streets and court-yards, 

sang in thought his careless lay: 50 

Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as 

a floweret of the soil, 
The nobility of labor, — the long pedigree 

of toil. 
1844. 1S44. 



THE BELFRY OF BRUGES 

CARILLON 

Ix the ancient town of Bruges, 
In the quaint old Flemish city. 
As the evening shades descended. 
Low and loud and sweetly blended. 
Low at times and loud at times, 
And changing like a poet's rhymes, 
Rang the beautiful wild chimes 
From the Belfry hi the market 
Of the ancient town of Bruges. 

Then, with deep sonorous clangor 
Calmly answering their sweet anger, 
When the wrangling bells had ended. 
Slowly struck the clock eleven. 
And, from out the silent heaven, 
Silence on the town descended. 
Silence, silence everywhere. 
On the earth and in the air, 
Save that footsteps here and there 
Of some burgher home returning, 
By the street lamps faintly burning, 
For a moment woke the echoes 
Of the ancient town of Bruges. 

But amid my broken slumbers 
Still I heard those magic numbers, 
As they loud proclaimed the flight 
And stolen marches of the night; 
Till their chimes in sweet collision 
Mingled with each wandering vision. 



Mingled with the fortune-telling 

Gypsy-bands of dreams and fancies, 30 

Which amid the waste expanses 

Of the silent land of trances 

Have their solitary dwelling: 

All else seemed asleep in Bruges. 

In the quaint old Flemish city. 

And I thought how like these chimes 

Are the poet's airy rhymes. 

All his rhymes and roundelays. 

His conceits, and songs, and ditties. 

From the belfry of his brain. 40 

Scattered downward, though in vain, 

On the roofs and stones of cities ! 

For by night the drowsy ear 

Under its curtains cannot hear. 

And by day men go their ways, 

Hearing the music as they piss, 

But deeming it no more, alas ! 

Than the hollow sound of brass. 

Yet perchance a sleepless wight, 

Lodging at some humble inn 50 

In the narrow lanes of life, 

When the dusk and hush of night 

Shut out the incessant din 

Of daylight and its toil and strife, 

May listen with a calm delight 

To the poet's melodies, 

Till he hears, or dreams he hears, 

Intermingled with the song, 

Thoughts that he has cherished long; 

Hears amid the chime and singing 60 

The bells of his own village ringing, 

And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes 

Wet with most delicious tears. 

Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay 
In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Ble*, 
Listening with a wild delight 
To the chimes that, through the night, 
Rang their changes from the Belfry 
Of that quaint old Flemish city. 
1845. • 1845. 1 

DANTE 

Tuscan, that wanderest through the realms 

of gloom, 
With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic 

eyes, 

1 The Belfry of Bruges volume bears the date 1S46, 
and is listed as of that year in the bibliographies of 
Longfellow and in at least two books on the first edi- 
tions of American authors ; but it was actually pub- 
lished on December 23, 1845. 



HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 



119 



Stern thoughts and awful from tliy soul 
arise, 

Like Farinata from liis fiery tomb. 

Thy sacred song is like the trump of 
doom ; 

Yet in thy heart what human sympathies, 

What soft compassion glows; as in the 
skies 

The tender stars their clouded lamps re- 
lume ! 

Methinks I see thee stand with pallid 
cheeks 

By Fra Hilario in his diocese, 

As up the convent-walls, in golden streaks, 

The ascending sunbeams mark the day's 
decrease ; 

And, as he asks what there the stranger- 
seeks, 

Thy voice along the cloister whispers 
< Peace ! ' 

1843 ? 1845. 



THE BRIDGE 1 

I STOOD on the bridge at midnight, 
As the clocks were striking the hour, 

And the moon rose o'er the city, 
Behind the dark church-tower. 

I saw her bright reflection 

In the waters under me, 
Like a golden goblet falling 

And sinking into the sea. 2 

And far in the hazy distance 

Of that lovely night in June, 10 

The blaze of the flaming furnace 

Gleamed redder than the moon. 

Among the long, black rafters 

The wavering shadows lay, 
And the current that came from the ocean 

Seemed to lift and bear them away; 

1 Called ' The Bridge "over the Charles,' in Long- 
fellow's Journal, Oct. 9, 1845. In an earlier passage 
of his Journal, March 15, 1838, lie speaks of his de- 
light in walking to and from Boston, and says : ' I 
always stop on the bridge ; tide-waters are beautiful. 
From the ocean up into the land they go, like mes- 
sengers, to ask why the tribute lias not been paid. 
The brooks and rivers answer that there has been 
little harvest of snow and rain this year.' Life, vol. i, 
p. 289. 

- An excellent example of the ' literary' character of 
Longfellow's inspiration. This is evidently a reminis- 
cence of the German ballads, not of anything seen or 
conceived by the poet himself. 



As, sweeping and eddying through them, 

Rose the belated tide, 
And, streaming into the moonlight, 

The seaweed floated wide. 20 

And like those waters rushing 

Among the wooden piers, 
A flood of thoughts came o'er me 

That filled my eyes with tears. 

How often, oh how often, 

In the days that had gone by, 

I had stood on that bridge at midnight 
And gazed on that wave and sky ! 

How often, oh how often, 

I had wished that the ebbing tide 30 
Would bear me away on its bosom 

O'er the ocean wild and wide ! 

For my heart was hot and restless, 
And my life was full of care, 

And the burden laid upon me 

Seemed greater than I could bear. 

But now it has fallen from me, 

It is buried in the sea; 
And only the sorrow of others 

Throws its shadow over me. 40 

Yet whenever I cross the river 
On its bridge with wooden piers, 

Like the odor of brine from the ocean 
Comes the thought of other years. 

And I think how many thousands 

Of care-encumbered men, 
Each bearing his burden of sorrow, 

Have crossed the bridge since then. 

I see the long procession 

Still passing to and fro, 50 

The young heart hot and restless, 

And the old subdued and slow ! 

And forever and forever, 

As long as the river flows, 
As long as the heart has passions, 

As long as life has woes; 

The moon and its broken reflection 
And its shadows shall appear, 

As the symbol of love in heaven, 

And its wavering image here. 60 

1846. 1845. 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 






THE OLD CLOCK ON THE 
STAIRS 1 

Somewhat back from the village street 
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. 
Across its antique portico 
Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw; 
And from its station in the hall 
An ancient timepiece says to all, — 
' Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! ' 

Half-way up the stairs it stands, 
And points and beckons with its hands 10 
From its case of massive oak, 
Like a monk, who, under his cloak, 
Crosses himself, and sighs, alas ! 
With sorrowful voice to all who pass, — 
' Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! ' 

By day its voice is low and light; 
But in the silent dead of night, 
Distinct as a passing footstep's fall, 
It echoes along the vacant hall, 20 

Along the ceiling, along the floor, 
And seems to say, at each chamber-door, — 
' Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! ' 

Through days of sorrow and of mirth, 
Through days of death and days of birth, 
Through every swift vicissitude 
Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, 
And as if, like God, it all things saw, 
It calmly repeats those words of awe, — 30 
' Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! ' 

In that mansion used to be 

Free-hearted Hospitality ; 

His great fires up the chimney roared; 

1 Longfellow wrote in his Journal under the date of 
November 12, 1845 : ' Began a poem on a clock, with 
the words " Forever, never," as the burden ; suggested 
by the words of Bridaine, the old French missionary, 
who said of eternity, Cestune pendule dont le balancier 
dit el redil sans cesse ces deux mots settlement da?is le si- 
lence des lombeaux, — Toujours, jamais ! Jamais, tou- 
jours .' El pendant ces effrayables revolutions, un re- 
prouvi s'ecrie, " Quelle heure est-il f " et. la voix d'un 
autre miserable lui repond, " L'Eternite." ' 

The ' old-fashioned country-seat,' where the clock 
stood, is in Pittsfield, Mass. Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow 
visited it on their wedding journey in 1843. (Life, vol. 
ii, pp. 2, 24, 25.) The house belonged to relatives of 
Mrs. Longfellow, and when it was sold in 1853, the 
' old clock ' was alone reserved by the family. (Life, 
vol. ii, p. 259.) 



The stranger feasted at his board; 
But, like the skeleton at the feast, 
That warning timepiece never ceased, - 
' Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! ' 

There groups of merry children played, 
There youths and maidens dreaming 

strayed; 
O precious hours ! O golden prime. 
And affluence of love and time ! 
Even as a miser counts his gold, 
Those hours the ancient timepiece told, — 

' Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! ' 

From that chamber, clothed in white, 
The bride came forth on her wedding 

night; 5 o 

There, in that silent room below, 
The dead lay in his shroud of snow; 
And in the hush that followed the prayer, 
Was heard the old clock on the stair, — 

' Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! ' 

All are scattered now and fled, 
Some are married, some are dead; 
And when I ask, with throbs of pain, 
' Ah ! when shall they all meet again ? ' 
As in the days long since gone by, 61 

The ancient timepiece makes reply, — 
' Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! ' 

Never here, forever there, 
Where all partmg, pain, and care, 
And death, and time shall disappear, — 
Forever there, but never here ! 
The horologe of Eternity 
Sayeth this incessantly, — 70 

' Forever — never ! 
Never — forever ! ' 
1845. 1845. 



THE ARROW AND THE SONG 

I shot an arrow into the air, 
It fell to earth, I knew not where; 
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 
Could not follow it in its flight. 

I breathed a song into the air, 

It fell to earth, I knew not where ; 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



For who has sight so keen and strong, 


No voice in the chambers, 


That it can follow the flight of song ? 


No sound in the hall ! 




Sleep and oblivion 


Long, long afterward, in an oak 


Reign over all ! 


I found the arrow, still unbroke ; 




And the song, from beginning to end, 


II 


I found again in the heart of a friend. 


The book is completed, 


1845. 1845. 


And closed, like the day; 




And the hand that has written it 


CURFEW 1 


Lays it away. 


I 


Dim grow its fancies; 


Solemnly, mournfully, 


Forgotten they lie; 


Dealing its dole, 


Like coals in the ashes, 


The Curfew Bell 


They darken and die. 


Is beginning to toll. 






Song sinks into silence, 


Cover the embers, 


The story is told, 


And put out the light; 


The windows are darkened, 


Toil comes with the morning, 


The hearth-stone is cold. 


And rest with the night. 






Darker and darker 


Dark grow the windows, 


The black shadows fall; 


And quenched is the fire; 


Sleep and oblivion 


Sound fades into silence, — 


Reign over all. 


All footsteps retire. 


1845. 1845. 



EVANGELINE 2 



A TALE OF ACADIE 



This is the forest primeval. The murmur- 
ing pines and the hemlocks, 

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, 
indistinct in the twilight, 

1 The concluding poem in the Belfry of Bruges vol- 
ume. 

2 The origin of ' Evangeline ' is described as follows 
in the Life of Longfellow : ' Mr. Hawthorne came one 
day to dine at Craigie House, bringing with him his 
friend Mr. H. L. Conolly, who had been the rector of a 
church in South Boston. At dinner Conolly said that 
he had been trying in vain to interest Hawthorne to 
write a story upon an incident which had been related 
to him by a parishioner of his, Mrs. Haliburton. It was 
the story of a young Acadian maiden, who at the dis- 
persion of her people by the English troops had been 
separated from her betrothed lover ; they sought each 
other for years in their exile; and at last they met in 
a hospital where the lover lay dying. Mr. Longfellow 
was touched by the story, especially by the constancy 
of its heroine, and said to his friend, " If you really do 
not want this incident for a tale, let me have it for a 
poem; " and Hawthorne consented.' {Life, vol. ii, pp. 
70-71.) 

The account given by Hawthorne is substantially the 
same, but contains a somewhat fuller outline of the 
story : ' H. L. C. heard from a French Canadian a story 
of a young couple in Acadie. On their marriage-day all 
the men of the Province were summoned to assemble 



Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad 

and prophetic, 
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that 

rest on their bosoms. 

in the church to hear a proclamation. When assembled, 
they were all seized and shipped off to be distributed 
through New England, — among them the new bride- 
groom. His bride set off in search of him — wandered 
about New England all her lifetime, and at last, when 
she was old, she found her bridegroom on his death- 
bed. The shock was so great that it killed her likewise.' 
{American Notebooks, vol. i, p. 203.) 

Another American poet, Whittier. had also thought 
of writing on the expulsion of the Acadians : ' Before 
Longfellow considered the matter of writing " Evange- 
line," Whittier had made a study of the history of the 
banishment of the Acadians, and had intended to write 
upon it, but he put it off until he found that Hawthorne 
was thinking about it, and had suggested it to Long- 
fellow. After the appearance of " Evangeline," Mr. 
Whittier was glad of his delay, for he said : " Long- 
fellow was just the one to write it. If I had attempted 
it I should have spoiled the artistic effect of the poem 
by my indignation at the treatment of the exiles by the 
Colonial Government." ' (Pickard's Life of Whittier, 
vol. i, p. 342). See also Whittier's poem, ' Marguerite,' 
and the note on it. 

Whittier welcomed the ' Evangeline ' heartily when 
it appeared, in a review beginning ' Eureka ! Here, then, 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 






Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep- 
voiced neighboring ocean 

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers 
the wail of the forest. 

This is the forest primeval ; but where 
are the hearts that beneath it 
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the 
woodland the voice of the huntsman? 

we have it at last, — an American poem, with the lack 
of which British reviewers have so long reproached us.' 
(Prose Works, vol. iii, p. 365.) 

The historical hasis which Longfellow used for his 
poem was somewhat scanty : ' For the history of the 
dispersion of the Acadians the poet read such books as 
were attainable ; Haliburton, for instance, with his 
quotations from the Abbe Raynal. . . . Later investi- 
gations and more recent publications have shown that 
the deportation had more justification than had been 
supposed; that some, at least, of the Acadians, so far 
from being innocent sufferers, had been troublesome 
subjects of Great Britain, — fomenting insubordination 
and giving help to the enemy. But if the expatriation 
was necessary, it was none the less cruel, and involved 
in suffering many who were innocent of wrong.' (Life 
of Longfellow, vol. ii, p. 71.) 

The exact title of Haliburton's book spoken of above 
is An Historical and Statistical A ccount of Nova Scotia. 
See also, on the poem, its subject, and its historical basis: 

Life, vol. ii, pp. 26-140. 

Hannay (James), The History of Acadia. 

Journal of Colonel John Window, in the Report and 
Collections of the- Nova Scotia Historical Society, iii, 
71-196. 

Gayarre\ The History of Louisiana. 

Anderson (William James), ' Evangeline ' and ' The 
Archives of Nova Scotia ; ' or, the Poetry and Prose of 
History. Quebec, 1870. 

Porter (Noah), Evangeline, the place, the story, and 
the poem. New York, 18S2. 

Sayler (H. L.) The Real Evangeline. In the Book- 
man, vol. xviii, p. 12 ; September, 1903. 

Whittier : Prose Works, vol. iii, pp. 3G5 : 373. 

Chasles (Philarete), Eludes sur la Litteralure et les 
Mceurs des Anglo-americains ait XIX me Siecle, 1851. 

Longfellow himself never visited either Nova Scotia 
or the Mississippi. He actually seems to have got some 
of his conceptions from a diorama of the Mississippi ex- 
hibited in Boston, which he eagerly went to see while 
writing the poem ! (Life, vol. ii, pp. 67-6S.) He also, as 
seems to be probable from letters recently published in 
the New York Times (February and March, 1905) wrote 
to Mr. Edouard Simon of St. Martinsville, a former 
student at the Harvard law school, with whom he had 
discussed the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova 
Scotia and their settlement in Louisiana, and obtained 
from him a description of the country along the Mis- 
sissippi where they settled. 

It may also be suggested that he probably obtained 
some inspiration, and perhaps a great deal, from Cha- 
teaubriand's descriptions of America, especially of the 
primeval forests and the country along the Ohio and 
Mississippi rivers, in his Alala, Rene, and Voyages. 
Longfellow was reading Chateaubriand, and with en- 
thusiasm, just at the time when he began to write 
'Evangeline.' (Life, vol. ii, p. 27.) 

The metre of ' Evangeline ' has been much discussed. 
See the Life of Longfellow, vol. ii, pp. 26, 36, 66, 76, 
107, etc. ; Stedman's Poets of America, pp. 195-200 ; 
Scudder's Life of Lowell, vol. ii, p. 75, and Lowell's 
' Fable for Critics ' ; Holmes's verdict, quoted in the 
Life of Longfellow, vol. iii, pp. 339-340 ; and Matthew 
Arnold's essays On Translating Homer. 



Where is the thatch-roofed village, the 
home of Acadian farmers, — 

Men whose lives glided on like rivers that 
water the woodlands, 

Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflect- 
ing an image of heaven ? 

Waste are those pleasant farms, and the 
farmers forever departed ! 

Scattered like dust and leaves, when the 
mighty blasts of October 

Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and 
sprinkle them far o'er the ocean. 

Naught but tradition remains of the beau- 
tiful village of Grand-Pre". 

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, 

and endures, and is patient, 
Ye who believe in the beauty and strength 

of woman's devotion, 
List to the mournful tradition, still sung by 

the pines of the forest; 
List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of 

the happy. 



PART THE FIRST 



In the Acadian land, on the shores of the 

Basin of Minas, 
Distant, secluded, still, the little village of 

Grand Pre" 
Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows 

stretched to the eastward, 
Giving the village its name, and pasture to 

flocks without number. 
Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had 

raised with labor incessant, 
Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated 

seasons the flood-gates 
Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander 

at will o'er the meadows. 
West and south there were fields of flax, 

and orchards and cornfields 
Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; 

and away to the northward 
Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and 

aloft on the mountains io 

Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from 

the mighty Atlantic 
Looked on the happy valley, but ne'er from 

their station descended. 
There, in the midst of its farms, reposed ; 

the Acadian village. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



123 



Strongly built were the houses, with frames 

of oak and of hemlock, 
Such as the peasants of Normandy built in 

the reign of the Henries. 
Thatched were the roofs, with dormer-win- 
dows ; and gables projecting 
Over the basement below protected and 

shaded the doorway. 
There in the tranquil evenings of summer, 

when brightly the sunset 
Lighted the village street, and gilded the 

vanes on the chimneys, 
Matrons and maidens sat in snow-white 

caps and in kirtles 20 

Scarlet and blue and green, with distaffs 

spinning the golden 
Flax for the gossiping looms, whose noisy 

shuttles within doors 
Mingled their sounds with the whir of the 

wheels and the songs of the maidens. 
Solemnly down the street came the parish 

priest, and the children 
Paused in their play to kiss the hand he 

extended to bless them. 
Reverend walked he among them; and up 

rose matrons and maidens, 
Hailing his slow approach with words of 

affectionate welcome. 
Then came the laborers home from the 

field, and serenely the sun sank 
Down to his rest, and twilight prevailed. 

Anon from the belfry 
Softly the Angelus sounded, and over the 

roofs of the village 30 

Columns of pale blue smoke, like clouds of 

incense ascending, 
Rose from a hundred hearths, the homes 

of peace and contentment. 
Thus dwelt together in love these simple 

Acadian farmers, — 
Dwelt hi the love of God and of man. 

Alike were they free from 
Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, 

the vice of republics. 
Neither locks had they to their doors, nor 

bars to their windows; 
But their dwellings were open as day and 

the hearts of the owners; 
There the richest was poor, and the poorest 

lived in abundance. 

Somewhat apart from the village, and 
nearer the Basin of Minas, 
Benedict Bellefontaine, the wealthiest 
farmer of Grand-Pre - , 40 



Dwelt on his goodly acres ; and with him, 

directing his household, 
Gentle Evangeline lived, his child, and the 

pride of the village. 
Stalwart and stately in form was the man 

of seventy winters; 
Hearty and hale was he, an oak that is cov- 
ered with snow-flakes; 
White as the snow were his locks, and his 

cheeks as brown as the oak-leaves. 
Fair was she to behold, that maiden of sev- 
enteen summers. 
Black were her eyes as the berry that grows 

on the thorn by the wayside, 
Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath 

the brown shade of her tresses ! 
Sweet was her breath as the breath of kine 

that feed in the meadows. 
When in the harvest heat she bore to the 

reapers at noontide 50 

Flagons of home-brewed ale, ah ! fair in 

sooth was the maiden. 
Fairer was she when, on Sunday morn, 

while the bell from its turret 
Sprinkled with holy sounds the air, as the 

priest with his hyssop 
Sprinkles the congregation, and scatters 

blessings upon them, 
Down the long street she passed, with her 

chaplet of beads and her missal, 
Wearing her Norman cap, and her kirtle 

of blue, and the ear-rings, 
Brought in the olden time from France, and 

since, as an heirloom, 
Handed down from mother to child, through 

long generations. 
But a celestial brightness — a more ethe- 
real beauty — 
Shone on her face and encircled her form, 

when, after confession, 60 

Homeward serenely she walked with God's 

benediction upon her. 
When she had passed, it seemed like the 

ceasing of exquisite music. 

Firmly builded with rafters of oak, the 
house of the farmer 

Stood on the side of a hill commanding the 
sea; and a shady 

Sycamore grew by the door, with a wood- 
bine wreathing around it. 

Rudely carved was the porch, with seats 
beneath; and a footpath 

Led through an orchard wide, and disap- 
peared in the meadow. 



124 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Under the sycamore-tree were hives over- 
hung by a penthouse, 

Such as the traveller sees in regions remote 
by the roadside, 

Built o'er a box for the poor, or the blessed 
image of Mary. 7 o 

Farther down, on the slope of the hill, was 
the well with its moss-grown 

Bucket, fastened with iron, and near it a 
trough for the horses. 

Shielding the house from storms, on the 
north, were the barns and the farm- 
yard. 

There stood the broad- wheeled wains and 
the antique ploughs and the har- 
rows; 

There were the folds for the sheep; and 
there, in his feathered seraglio, 

Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the 
cock, with the selfsame 

Voice that in ages of old had startled the 
penitent Peter. 

Bursting with hay were the barns, them- 
selves a village. In each one 

Far o'er the gable projected a roof of 
thatch ; and a staircase, 

Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the 
odorous corn-loft. So 

There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek 
and innocent inmates 

Murmuring ever of love; while above in 
the variant breezes 

Numberless noisy weathercocks rattled and 
sang of mutation. 

Thus, at peace with God and the world, 

the farmer of Grand-Pre* 
Lived on his sunny farm, and Evangeline 

governed his household. 
Many a youth, as he knelt in church and 

opened his missal, 
Fixed his eyes upon her as the saint of his 

deepest devotion; 
Happy was he who might touch her hand 

or the hem of her garment ! 
Many a suitor came to her door, by the 

darkness befriended, 
And, as he knocked and waited to hear the 

sound of her footsteps, 90 

Knew not which beat the louder, his heart 

or the knocker of iron; 
Or at the joyous feast of the Patron Saint 

of the village, 
Bolder grew, and pressed her hand in the 

dance as he whispered 



Hurried words of love, that seemed a put 
of the music. 

But, among all who came, young Gabriel 
only was welcome; 

Gabriel Lajemiesse, the son of Basil the 
blacksmith, 

Who was a mighty man in the village, and 
honored of all men; 

For, since the birth of time, throughout all 
ages and nations, 

Has the craft of the smith been held in re- 
pute by the people. 

Basil was Benedict's friend. Their children 
from earliest childhood 100 

Grew up together as brother and sister; and 
Father Felician, 

Priest and pedagogue both hi the village, 
had taught them their letters 

Out of the selfsame book, with the hymns 
of the church and the plain-song. 

But when the hymn was simg, and the daily 
lesson completed, 

Swiftly they hurried away to the forge of 
Basil the blacksmith. 

There at the door they stood, with wonder- 
ing eyes to behold him 

Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse 
as a plaything, 

Nailing the shoe in its place ; while near him 
the tire of the cart-wheel 

Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a cir- 
cle of cinders. 

Oft on autumnal eves, when without in the 
gathering darkness 1 10 

Bursting with light seemed the smithy, 
through every cranny and crev- 
ice, 

Warm by the forge within they watched 
the laboring bellows, 

And as its panting ceased, and the sparks 
expired in the ashes, 

Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns 
going into the chapel. 

Oft on sledges in whiter, as swift as the 
swoop of the eagle, 

Down the hillside bounding, they glided 
away o'er the meadow. 

Oft hi the barns they climbed to the popu- 
lous nests on the rafters, 

Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous 
stone, which the swallow 

Brings from the shore of the sea to restore 
the sight of its fledglings; 

Lucky was he who found that stone hi the 
nest of the swallow ! 120 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



"5 



Thus passed a few swift years, and they no 

longer were children. 
He was a valiant youth, and his face, like 

the face of the morning, 
Gladdened the earth with its light, and 

ripened thought into action. 
She was a woman now, with the heart and 

hopes of a woman. 
' Sunshine of Saint Eulalie ' was she called ; 

for that was the sunshine 
Which, as the farmers believed, would load 

their orchards with apples ; 1 
She, too, would bring to her husband's house 

delight and abundance, 
Filling it with love and the ruddy faces of 

children. 



Now had the season returned, when the 
nights grow colder and longer, 

And the retreating smi the sign of the Scor- 
pion enters. i 3 o 

Birds of passage sailed through the leaden 
air, from the ice-bound, 

Desolate northern bays to the shores of trop- 
ical islands. 

Harvests were gathered in; and wild with 
the winds of September 

Wrestled the trees of the forest, as Jacob 
of old with the angel. 

All the signs foretold a winter long and in- 
clement. 

Bees, with prophetic instinct of want, had 
hoarded their honey 

Till the hives overflowed; and the Indian 
hunters asserted 

Cold would the winter be, for thick was the 
fur of the foxes. 

Such was the advent of autumn. Then fol- 
lowed that beautiful season, 

Called by the pious Acadian peasants the 
Summer of All-Saints ! i 4 o 

Filled was the air with a dreamy and magi- 
cal light; and the landscape 

Lay as if new-created in all the freshness of 
childhood. 

Peace seemed to reign upon earth, and the 
restless heart of the ocean 

Was for a moment consoled. All sounds 
were in harmony blended. 

Voices of children at play, the crowing of 
cocks in the farm-yards, 

1 From the old Norman-French proverb : — 

Si lc soleil rit le jour Sainte-Eulalie 
II y aura pomme's et cidre a folie. 



Whir of wings in the drowsy air, and the 

cooing of pigeons, 
All were subdued and low as the murmurs 

of love, and the great smi 
Looked with the eye of love through the 

golden vapors around him; 
While arrayed in its robes of russet and 

scarlet and yellow, 
Bright with the sheen of the dew, each 

glittering tree of the forest i 5 o 

Flashed like the plane-tree the Persian 

adorned with mantles and jew- 
els. 1 

Now recommenced the reign of rest and 

affection and stillness. 
Day with its burden and heat had departed, 

and twilight descending 
Brought back the evening star to the sky, 

and the herds to the homestead. 
Pawing the ground they came, and resting 

their necks on each other, 
And with their nostrils distended inhaling 

the freshness of evening. 
Foremost, bearing the bell, Evangeline's 

beautiful heifer, 
Proud of her snow-white hide, and the rib- 
bon that waved from her collar, 
Quietly paced and slow, as if conscious of 

human affection. 
Then came the shepherd back with his 

bleating flocks from the seaside, 160 
Where was their favorite pasture. Behind 

them followed the watch-dog, 
Patient, full of importance, and grand in the 

pride of his instinct, 
Walking from side to side with a lordly air, 

and superbly 
Waving his bushy tail, and urging forward 

the stragglers; 
Regent of flocks was he when the shepherd 

slept; their protector, 
When from the forest at night, through the 

starry silence the wolves howled. 
Late, with the rising moon, returned the 

wains from the marshes, 
Laden with briny hay, that filled the air 

with its odor. 
Cheerily neighed the steeds, with dew on 

their manes and their fetlocks, 
While aloft on their shoulders the wooden 

and ponderous saddles, i 7 o 

Painted with brilliant dyes, and adorned 

with tassels of crimson, 
See Evelyn's Silva, ii, 53. (Longfellow.) 



126 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Nodded in bright array, like hollyhocks 
heavy with blossorns. 

Patiently stood the cows meanwhile, and 
yielded their udders 

Unto the milkmaid's hand ; whilst loud and 
in regular cadence 

Into the sounding pails the f oaming stream- 
lets descended. 

Lowing of cattle and peals of laughter were 
heard in the farm-yard, 

Echoed back by the barns. Anon they 
sank into stillness; 

Heavily closed, with a jarring sound, the 
valves of the barn-doors, 

Rattled the wooden bars, and all for a sea- 
son was silent. 

In -doors, warm by the wide -mouthed 

fireplace, idly the farmer 180 

Sat in his elbow-chair and watched how the 

flames and the smoke-wreaths 
Struggled together like foes in a burning 

city. Behind him, 
Nodding and mocking along the wall, with 

gestures fantastic, 
Darted his own huge shadow, and vanished 

away into darkness. 
Faces, clumsily carved in oak, on the back 

of his arm-chair 
Laughed in the flickering light; and the 

pewter plates on the dresser 
Caught and reflected the flame, as shields 

of armies the sunshine. 
Fragments of song the old man sang, and 

carols of Christmas, 
Such as at home, in the olden time, his 

fathers before him 
Sang in their Norman orchards and bright 

Burgundian vineyards. 190 

Close at her father's side was the gentle 

Evangeline seated, 
Spinning flax for the loom, that stood in 

the corner behind her. 
Silent awhile were its treadles, at rest was 

its diligent shuttle, 
While the monotonous drone of the wheel, 

like the drone of a bagpipe, 
Followed the old man's song and united the 

fragments together. 
As in a church, when the chant of the choir 

at intervals ceases, 
Footfalls are heard in the aisles, or words 

of the priest at the altar, 
So, in each pause of the song, with mea- 
sured motion the clock clicked. 



Thus as they sat, there were footsteps 

heard, and, suddenly lifted, 
Sounded the wooden latch, and the door 

swung back on its hinges. 200 

Benedict knew by the hob-nailed shoes it 

was Basil the blacksmith, 
And by her beating heart Evangeline knew 

who was with him. 
' Welcome ! ' the farmer exclaimed, as their 

footsteps paused on the thres- 
hold, 
' Welcome, Basil, my friend ! Come, take 

thy place on the settle 
Close by the chimney-side, which is always 

empty without thee ; 
Take from the shelf overhead thy pipe and 

the box of tobacco; 
Never so much thyself art thou as when 

through the curling 
Smoke of the pipe or the forge thy friendly 

and jovial face gleams 
Round and red as the harvest moon through 

the mist of the marshes.' 
Then, with a smile of content, thus an- 
swered Basil the blacksmith, 210 
Taking with easy air the accustomed seat 

by the fireside : — 
' Benedict Bellefontaine, thou hast ever thy 

jest and thy ballad ! 
Ever in cheerfullest mood art thou, when 

others are filled with 
Gloomy forebodings of ill, and see only ruin 

before them. 
Happy art thou, as if every day thou hadst 

picked up a horseshoe.' 
Pausing a moment, to take the pipe that 

Evangeline brought him, 
And with a coal from the embers had 

lighted, he slowly continued : — 
' Four days now are passed since the Eng- 
lish ships at their anchors 
Ride in the Gaspereau's mouth, with their 

cannon pointed against us. 
What their design may be is unknown; but 

all are commanded 220 

On the morrow to meet in the church, 

where his Majesty's mandate 
Will be proclaimed as law in the land. 

Alas ! hi the mean time 
Many surmises of evil alarm the hearts of 

the people.' 
Then made answer the farmer : ' Perhaps 

some friendlier purpose . 
Brings these ships to our shores. Perhaps 

the harvests in England 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



127 



By untimely rains or untimelier heat have 

been blighted, 
And from our bursting barns they would 

feed their cattle and children.' 
' Not so thinketh the folk in the village,' 

said, warmly, the blacksmith, 
Shaking his head, as in doubt; then, heav- 
ing a sigh, he continued : — 
' Louisburg is not forgotten, nor Beau S6- 

jour, nor Port Royal. 230 

Many already have fled to the forest, and 

lurk on its outskirts, 
Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious 

fate of to-morrow. 
Arms have been taken from us, and war- 
like weapons of all kinds; 
Nothing is left but the blacksmith's sledge 

and the scythe of the mower.' 
Then with a pleasant smile made answer the 

jovial farmer : — 
' Safer are we unarmed, in the midst of our 

flocks and our cornfields, 
Safer within these peaceful dikes, besieged 

by the ocean, 
Than our fathers in forts, besieged by the 

enemy's cannon. 
Fear no evil, my friend, and to-night may 

no shadow of sorrow 
Fall on this house and earth; for this is the 

night of the contract. 240 

Built are the house and the barn. The 

merry lads of the village 
Strongly have built them and well; and, 

breaking the glebe round about them, 
Filled the barn with hay, and the house 

■ with food for a twelvemonth. 
Rene - Leblanc will be here anon, with his 

papers and inkhorn. 
Shall we not then be glad, and rejoice in the 

joy of our children ? ' 
As apart by the window she stood, with her 

hand in her lover's, 
Blushing Evangeline heard the words that 

her father had spoken, 
And, as they died on his lips, the worthy 

notary entered. 



Bent like a laboring oar, that toils in the 

surf of the ocean, 
Bent, but not broken, by age was the form 

of the notary public; 250 

Shocks of yellow hair, like the silken floss 

of the maize, hung 



Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; 

and glasses with horn bows 
Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wis- 
dom supernal. 
Father of twenty children was he, and more 

than a hundred 
Children's children rode on his knee, and 

heard his great watch tick. 
Four long years in the times of the war had 

he languished a captive, 
Suffering much in an old French fort as the 

friend of the English. 
Now, though warier grown, without all 

guile or suspicion, 
Ripe in wisdom was he, but patient, and 

simple, and childlike. 
He was beloved by all, and most of all by 

the children; 260 

For he told them tales of the Loup-garou 

in the forest, 
And of the goblin that came in the night to 

water the horses, 
And of the white Le"tiche, the ghost of a 

child who unchristened 
Died, and was doomed to haunt unseen the 

chambers of children; 
And how on Christmas eve the oxen talked 

in the stable, 
And how the fever was cured by a spider 

shut up in a nutshell, 
And of the marvellous powers of four- 
leaved clover and horseshoes, 
With whatsoever else was writ in the lore 

of the village. 
Then up rose from his seat by the fireside 

Basil the blacksmith, 
Knocked from his pipe the ashes, and slowly 

extending his right hand, 270 

' Father Leblanc,' he exclaimed, ' thou 

hast heard the talk in the vil- 



And, perchance, canst tell us some news of 

these ships and their errand.' 
Then with modest demeanor made answer 

the notary public, — 
' Gossip enough have I heard, in sooth, yet 

am never the wiser; 
And what their errand may be I know not 

better than others. 
Yet am I not of those who imagine some 

evil intention 
Brings them here, for we are at peace ; and 

why then molest us ? ' 
' God's name ! ' shouted the hasty and 

somewhat irascible blacksmith; 



128 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



'Must we in all things look for the how, 

and the why, and the where- 
fore ? 
Daily injustice is done, and might is the 

right of the strongest ! ' 2S0 

But without heeding his warmth, continued 

the notary public, — 
' Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally 

justice 
Triumphs; and well I remember a story, 

that often consoled me, 
When as a captive I lay in the old French 

fort at Port Royal.' 
This was the old man's favorite tale, and 

he loved to repeat it 
When his neighbors complained that any 

injustice was done them. 
' Once in an ancient city, whose name I no 

longer remember, 
Raised aloft on a column, a brazen statue 

of Justice 
Stood in the public square, iipholding the 

scales in its left hand, 
And in its right a sword, as an emblem that 

justice presided 290 

Over the laws of the land, and the hearts 

and homes of the people. 
Even the birds had built their nests in the 

scales of the balance, 
Having no fear of the sword that flashed in 

the sunshine above them. 
But in the course of time the laws of the 

land were corrupted; 
Might took the place of right, and the weak 

were oppressed, and the mighty 
Ruled with an iron rod. Then it chanced 

in a nobleman's palace 
That a necklace of pearls was lost, and ere- 
long a suspicion 
Fell on an orphan girl who lived as a maid 

in the household. 
She, after form of trial condemned to die 

on the scaffold, 
Patiently met her doom at the foot of the 

statue of Justice. 300 

As to her Father in heaven her innocent 

spirit ascended, 
Lo ! o'er the city a tempest rose; and the 

bolts of the thunder 
Smote the statue of bronze, and hurled in 

wrath from its left hand 
Down on the pavement below the clattering 

scales of the balance, 
And in the hollow thereof was found the 

nest of a magpie, 



Into whose clay-built walls the necklace of 
pearls was inwoven.' 

Silenced, but not convinced, when the story 
was ended, the blacksmith 

Stood like a man who fain would speak, 
but findeth no language; 

All his thoughts were congealed into lines 
on his face, as the vapors 

Freeze in fantastic shapes on the window- 
panes in the winter. 310 

Then Evangeline lighted the brazen lamp 

on the table, 
Filled, till it overflowed, the pewter tankard 

with home-brewed 
Nut-brown ale, that was famed for its 

strength in the village of Grand- 

Pr£; 
While from his pocket the notary drew his 

papers and inkhorn, 
Wrote with a steady hand the date and the 

age of the parties, 
Naming the dower of the bride in flocks of 

sheep and in cattle. 
Orderly all things proceeded, and duly and 

well were completed, 
And the great seal of the law was set like 

a sun on the margin. 
Then from his leathern pouch the farmer 

threw on the table 
Three times the old man's fee in solid 

pieces of silver; 32 o 

And the notary rising, and blessing the 

bride and the bridegroom, 
Lifted aloft the tankard of ale and drank 

to their welfare. 
Wiping the foam from his lip, he solemnly 

bowed and departed, 
While in silence the others sat and mused 

by the fireside, 
Till Evangeline brought the draught-board 

out of its corner. 
Soon was the game begun. In friendly 

contention the old men 
Laughed at each lucky hit, or unsuccessful 

manoeuvre, 
Laughed when a man was crowned, or a 

breach was made in the king- 
row. 
Meanwhile apart, in the twilight gloom of 

a window's embrasure, 
Sat the lovers, and whispered together, be- 
holding the moon rise 330 
Over the pallid sea, and the silvery mists 

of the meadows. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



129 



Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows 
of heaven, 

Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me- 
nots of the angels. 

Thus was the evening passed. Anon the 

bell from the belfry 
Rang out the hour of nine, the village cur- 
few, and straightway 
Rose the guests and departed; and silence 

reigned in the household. 
Many a farewell word and sweet good- 
night on the door-step 
Lingered long in Evangeline's heart, and 

filled it with gladness. 
Carefully then were covered the embers 

that glowed on the hearth-stone, 
And on the oaken stairs resounded the 

tread of the farmer. 34 o 

Soon with a soundless step the foot of 

Evangeline followed. 
Up the staircase moved a luminous space 

in the darkness, 
Lighted less by the lamp than the shining 

face of the maiden. 
Silent she passed the hall, and entered the 

door of her chamber. 
Simple that chamber was, with its curtains 

of white, and its clothes-press 
Ample and high, on whose spacious shelves 

were carefully folded 
Linen and woollen stuffs, by the hand of 

Evangeline woven. 
This was the precious dower she would 

bring to her husband in mar- 
riage, 
Better than flocks and herds, being proofs 

of her skill as a housewife. 
Soon she extinguished her lamp, for the 

mellow and radiant moonlight 350 
Streamed through the windows, and lighted 

the room, till the heart of the 

maiden 
Swelled and obeyed its power, like the 

tremulous tides of the ocean. 
Ah ! she was fair, exceeding fair to behold, 

as she stood with 
Naked snow-white feet on the gleaming 

floor of her chamber ! 
Little she dreamed that below, among the 

trees of the orchard, 
Waited her lover and watched for the 

gleam of her lamp and her shadow. 
Yet were her thoughts of him, and at times 

a feeling of sadness 



Passed o'er her soul, as the sailing shade of 

clouds in the moonlight 
Flitted across the floor and darkened the 

room for a moment. 
And, as she gazed from the window, she 

saw serenely the moon pass 360 

Forth from the folds of a cloud, and one 

star follow her footsteps, 
As out of Abraham's tent young Ishmael 

wandered with Hagar ! 



Pleasantly rose next morn the sun on the 

village of Grand Pre*. 
Pleasantly gleamed in the soft, sweet air 

the Basin of Minas, 
Where the ships, with their wavering sha- 
dows, were riding at anchor. 
Life had long been astir in the village, and 

clamorous labor 
Knocked with its hundred hands at the 

golden gates of the morning. 
Now from the country around, from the 

farms and neighboring hamlets, 
Came in their holiday dresses the blithe 

Acadian peasants. 
Many a glad good-morrow and jocund 

laugh from the young folk 37 o 

Made the bright air brighter, as up from 

the numerous meadows, 
Where no path could be seen but the track 

of wheels in the greensward, 
Group after group appeared, and joined, or 

passed on the highway. 
Long ere noon, in the village all sounds of 

labor were silenced. 
Thronged were the streets with people ; and 

noisy groups at the house-doors 
Sat in the cheerful sun, and rejoiced and 

gossipped together. 
Every house was an inn, where all were 

welcomed and feasted; 
For with this simple people, who lived like 

brothers together, 
All things were held in common, and what 

one had was another's. 
Yet under Benedict's roof hospitality seemed 

more abundant: 380 

For Evangeline stood among the guests of 

her father; 
Bright was her face with smiles, and words 

of welcome and gladness 
Fell from her beautiful lips, and blessed 

the cup as she gave it. 



130 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Under the open sky, in the odorous air of 

the orchard, 
Stript of its golden fruit, was spread the 

feast of betrothal. 
There hi the shade of the porch were the 

priest and the notary seated; 
There good Benedict sat, and sturdy Basil 

the blacksmith. 
Not far withdrawn from these, by the 

cider-press and the beehives, 
Michael the fiddler was placed, with the 

gayest of hearts and of waistcoats. 
Shadow and light from the leaves alter- 
nately played on his snow-white 390 
Hair, as it waved in the wind; and the jolly 

face of the fiddler 
Glowed like a living coal when the ashes 

are blown from the embers. 
Gayly the old man sang to the vibrant 

sound of his fiddle, 
Tous les Bourgeois de Chartres, and Le 

Carillon de Dunquerque, 
And anon with his wooden shoes beat time 

to the music. 
Merrily, merrily whirled the wheels of the 

dizzying dances 
Under the orchard-trees and down the path 

to the meadows; 
Old folk and young together, and children 

mingled among them. 
Fairest of all the maids was Evangeline, 

Benedict's daughter ! 
Noblest of all the youths was Gabriel, son 

of the blacksmith ! 400 

So passed the morning away. And lo ! 

with a summons sonorous 
Sounded the bell from its tower, and over 

the meadows a drum beat. 
Thronged erelong was the church with men. 

Without, in the churchyard, 
Waited the women. They stood by the 

graves, and hung on the headstones 
Garlands of autumn-leaves and evergreens 

fresh from the forest. 
Then came the guard from the ships, and 

marching proudly among them 
Entered the sacred portal. With loud and 

dissonant clangor 
Echoed the sound of their brazen drums 

from ceiling and casement, — 
Echoed a moment only, and slowly the 

ponderous portal 
Closed, and in silence the crowd awaited 

the will of the soldiers. 410 



Then uprose their commander, and spake 

from the steps of the altar, 
Holding aloft in his hands, with its seals, 

the royal commission. 
' You are convened this day,' he said, ' by 

his Majesty's orders. 
Clement and kind has he been; but how 

you have answered his kindness, 
Let your own hearts reply ! To my nat- 
ural make and my temper 
Painful the task is I do, which to you I 

know must be grievous. 
Yet must I bow and obey, and deliver the 

will of our monarch; 
Namely, that all your lands, and dwellings, 

and cattle of all kinds 
Forfeited be to the crown; and that you 

yourselves from this province 
Be transported to other lands. God grant 

you may dwell there 420 

Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and 

peaceable people ! 
Prisoners now I declare you; for such is 

his Majesty's pleasure ! ' 
As, when the air is serene in sultry solstice 

of summer, 
Suddenly gathers a storm, and the deadly 

sling of the hailstones 
Beats down the farmer's corn in the field 

and shatters his windows, 
Hiding the sun, and strewing the ground 

with thatch from the house-roofs, 
Bellowing fly the herds, and seek to break 

their enclosures; 
So on the hearts of the people descended the 

words of the speaker. 
Silent a moment they stood in speechless 

wonder, and then rose 
Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow 

and anger, 430 

And, by one impulse moved, they madly 

rushed to the door-way. 
Vain was the hope of escape ; and cries and 

fierce imprecations 
Rang through the house of prayer; and 

high o'er the heads of the others 
Rose, with his arms uplifted, the figure of 

Basil the blacksmith, 
As, on a stormy sea, a spar is tossed by the 

billows. 
Flushed was his face and distorted with 

passion; and wildly he shouted, — 
' Down with the tyrants of England ! 

we never have sworn them alle- 
giance ! 



HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 



'3* 



Death to these foreign soldiers, who seize 
on our homes and our harvests ! ' 

More he fain would have said, but the 
merciless hand of a soldier 

Smote him upon the mouth, and dragged 
him down to the pavement. 440 

In the midst of the strife and tumult of 
angry contention, 

Lo ! the door of the chancel opened, and 
Father Felician 

Entered, with serious mien, and ascended 
the steps of the altar. 

Raising his reverend hand, with a gesture 
he awed into silence 

All that clamorous throng; and thus he 
spake to his people; 

Deep were his tones and solemn; in accents 
measured and mournful 

Spake he, as, after the tocsin's alarum, dis- 
tinctly the clock strikes. 

' What is this that ye do, my chil- 
dren ? what madness has seized 
you ? 

Forty years of my life have I labored 
among you, and taught you, 

Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one 
another ! 450 

Is this the fruit of my toils, of my vigils 
and prayers and privations ? 

Have you so soon forgotten all lessons of 
love and forgiveness ? 

This is the house of the Prince of Peace, 
and would you profane it 

Thus with violent deeds and hearts over- 
flowing with hatred ? 

Lo ! where the crucified Christ from his 
cross is gazing upon you ! 

See ! in those sorrowful eyes what meek- 
ness and holy compassion ! 

Hark ! how those lips still repeat the 
prayer, " Father, forgive them ! '' 

Let us repeat that prayer in the hour when 
the wicked assail us, 

Let us repeat it now, and say, " Father, 
forgive them ! " ' 

Few were his words of rebuke, but deep in 
the hearts of his people 460 

Sank they, and sobs of contrition succeeded 
the passionate outbreak, 

While they repeated his prayer, and said, 
c O Father, forgive them ! ' 

Then came the evening service. The 
tapers gleamed from the altar. 



Fervent and deep was the voice of the 
priest, and the people responded, 

Not with their lips alone, but their hearts; 
and the Ave Maria 

Sang they, and fell on their knees, and 
their souls, with devotion trans- 
lated, 

Rose on the ardor of prayer, like Elijah 
ascending to heaven. 

Meanwhile had spread in the village the 
tidings of ill, and on all sides 

Wandered, wailing, from house to house 
the women and children. 

Long at her father's door Evangeline stood, 
with her right hand 470 

Shielding her eyes from the level rays of 
the sun, that, descending, 

Lighted the village street with mysterious 
splendor, and roofed each 

Peasant's cottage with golden thatch, and 
emblazoned its windows. 

Long within had been spread the snow- 
white cloth on the table; 

There stood the wbeaten loaf, and the 
honey fragrant with wild -flow- 
ers; 

There stood the tankard of ale, and the 
cheese fresh brought from the dairy, 

And, at the head of the board, the great 
arm-chair of the farmer. 

Thus did Evangeline wait at her father's 
door, as the sunset 

Threw the long shadows of trees o'er the 
broad ambrosial meadows. 

Ah ! on her spirit within a deeper shadow 
had fallen, 4 *o 

And from the fields of her soul a fragrance 
celestial ascended, — 

Charity, meekness, love, and hope, and for- 
giveness, and patience ! 

Then, all-forgetful of self, she wandered 
into the village, 

Cheering with looks and words the mourn- 
ful hearts of the women, 

As o'er the darkening fields with lingering 
steps they departed, 

Urged by their household cares, and the 
weary feet of their children. 

Down sank the great red sun, and in golden, 
glimmering vapors 

Veiled the light of his face, like the Prophet 
descending from Sinai. 

Sweetly over the village the bell of the 
Angelus sounded. 






132 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Meanwhile, amid the gloom, by the 
church Evangeline lingered. 490 

All was silent within; and in vain at the 
door and the windows 

Stood she, and listened and looked, till, 
overcome by emotion, 

' Gabriel ! ' cried she aloud with tremulous 
voice; but no answer 

Came from the graves of the dead, nor the 
gloomier grave of the living. 

Slowly at length she returned to the tenant- 
less house of her father. 

Smouldered the fire on the hearth, on the 
board was the supper untasted, 

Empty and drear was each room, and 
haunted with phantoms of terror. 

Sadly echoed her step on the stair and the 
floor of her chamber. 

In the dead of the night she heard the dis- 
consolate rain fall 

Loud on the withered leaves of the syca- 
more-tree by the window. 500 

Keenly the lightning flashed ; and the voice 
of the echoing thunder 

Told her that God was in heaven, and gov- 
erned the world He created ! 

Then she remembered the tale she had 
heard of the justice of Heaven; 

Soothed was her troubled soul, and she 
peacefully slumbered till morning. 



Four times the sun had risen and set; and 

now on the fifth day 
Cheerily called the cock to the sleeping 

maids of the farm-house. 
Soon o'er the yellow fields, in silent and 

mournful procession, 
Came from the neighboring hamlets and 

farms the Acadian women, 
Driving in ponderous wains their household 

goods to the sea-shore, 
Pausing and looking back to gaze once 

more on their dwellings, 510 

Ere they were shut from sight by the wind- 
ing road and the woodland. 
Close at their sides their children ran, and 

urged on the oxen, 
While in their little hands they clasped 

some fragments of playthings. 

Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth they 
hurried; and there on the sea- 
beach 



Piled in confusion lay the household goods 

of the peasants. 
All day long between the shore and the 

ships did the boats ply; 
All day long the wains came laboring down 

from the village. 
Late in the afternoon, when the sun was 

near to his setting, 
Echoed far o'er the fields came the roll of 

drums from the churchyard. 
Thither the women and children thronged. 

On a sudden the church-doors 520 
Opened, and forth came the guard, and 

marching in gloomy procession 
Followed the long-imprisoned, but patient, 

Acadian farmers. 
Even as pilgrims, who journey afar from 

their homes and their country, 
Sing as they go, and in singing forget they 

are weary and wayworn, 
So with songs on their lips the Acadian 

peasants descended 
Down from the church to the shore, amid 

their wives and their daughters. 
Foremost the young men came ; and, raising 

together their voices, 
Sang with tremulous lips a chant of the 

Catholic Missions: — 
' Sacred heart of the Saviour ! O inex- 
haustible fountain ! 
Fill our hearts this day with strength and 

submission and patience ! ' 530 

Then the old men, as they marched, and the 

women that stood by the wayside 
Joined in the sacred psalm, and the birds in 

the sunshine above them 
Mingled their notes therewith, like voices 

of spirits departed. 

Half-way down to the shore Evangeline 
waited in silence, 

Not overcome with grief, but strong in the 
hour of affliction, — 

Calmly and sadly she waited, until the pro- 
cession approached her, 

And she beheld the face of Gabriel pale 
with emotion. 

Tears then filled her eyes, and, eagerly run- 
ning to meet him, 

Clasped she his hands, and laid her head on 
his shoulder, and whispered, — 

' Gabriel I be of good cheer ! for if we love 
one another 540 

Nothing, in truth, can harm us, whatever 
mischances may happen ! ' 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



i33 



Smiling she spake these words; then sud- 
denly paused, for her father 

Saw she slowly advancing. Alas ! how 
changed was his aspect ! 

Gone was the glow from his cheek, and the 
fire from his eye, and his footstep 

Heavier seemed with the weight of the 
heavy heart in his bosom. 

But with a smile and a sigh, she clasped 
his neck and embraced him, 

Speaking words of endearment where words 
of comfort availed not. 

Thus to the Gaspereau's mouth moved on 
that mournful procession. 

There disorder prevailed, and the tumult 
and stir of embarking. 

Busily plied the freighted boats; and in the 
confusion 55 o 

Wives were torn from their husbands, and 
mothers, too late, saw their children 

Left on the land, extending their arms, with 
wildest entreaties. 

So unto separate ships were Basil and Ga- 
briel carried, 

While in despair on the shore Evangeline 
stood with her father. 

Half the task was not done when the sun 
went down, and the twilight 

Deepened and darkened around; and in 
haste the refluent ocean 

Fled away from the shore, and left the line 
of the sand-beach 

Covered with waifs of the tide, with kelp 
and the slippery sea-weed. 

Farther back in the midst of the household 
goods and the wagons, 

Like to a gypsy camp, or a leaguer after a 
battle, 560 

All escape cut off by the sea, and the sen- 
tinels near them, 

Lay encamped for the night the houseless 
Acadian farmers. 

Back to its nethermost caves retreated the 
bellowing ocean, 

Dragging adown the beach the rattling 
pebbles, and leaving 

Inland and far up the shore the stranded 
boats of the sailors. 

Then, as the night descended, the herds re- 
turned from their pastures; 

Sweet was the moist still air with the odor 
of milk from their udders ; 

Lowing they waited, and long, at the well- 
known bars of the farm-yard, — 



Waited and looked in vain for the voice 
and the hand of the milk-maid. 

Silence reigned in the streets; from the 
church no Angelus sounded, 57 o 

Rose no smoke from the roofs, and gleamed 
no lights from the windows. 

But on the shores meanwhile the evening 

fires had been kindled, 
Built of the drift-wood thrown on the 

sands from wrecks in the tem- 
pest. 
Round them shapes of gloom and sorrowful 

faces were gathered, 
Voices of women were heard, and of men, 

and the crying of children. 
Onward from fire to fire, as from hearth to 

hearth in his parish, 
Wandered the faithful priest, consoling and 

blessing and cheering, 
Like unto shipwrecked Paul on Melita's 

desolate sea-shore. 
Thus he approached the place where Evan- 
geline sat with her father, 
And in the nickering light beheld the face 

of the old man, 580 

Haggard and hollow and wan, and without 

either thought or emotion, 
E'en as the face of a clock from which the 

hands have been taken. 
Vainly Evangeline strove with words and 

caresses to cheer him, ' 
Vainly offered him food ; yet he moved not, 

he looked not, he spake not, 
But, with a vacant stare, ever gazed at the 

flickering fire-light. 
' Benedicite ! ' murmured the priest, in tones 

of compassion. 
More he fain would have said, but his heart 

was full, and his accents 
Faltered and paused on his lips, as the 

feet of a child on a threshold, 
Hushed by the scene he beholds, and the 

awful presence of sorrow. 
Silently, therefore, he laid his hand on the 

head of the maiden, 590 

Raising his tearful eyes to the silent stars 

that above them 
Moved on their way, unperturbed by the 

wrongs and sorrows of mortals. 
Then sat he down at her side, and they 

wept together in silence. 

Suddenly rose from the south a light, as 
in autumn the blood-red 



J 34 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven, 

and o'er the horizon 
Titan-like stretches its hundred hands upon 

the mountain and meadow, 
Seizing the rocks and the rivers and piling 

huge shadows together. 
Broader and ever broader it gleamed on 

the roofs of the village, 
Gleamed on the sky and sea, and the ships 

that lay hi the roadstead. 
Columns of shining smoke uprose, and 

flashes of flame were 600 

Thrust through their folds and withdrawn, 

like the quivering hands of a mar- 
tyr. 
Then as the wind seized the gleeds and the 

burning thatch, and, uplifting, 
Whirled them aloft through the air, at 

once from a hundred house-tops 
Started the sheeted smoke with flashes of 

flame intermingled. 

These things beheld in dismay the crowd 
on the shore and on shipboard. 

Speechless at first they stood, then cried 
aloud in their anguish, 

' We shall behold no more our homes in 
the village of Grand- Pre - ! ' 

Loud on a sudden the cocks began to crow 
in the farm-yards, 

Thinking the day had dawned; and anon 
the lawing of cattle 

Came on the evening breeze, by the bark- 
ing of dogs interrupted. 610 

Then rose a sound of dread, such as startles 
the sleeping encampments 

Far in the western prairies or forests that 
skirt the Nebraska, 

When the wild horses affrighted sweep 
by with the speed of the whirl- 
wind, 

Or the loud bellowing herds of buffaloes 
rush to the river. 

Such was the sound that arose on the night, 
as the herds and the horses 

Broke through their folds and fences, and 
madly rushed o'er the meadows^ 

Overwhelmed with the sight, yet speech- 
less, the priest and the maiden 

Gazed on the scene of terror that reddened 
and widened before them: 

And as they turned at length to speak to 
their silent companion, 



Lo ! from his seat he had fallen, and 
stretched abroad on the sea-shore 

Motionless lay his form, from which the 
soul had departed. 621 

Slowly the priest uplifted the lifeless head, 
and the maiden 

Knelt at her father's side, and wailed aloud 
in her terror. 

Then in a swoon she sank, and lay with her 
head on his bosom. 

Through the long night she lay in deep, ob- 
livious slumber; 

And when she awoke from the trance, she 
beheld a multitude near her. 

Faces of friends she beheld, that were 
mournfully gazing upon her, 

Pallid, with tearful eyes, and looks of sad- 
dest compassion. 

Still the blaze of the burning village illu- 
mined the landscape, 

Reddened the sky overhead, and gleamed 
on the faces around her, 630 

And like the day of doom it seemed to her 
wavering senses. 

Then a familiar voice she heard, as it said 
to the people, — 

' Let us bury him here by the sea. When 
a happier season 

Brings us again to our homes from the un- 
known land of our exile, 

Then shall his sacred dust be piously laid 
in the churchyard.' 

Such were the words of the priest. And 
there in haste by the sea-side, 

Having the glare of the burning village for 
funeral torches, 

But without bell or book, they buried the 
farmer of Grand-Pre". 

And as the voice of the priest repeated the 
service of sorrow, 

Lo ! with a mournful sound, like the voice 
of a vast congregation, 640 

Solemnly answered the sea, and mingled its 
roar with the dirges. 

'T was the returning tide, that afar from 
the waste of the ocean, 

With the first dawn of the day, came heav- 
ing and hurrying landward. 

Then recommenced once more the stir and 
noise of embarking; 

And with the ebb of the tide the ships 
sailed out of the harbor, 

Leaving behind them the dead on the shore, 
and the village in ruins. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



135 



PART THE SECOND 
1 

Many a weary year had passed since the 

burning of Grand-Prd, 
When on the falling tide the freighted ves- 
sels departed, 
Bearing a nation, with all its household 

gods, into exile, 
Exile without an end, and without an ex- 
ample in story. 
Far asunder, on separate coasts, the Aca- 

dians landed; 
Scattered were they, like flakes of snow, 

when the wind from the northeast 
Strikes aslant through the fogs that darken 

the Banks of Newfoundland. 
Friendless, homeless, hopeless, they wan- 
dered from city to city, 
From the cold lakes of the North to sultry 

Southern savannas, — 
From the bleak shores of the sea to the 

lands where the Father of Waters 10 
Seizes the hills in his hands, and drags them 

down to the ocean, 
Deep in their sands to bury the scattered 

bones of the mammoth. 
Friends they sought and homes; and many, 

despairing, heart-broken, 
Asked of the earth but a grave, and no 

longer a friend nor a fireside. 
Written their history stands on tablets of 

stone in the churchyards. 
Long among them was seen a maiden who 

waited and wandered, 
Lowly and meek in spirit, and patiently 

suffering all things. 
Fair was she and young: but, alas ! before 

her extended, 
Dreary and vast and silent, the desert of 

life, with its pathway 
Marked by the graves of those who had 

sorrowed and suffered before her, 20 
Passions long extinguished, and hopes long 

dead and abandoned, 
As the emigrant's way o'er the Western 

desert is marked by 
Camp-fires long consumed, and bones that 

bleach in the sunshine. 
Something there was in her life incomplete, 

imperfect, unfinished; 
As if a morning of June, with all its music 

and sunshine, 
Suddenly paused in the sky, and, fading, 

slowly descended 



Into the east again, from whence it late had 

arisen. 
Sometimes she lingered in towns, till, urged 

by the fever within her, 
Urged by a restless longing, the hunger and 

thirst of the spirit, 
She would commence again her endless 

search and endeavor; 30 

Sometimes in churchyards strayed, and 

gazed on the crosses and tomb- 
stones, 
Sat by some nameless grave, and thought 

that perhaps in its bosom 
He was already at rest, and she longed to 

slumber beside him. 
Sometimes a rumor, a hearsay, an inarticu- 
late whisper, 
Came with its airy hand to point and beckon 

her forward. 
Sometimes she spake with those who had 

seen her beloved and known him, 
But it was long ago, in some far-off place or 

forgotten. 
' Gabriel Lajeunesse ! ' they said ; ' Oh yes ! 

we have seen him. 
He was with Basil the blacksmith, and both 

have gone to the prairies; 
Coureurs-des-Bois are they, and famous 

hunters and trappers.' 40 

' Gabriel Lajeunesse ! ' said others ; ' Oh yes ! 

we have seen him. 
He is a Voyageur in the lowlands of Louisi- 
ana.' 
Then would they say, ' Dear child ! why 

dream and wait for him longer ? 
Are there not other youths as fair as Ga- 
briel ? others 
Who have hearts as tender and true, and 

spirits as loyal ? 
Here is Baptiste Leblanc, the notary's son, 

who has loved thee 
Many a tedious year; come, give him thy 

hand and be happy ! 
Thou art too fair to be left to braid St. 

Catherine's tresses.' ' 
Then would Evangeline answer, serenely 

but sadly, ' I cannot ! 
Whither my heart has gone, there follows 

my hand, and not elsewhere. 50 

For when the heart goes before, like a lamp, 

and illumines the pathway, 
Many things are made clear, that else lie 

hidden in darkness.' 

1 There is a common expression in French, ' coiffer 
Sainte Catherine,' 1 meaning to be an old maid. 



136 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Thereupon the priest, her friend and father- 
confessor. 

Said, with a smile, ' O daughter ! thy God 
thus speaketk within thee ! 

Talk not of wasted affection, affection never 
was wasted; 

If it enrich not the heart of another, its 
waters, returning 

Back to their springs, like the rain, shall till 
them full of ref reshnient : 

That which the fountain sends forth returns 
again to the fountain. 

Patience; accomplish thy labor; accomplish 
thy work of affection ! 

Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient 
endurance is godlike. 60 

Therefore accomplish thy labor of love, till 
the heart is made godlike, 

Purified, strengthened, perfected, and ren- 
dered more worthy of heaven ! ' 

Cheered by the g-ood man's words, Evange- 
line labored and waited. 

Still in her heart she heard the funeral dirge 
of the ocean, 

But with its sound there was mingled 
a voice that whispered, ' Despair 
not!' 

Thus did that poor soul wander in want and 
cheerless discomfort. 

Bleeding, barefooted, over the shards and 
thorns of existence. 

Let me essay, O Muse ! to follow the wan- 
derer's footsteps; — 

Not through each devious path, each change- 
ful year of existence. 

But as a traveller follows a streamlet's 
course through the valley: 70 

Far from its margin at times, and seeing the 
gleam of its water 

Here and there, in some open space, and at 
intervals only; 

Then drawing nearer its banks, through 
sylvan glooms that conceal it, 

Though he behold it not, he can hear its 
continuous murmur: 

Happy, at length, if he find the spot where 
it reaches an outlet. 



It was the month of May. Far down the 

Beautiful River, 
Past the Ohio shore and past the mouth of 

the Wabash, 
Into the golden stream of the broad and 

swift Mississippi, 



Floated a cumbrous boat, that was rowed 
by Acadian boatmen. 

It was a band of exiles: a raft, as it were, 
from the shipwrecked So 

Nation, scattered along the coast, now 
floating together. 

Bound by the bonds of a common belief 
and a common misfortune; 

Men and women and children, who, guided 
by hope or by hearsay. 

Sought for their kith and their kin among 
the few-acred farmers 

On the Acadian coast, and the prairies of 
fair Opelousas. 

With them Evangeline went, aud her guide, 
the Father Felieian. 

Onward o'er sunken sands, through a wil- 
derness sombre with forests, 

Day after day they glided adown the tur- 
bulent river; 

Night after night, by their blazing fires, 
encamped on its borders. 

Now through rushing chutes, among green 
islands, where plimielike 90 

Cotton-trees nodded their shadowy crests, 
they swept with the current, 

Then emerged into broad lagoons, where 
silvery sand-bars 

Lay in the stream, and along the wimpling 
waves of their margin, 

Shining with snow - white plumes, large 
flocks of pelicans waded. 

Level the landscape grew, and along the 
shores of the river, 

Shaded by china-trees, in the midst of lux- 
ru'iant gardens, 

Stood the houses of planters, with negro- 
cabins and dove-cots. 

They were approaching the region where 
reigns perpetual summer. 

Where through the Golden Coast, and 
groves of orange and citron, 

Sweeps with majestic curve the river away 
to the eastward. 100 

They, too, swerved from their course ; and 
entering the Bayou of Plaque- 
mine, 

Soon were lost in a maze of sluggish and 
devious waters, 

Which, like a network of steel, extended in 
every direction. 

Over their heads the towering and tene- 
brous boughs of the cypress 

Met in a dusky arch, and trailing mosses' in 
mid-air 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



137 



Waved like banners that hang on the walls 
of ancient cathedrals. 

Deathlike the silence seemed, and un- 
broken, save by the herons 

Home to their roosts in the cedar-trees re- 
turning at sunset, 

Or by the owl, as he greeted the moon with 
demoniac laughter. 

Lovely the moonlight was as it glanced and 
gleamed on the water, 1 10 

Gleamed on the columns of cypress and 
cedar sustaining the arches, 

Down through whose broken vaults it fell 
as through chinks in a ruin. 

Dreamlike, and indistinct, and strange were 
all things around them; 

And o'er their spirits there came a feeling 
of wonder and sadness, — 

Strange forebodings of ill, unseen and that 
cannot be compassed. 

As, at the tramp of a horse's hoof on the 
turf of the prairies, 

Far in advance are closed the leaves of the 
shrinking mimosa, 

So, at the hoof-beats of fate, with sad fore- 
bodings of evil, 

Shrinks and closes the heart, ere the stroke 
of doom has attained it. 

But Evangeline's heart was sustained by a 
vision, that faintly 120 

Floated before her eyes, and beckoned her 
on through the. moonlight. 

It was the thought of her brain that as- 
sumed the shape of a phantom. 

Through those shadowy aisles had Gabriel 
wandered before her, 

And every stroke of the oar now brought 
him nearer and nearer. 

Then in his place, at the prow of the 
boat, rose one of the oarsmen, 

And, as a signal sound, if others like them 
peradventure 

Sailed on those gloomy and midnight 
streams, blew a blast on his bugle. 

Wild through the dark colonnades and cor- 
ridors leafy the blast rang, 

Breaking the seal of silence, and giving 
tongues to the forest. 

Soundless above them the banners of moss 
just stirred to the music. 130 

Multitudinous echoes awoke and died in 
the distance, 

Over the watery floor, and beneath the re- 
verberant branches; 



But not a voice replied; no answer came 
from the darkness; 

And, when the echoes had ceased, like a 
sense of pain was the silence. 

Then Evangeline slept; but the boatmen 
rowed through the midnight, 

Silent at times, then singing familiar Cana- 
dian boat-songs, 

Such as they sang of old on their own Aca- 
dian rivers, 

While through the night were heard the 
mysterious sounds of the desert, 

Far off, — indistinct, — as of wave or wind 
in the forest, 

Mixed with the whoop of the crane and 
the roar of the grim alligator. 140 

Thus ere another noon they emerged 
from the shades; and before them 

Lay, in the golden sun, the lakes of the 
Atchafalaya. 

Water-lilies hi myriads rocked on the slight 
undulations 

Made by the passing oars, and, resplendent 
in beauty, the lotus 

Lifted her golden crown above the heads 
of the boatmen. 

Faint was the air with the odorous breath 
of magnolia blossoms, 

And with the heat of noon; and numberless 
sylvan islands, 

Fragrant and thickly embowered with blos- 
soming hedges of roses, 

Near to whose shores they glided along, 
invited to slumber. 

Soon by the fairest of these their weary 
oars were suspended. 150 

Under the boughs of Wachita willows, that 
grew by the margin, 

Safely their boat was moored; and scat- 
tered about on the greensward, 

Tired with their midnight toil, the weary 
travellers slumbered. 

Over them vast and high extended the cope 
of a cedar. 

Swinging from its great arms, the trumpet- 
flower and the grapevine 

Hung their ladder of ropes aloft like the 
ladder of Jacob, 

On whose pendulous stairs the angels as- 
cending, descending, 

Were the swift humming-birds, that flitted 
from blossom to blossom. 

Such was the vision Evangeline saw as she 
slumbered beneath it. 



133 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Filled was her heart with love, and the 
dawn of an opening heaven 160 

Lighted her soul in sleep with the glory of 
regions celestial. 

Nearer, and ever nearer, among the 

numberless islands, 
Darted a light, swift boat, that sped away 

o'er the water, 
Urged on its course by the sinewy arms of 

hunters and trappers. 
Northward its prow was turned, to the land 

of the bison and beaver. 
At the helm sat a youth, with countenance 

thoughtful and careworn. 
Dark and neglected locks overshadowed his 

brow, and a sadness 
Somewhat beyond his years on his face was 

legibly written. 
Gabriel was it, who, weary with waiting, 

unhappy and restless, 
Sought in the Western wilds oblivion of 

self and of sorrow. i 7 o 

Swiftly they glided along, close under the 

lee of the island, 
But by the opposite bank, and behind a 

screen of palmettos, 
So that they saw not the boat, where it lay 

concealed in the willows ; 
All undisturbed by the dash of their oars, 

and unseen, were the sleepers. 
Angel of God was there none to awaken the 

slumbering maiden. 
Swiftly they glided away, like the shade of 

a cloud on the prairie. 
After the sound of their oars on the tholes 

had died in the distance, 
As from a magic trance the sleepers awoke, 

and the maiden 
Said with a sigh to the friendly priest, ' O 

Father Felician ! 
Something says in my heart that near me 

Gabriel wanders. 180 

Is it a foolish dream, an idle and vague 

superstition ? 
Or has an angel passed, and revealed the 

truth to my spirit ? ' 
Then, with a blush, she added, ' Alas for 

my credulous fancy ! 
Unto ears like thine such words as these 

have no meaning.' 
But made answer the reverend man, and he 

smiled as he answered, — 
' Daughter, thy words are not idle ; nor are 

they to me without meaning. 



Feeling is deep and still ; and the word that 

floats on the surface 
Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where 

the anchor is hidden. 
Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what 

the world calls illusions. 
Gabriel truly is near thee; for not far away 

to the southward, i 9 o 

On the banks of the Teche, are the towns 

of St. Maur and St. Martin. 
There the long-wandering bride shall be 

given again to her bridegroom, 
There the long-absent pastor regain his 

flock and his sheepfold. 
Beautiful is the land, with its prairies and 

forests of fruit-trees; 
Under the feet a garden of flowers, and the 

bluest of heavens 
Bending above, and resting its dome on the 

walls of the forest. 
They who dwell there have named it the 

Eden of Louisiana ! ' 

With these words of cheer they arose and 

continued their journey. 
Softly the evening came. The sun from 

the western horizon 
Like a magician extended his golden wand 

o'er the landscape; 200 

Twinkling vapors arose ; and sky and water 

and forest 
Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted 

and mingled together. 
Hanging between two sides, a cloud with 

edges of silver, 
Floated the boat, with its dripping oars, on 

the motionless water. 
Filled was Evangeline's heart with inex- 
pressible sweetness. 
Touched by the magic spell, the sacred 

fountains of feeling 
Glowed with the light of love, as the skies 

and waters around her. 
Then from a neighboring thicket the mock- 
ing-bird, wildest of singers, 
Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung 

o'er the water, 
Shook from his little throat such floods of 

delirious music, 210 

That the whole air and the woods and the 

waves seemed silent to listen. 
Plaintive at first were the tones and sad : . 

then soaring to madness 
Seemed they to follow or guide the revel 

of frenzied Bacchantes. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



139 



Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, 

low lamentation; 
Till, having gathered them all, he flung 

them abroad in derision, 
As when, after a storm, a gust of wind 

through the tree-tops 
Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal 

shower on the branches. 
With such a prelude as this, and hearts 

that throbbed with emotion, 
Slowly they entered the Teche, where it 

flows through the green Opelou- 

sas, 
And, through the amber air, above the 

crest of the woodland, 220 

Saw the column of smoke that arose from 

a neighboring dwelling; — 
Sounds of a horn they heard, and the dis- 
tant lowing of cattle. 



Near to the bank of the river, o'ershad- 
owed by oaks, from whose branches 

Garlands of Spanish moss and of mystic 
mistletoe flaunted, 

Such as the Druids cut down with golden 
hatchets at Yule-tide, 

Stood, secluded and still, the house of the 
herdsman. A garden 

Girded it round about with a belt of luxuri- 
ant blossoms, 

Filling the air with fragrance. The house 
itself was of timbers 

Hewn from the cypress-tree, and carefully 
fitted together. 

Large and low was the roof ; and on slender 
columns supported, 230 

Rose-wreathed, vine-encircled, a broad and 
spacious veranda, 

Haunt of the humming-bird and the bee, 
extended around it. 

At each end of the house, amid the flowers 
of the garden, 

Stationed the dove-cots were, as love's per- 
petual symbol, 

Scenes of endless wooing, and endless con- 
tentions of rivals. 

Silence reigned o'er the place. The line of 
shadow and sunshine 

Ran near the tops of the trees; but the 
house itself was in shadow, 

And from its chimney-top, ascending and 
slowly expanding 

Into the evening air, a thin blue column of 
smoke rose. 



In the rear of the house, from the garden 
gate, ran a pathway 240 

Through the great groves of oak to the 
skirts of the limitless prairie, 

Into whose sea of flowers the sun was 
slowly descending. 

Full in his track of light, like ships with 
shadowy canvas 

Hanging loose from their spars in a motion- 
less calm in the tropics, 

Stood a cluster of trees, with tangled cord- 
age of grape-vines. 

Just where the woodlands met the flow- 
ery surf of the prairie, 

Mounted upon his horse, with Spanish sad- 
dle and stirrups, 

Sat a herdsman, arrayed in gaiters and 
doublet of deerskin. 

Broad and brown was the face that from 
under the Spanish sombrero 

Gazed on the peaceful scene, with the 
lordly look of its master. 250 

Round about him were numberless herds 
of kine, that were grazing 

Quietly in the meadows, and breathing the 
vapory freshness 

That uprose from the river, and spread 
itself over the landscape. 

Slowly lifting the horn that hung at his side, 
and expanding 

Fully his broad, deep chest, he blew a blast, 
that resounded 

Wildly and sweet and far, through the still 
damp air of the evening. 

Suddenly out of the grass the long white 
horns of the cattle 

Rose bike flakes of foam on the adverse 
currents of ocean. 

Silent a moment they gazed, then bellow- 
ing rushed o'er the prairie, 

And the whole mass became a cloud, a 
shade in the distance. 260 

Then, as the herdsman turned to the house, 
through the gate of the garden 

Saw he the forms of the priest and the 
maiden advancing to meet him. 

Suddenly down from his horse he sprang in 
amazement, and forward 

Rushed with extended arms and exclama- 
tions of wonder; 

When they beheld his face, they recognized 
Basil the blacksmith. 

Hearty his welcome was, as he led his 
guests to the garden. 



140 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



There in an arbor of roses with endless 
question and answer 

Gave they vent to their hearts, and renewed 
their friendly embraces, 

Laughing and weeping by turns, or sitting 
silent and thoughtful. 

Thoughtful, for Gabriel came not; and now 
dark doubts and misgivings 270 

Stole o'er the maiden's heart; and Basil, 
somewhat embarrassed, 

Broke the silence and said, ' If you came 
by the Atchafalaya, 

How have you nowhere encountered my 
Gabriel's boat on the bayous ? ' 

Over Evangeline's face at the words of 
Basil a shade passed. 

Tears came into her eyes, and she said, 
with a tremulous accent, 

' Gone ? is Gabriel gone ? ' and, conceal- 
ing her face on his shoulder, 

All her o'erburdened heart gave way, and 
she wept and lamented. 

Then the good Basil said, — and his voice 
grew blithe as he said it, — 

' Be of good cheer, my child ; it is only to- 
day he departed. 

Foolish boy ! he has left me alone with my 
herds and my horses. 2S0 

Moody and restless grown, and tried and 
troubled, his spirit 

Could no longer endure the calm of this 
quiet existence, 

Thinking ever of thee, uncertain and sor- 
rowful ever, 

Ever silent, or speaking oidy of thee and 
his troubles, 

He at length had become so tedious to men 
and to maidens, 

Tedious even to me, that at length I be- 
thought me, and sent him 

Unto the town of Adayes to trade for mules 
with the Spaniards. 

Thence he will follow the Indian trails to 
the Ozark Mountains, 

Hunting for furs in the forests, on rivers 
trapping the beaver. 

Therefore be of good cheer; we will fol- 
low the fugitive lover; 290 

He is not far on his way, and the 
Fates and the streams are against 
him. 

Up and away to-morrow, and through the 
red dew of the morning 

We will follow him fast, and bring him 
back to his prison.' 



Then glad voices were heard, and up 
from the banks of the river, 

Borne aloft on his comrades' arms, came 
Michael the fiddler. 

Long under Basil's roof had he lived like a 
god on Olympus, 

Having no other care than dispensing 
music to mortals. 

Far renowned was he for his silver locks 
and his fiddle. 

' Long live Michael,' they cried, ' our brave 
Acadian minstrel ! ' 

As they bore him aloft in triumphal pro- 
cession; and straightway 300 

Father Felician advanced with Evangeline, 
greeting the old man 

Kindly and oft, and recalling the past, 
while Basil, enraptured, 

Hailed with hilarious joy his old compan- 
ions and gossips, 

Laughing loud and long, and embracing 
mothers and daughters. 

Much they marvelled to see the wealth of 
the ci-devant blacksmith, 

All his domains and his herds, and his pa- 
triarchal demeanor; 

Much they marvelled to hear his tales of 
the soil and the climate, 

And of the prairies, whose numberless 
herds were his who would take them ; 

Each one thought in his heart, that he, too, 
would go and do likewise. 

Thus they ascended the steps, and crossing 
the breezy veranda, 310 

Entered the hall of the house, where al- 
ready the supper of Basil 

Waited his late return; and they rested 
and feasted together. 

Over the joyous feast the sudden dark- 
ness descended. 

All was silent without, and, illuming the 
landscape with silver, 

Fair rose the dewy moon and the myriad 
stars; but within doors, 

Brighter than these, shone the faces of 
friends in the glimmering lamplight. 

Then from his station aloft, at the head of 
the table, the herdsman 

Poured forth his heart and his wine to- 
gether in endless profusion. 

Lighting his pipe, that was filled with sweet . 
Natchitoches tobacco, 

Thus he spake to his guests, who listened, 
and smiled as they listened: — 320 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



141 



' Welcome once more, my friends, who long 

have been friendless and homeless, 
Welcome once more to a home, that is 

better perchance than the old one ! 
Here no hungry winter congeals our blood 

like the rivers; 
Here no stony ground provokes the wrath 

of the farmer. 
Smoothly the ploughshare runs through the 

soil, as a keel through the water. 
All the year round the orange-groves are 

in blossom; and grass grows 
More in a single night than a whole Cana- 
dian summer. 
Here, too, numberless herds run wild and 

unclaimed in the prairies; 
Here, too, lands may be had for the asking, 

and forests of timber 
With a few blows of the axe are hewn and 

framed into houses. 330 

After your houses are built, and your fields 

are yellow with harvests, 
No King George of England shall drive 

you away from your homesteads, 
Burning your dwellings and barns, and 

stealing your farms and your cat- 
tle.' 
Speaking these words, he blew a wrathful 

cloud from his nostrils, 
While his huge, brown hand came thunder- 
ing down on the table, 
So that the guests all started; and Father 

Felician, astounded, 
Suddenly paused, with a pinch of snuff 

half-way to his nostrils. 
But the brave Basil resumed, and his 

words were milder and gayer: — 
' Only beware of the fever, my friends, 

beware of the fever ! 
For it is not like that of our cold Acadian 

climate, 340 

Cured by wearing a spider hung round 

one's neck in a nutshell ! ' 
Then there were voices heard at the door, 

and footsteps approaching 
Sounded upon the stairs and the floor of 

the breezy veranda. 
It was the neighboring Creoles and small 

Acadian planters, 
Who had been summoned all to the house 

of Basil the Herdsman. 
Merry the meeting was of ancient com- 
rades and neighbors: 
Friend clasped friend in his arms; and they 

who before were as strangers, 



Meeting in exile, became straightway as 
friends to each other, 

Drawn by the gentle bond of a common 
country together. 

But in the neighboring hall a strain of mu- 
sic, proceeding 350 

From the accordant strings of Michael's 
melodious fiddle, 

Broke up all further speech. Away, like 
children delighted, 

All things forgotten beside, they gave them- 
selves to the maddening 

Whirl of the giddy dance, as it swept and 
swayed to the music, 

Dreamlike, with beaming eyes and the rush 
of fluttering garments. 

Meanwhile, apart, at the head of the 
hall, the priest and the herdsman 

Sat, conversing together of past and present 
and future; 

While Evangeline stood bike one entranced, 
for within her 

Olden memories rose, and loud in the midst 
of the music 

Heard she the sound of the sea, and an ir- 
repressible sadness 360 

Came o'er her heart, and unseen she stole 
forth into the garden. 

Beautiful was the night. Behind the black 
wall of the forest, 

Tipping its summit with silver, arose the 
moon. On the river 

Fell here and there through the branches a 
tremulous gleam of the moonlight, 

Like the sweet thoughts of love on a dark- 
ened and devious spirit. 

Nearer and round about her, the manifold 
flowers of the garden 

Poured out their souls in odors, that were 
their prayers and confessions 

Unto the night, as it went its way, like a 
silent Carthusian. 

Fuller of fragrance than they, and as heavy 
with shadows and night-dews, 

Hung the heart of the maiden. The calm 
and the magical moonlight 370 

Seemed to inundate her soul with indefin- 
able longings, 

As, through the garden-gate, and beneath 
the shade of the oak-trees, 

Passed she along the path to the edge of 
the measureless prairie. 

Silent it lay, with a silvery haze upon it, 
and fire-flies 



142 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Gleamed and floated away in mingled and 

infinite numbers. 
Over her head the stars, the thoughts of 

God in the heavens, 
Shone on the eyes of man, who had ceased 

to marvel and worship, 
Save when a blazing comet was seen on the 

walls of that temple, 
As if a hand had appeared and written 

upon them, ' Upharsin.' 
And the soul of the maiden, between the 

stars and the fire-flies, 3S0 

Wandered alone, and she cried, ' O Ga- 
briel ! O my beloved ! 
Art thou so near unto me, and yet I cannot 

behold thee ? 
Art thou so near tmto me, and yet thy voice 

does not reach me ? 
Ah ! how often thy feet have trod this path 

to the prairie ! 
Ah ! how often thine eyes have looked on 

the woodlands around me ! 
Ah ! how often beneath this oak, returning 

from labor, 
Thou hast lain down to rest, and to dream 

of me in thy slumbers ! 
When shall these eyes behold, these arms 

be folded about thee ? ' 
Loud and sudden and near the notes of a 

whippoorwill sounded 
Like a flute in the woods ; and anon, through 

the neighboring thickets, 390 

Farther and farther away it floated and 

dropped into silence. 
' Patience ! ' whispered the oaks from orac- 
ular caverns of darkness: 
And, from the moonlit meadow, a sigh re- 
sponded, ' To-morrow ! ' 

Bright rose the sun next day ; and all the 

flowers of the garden 
Bathed his shining feet with their tears, 

and anointed his tresses 
With the delicious balm that they bore in 

their vases of crystal. 
' Farewell ! ' said the priest, as he stood at 

the shadowy threshold; 
' See that you bring us the Prodigal Son 

from his fasting and famine, 
And, too, the Foolish Virgin, who slept when 

the bridegroom was coming.' 
' Farewell ! ' answered the maiden, and, 

smiling, with Basil descended 400 
Down to the river's brink, where the boat- 
men already were waiting. 



Thus beginning their journey with morn- 
ing, and sunshine, and gladness, 
Swiftly they followed the flight of him who 

was speeding before them, 
Blown by the blast of fate like a dead leaf 

over the desert. 
Not that day, nor the next, nor yet the day 

that succeeded, 
Found they the trace of his course, in lake 

or forest or river, 
Nor, after many days, had they found him ; 

but vague and uncertain 
Rumors alone were their guides through a 

wild and desolate country; 
Till, at the little inn of the Spanish town of 

Adayes, 
Weary and worn, they alighted, and learned 

from the garrulous landlord, 410 

That on the day before, with horses and 

guides and companions, 
Gabriel left the village, and took the road 

of the prairies. 



Far in the West there lies a desert land, 

where the mountains 
Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty 

and luminous summits. 
Down from their jagged, deep ravines, 

where the gorge, like a gate- 
way, 
Opens a passage rude to the wheels of the 

emigrant's wagon, 
Westward the Oregon flows and the Walle- 

way and Owyhee. 
Eastward, with devious course, among the 

Wind-river Mountains, 
Through the Sweet-water Valley precipi- 
tate leaps the Nebraska; 
And to the south, from Fontaine-qui-bout 

and the Spanish sierras, 420 

Fretted with sands and rocks, and swept by 

the wind of the desert, 
Numberless torrents, with ceaseless sound, 

descend to the ocean, 
Like the great chords of a harp, in loud and 

solemn vibrations. 
Spreading between these streams are the 

wondrous, beautiful prairies; 
Billowy bays of grass ever rolling in shadow 

and sunshine, 
Bright with luxuriant clusters of roses and 

purple amorphas. 
Over them wandered the buffalo herds, and 

the elk and the roebuck; 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



i43 



Over them wandered the wolves, and herds 
of riderless horses; 

Fires that blast and blight, and winds that 
are weary with travel; 

Over them wander the scattered tribes of 
Ishmael's children, 430 

Staining the desert with blood; and above 
their terrible war-trails 

Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, 
the vulture, 

Like the implacable soul of a chieftain 
slaughtered in battle, 

By invisible stairs ascending and scaling 
the heavens. 

Here and there rise smokes from the 
camps of these savage maraud- 
ers; 

Here and there rise groves from the mar- 
gins of swift-running rivers; 

And the grim, taciturn bear, the anchorite 
monk of the desert, 

Climbs down their dark ravines to dig for 
roots by the brook-side, 

And over all is the sky, the clear and crys- 
talline heaven, 

Like the protecting hand of God inverted 
above them. 440 

Into this wonderful land, at the base of 

the Ozark Mountains, 
Gabriel far had entered, with hunters and 

trappers behind him. 
Day after day, with their Indian guides, the 

maiden and Basil 
Followed his flying steps, and thought each 

day to o'ertake him. 
Sometimes they saw, or thought they saw, 

the smoke of his camp-fire 
Rise in the morning air from the distant 

plain; but at nightfall, 
When they had reached the place they 

found only embers and ashes. 
And, though their hearts were sad at times 

and their bodies were weary, 
Hope still guided them on, as the magic 

Fata Morgana 
Showed them her lakes of light, that re- 
treated and vanished before them. 450 

Once, as they sat by their evening fire, 

there silently entered 
Into their little camp an Indian woman, 

whose features 
Wore deep traces of sorrow, and patience 

as great as her sorrow. 



She was a Shawnee woman returning home 

to her people, 
From the far-off hunting-grounds of the 

cruel Camanches, 
Where her Canadian husband, a Coureur- 

des-Bois, had been murdered. 
Touched were their hearts at her story, 

and warmest and friendliest wel- 
come 
Gave they, with words of cheer, and she sat 

and feasted among them 
On the buffalo-meat and the venison cooked 

on the embers. 
But when their meal was done, and Basil 

and all his companions, 460 

Worn with the long day's march and the 

chase of the deer and the bison, 
Stretched themselves on the ground, and 

slept where the quivering fire-light 
Flashed on their swarthy cheeks, and their 

forms wrapped up in their blankets, 
Ther at the door of Evangeline's tent she 

sat and repeated 
Slowly, with soft, low voice, and the charm 

of her Indian accent, 
All the tale of her love, with its pleasures, 

and pains, and reverses. 
Much Evangeline wept at the tale, and to 

know that another 
Hapless heart like her own had loved and 

had been disappointed. 
Moved to the depths of her soul by pity 

and woman's compassion, 
Yet in her sorrow pleased that one who 

had suffered was near her, 470 

She in turn related her love and all its dis- 
asters. 
Mute with wonder the Shawnee sat, and 

when she had ended 
Still was mute; but at length, as if a mys- 
terious horror 
Passed through her brain, she spake, and 

repeated the tale of the Mo wis; 
Mowis, the bridegroom of snow, who won 

and wedded a maiden, 
But, when the morning came, arose and 

passed from the wigwam, 
Fading and melting away and dissolving 

into the sunshine, 
Till she beheld him no more, though she 

followed far into the forest. 
Then, in those sweet, low tones, that seemed 

like a weird incantation, 
Told she the tale of the fair Lilinau, who 

was wooed by a phantom, 480 



144 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



That through the pines o'er her father's 
lodge, in the hush of the twilight, 

Breathed like the evening wind, and whis- 
pered love to the niaiden, 

Till she followed his green and waving 
plume through the forest, 

And nevermore returned, nor was seen 
again by her people. 

Silent with wonder and strange surprise, 
Evangeline listened 

To the soft flow of her magical words, till 
the region around her 

Seemed like enchanted ground, and her 
swarthy guest the enchantress. 

Slowly over the tops of the Ozark Moun- 
tains the moon rose, 

Lighting the little tent, and with a myste- 
rious splendor 

Touching the sombre leaves, and embracing 
and filling the woodland. 49 o 

With a delicious sound the brook rushed 
by, and the branches 

Swayed and sighed overhead in scarcely 
audible whispers. 

Filled with the thoughts of love was Evan- 
geline's heart, but a secret, 

Subtile sense crept in of pain and indefinite 
terror, 

As the cold, poisonous snake creeps into the 
nest of the swallow. 

It was no earthly fear. A breath from the 
region of spirits 

Seemed to float in the air of night; and she 
felt for a moment 

That, like the Indian maid, she, too, was 
pursuing a phantom. 

With this thought she slept, and the fear 
and the phantom had vanished. 

Early upon the morrow the march was 
resumed; and the Shawnee 500 

Said, as they journeyed along, ' On the 
western slope of these mountains 

Dwells in his little village the Black Robe 
chief of the Mission. 

Much he teaches the people, and tells them 
of Mary and Jesus. 

Loud laugh their hearts with joy, and weep 
with pain, as they bear him.' 

Then, with a sudden and secret emotion, 
Evangeline answered, 

' Let us go to the Mission, for there good 
tidings await us ! ' 

Thither they turned their steeds; and be- 
hind a spur of the mountains, 



Just as the sun went down, they heard a 
murmur of voices, 

And in a meadow green and broad, by the 
bank of a river, 

Saw the tents of the Christians, the tents 
of the Jesuit Mission. 510 

Under a towering oak, that stood in the 
midst of the village, 

Knelt the Black Robe chief with his chil- 
dren. A crucifix fastened 

High on the trunk of the tree, and over- 
shadowed by grapevines, 

Looked with its agonized face on the multi- 
tude kneeling beneath it. 

This was their rural chapel. Aloft, through 
the intricate arches 

Of its aerial roof, arose the chant of their 
vespers, 

Mingling its notes with the soft susurrus 
and sighs of the branches. 

Silent, with heads uncovered, the travellers, 
nearer approaching, 

Knelt on the swarded floor, and joined in 
the evening devotions. 

But when the service was done, and the 
benediction had fallen 520 

Forth from the hands of the priest, like 
seed from the hands of the sower, 

Slowly the reverend man advanced to the 
strangers, and bade them 

Welcome ; and when they replied, he smiled 
with benignant expression, 

Hearing the homelike sounds of his mother- 
tongue in the forest, 

And, with words of kindness, conducted 
them into his wigwam. 

There upon mats and skins they reposed, 
and on cakes of the maize-ear 

Feasted, and slaked their thirst from the 
water-gourd of the teacher. 

Soon was their story told; and the priest 
with solemnity answered: — 

'Not six suns have risen and set since 
Gabriel, seated 

On this mat by my side, where now the 
maiden reposes, 530 

Told me this same sad tale ; then arose and 
continued his journey ! ' 

Soft was the voice of the priest, and he 
spake with an accent of kind- 
ness; 

But on Evangeline's heart fell his words as 
in winter the snow-flakes 

Fall into some lone nest from which the 
birds have departed. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



[ 45 



' Far to the north he has gone,' continued 
the priest; ' but hi autumn, 

When the chase is done, will return again 
to the Mission.' 

Then Evangeline said, and her voice was 
meek and submissive, 

' Let me remain with thee, for my soul is 
sad and afflicted.' 

So seemed it wise and well unto all; and 
betimes on the morrow, 

Mounting his Mexican steed, with his In- 
dian guides and companions, 540 

Homeward Basil returned, and Evangeline 
stayed at the Mission. 

Slowly, slowly, slowly the days succeeded 
each other, — 

Days and weeks and months ; and the fields 
of maize that were springing 

Green from the ground when a stranger 
she came, now waving above 
her, 

Lifted their slender shafts, with leaves in- 
terlacing, and forming 

Cloisters for mendicant crows and granaries 
pillaged by squirrels. 

Then in the golden weather the maize was 
husked, and the maidens 

Blushed at each blood-red ear, for that be- 
tokened a lover, 

But at the crooked laughed, and called it a 
thief in the corn-field. 

Even the blood -red ear to Evangeline 
brought not her lover. 5 ;o 

'Patience!' the priest would say; 'have 
faith, and thy prayer will be an- 
swered ! 

Look at this vigorous plant that lifts its 
head from the meadow, 

See how its leaves are turned to the north, 
as true as the magnet; 

This is the compass-flower, that the finger 
of God has planted 

Here in the houseless wild, to direct the 
traveller's journey 

Over the sea-like, pathless, limitless waste 
of the desert. 

Such in the soul of man is faith. The blos- 
soms of passion, 

Gay and luxuriant flowers, are brighter and 
fuller of fragrance, 

But they beguile us, and lead us astray, and 
their odor is deadly. 

Only this humble plant can guide us here, 
and hereafter 560 



Crown us with asphodel flowers, that are 
wet with the dews of nepenthe.' 

So came the autumn, and passed, and the 

winter, — yet Gabriel came not; 
Blossomed the opening spring, and the notes 

of the robin and bluebird 
Sounded sweet upon wold and in wood, yet 

Gabriel came not. 
But on the breath of the summer winds a 

rumor was wafted 
Sweeter than song of bird, or hue or odor 

of blossom. 
Far to the north and east, it said, in the 

Michigan forests, 
Gabriel had his lodge by the banks of the 

Saginaw River. 
And, with returning guides, that sought the 

lakes of St. Lawrence, 
Saying a sad farewell, Evangeline went 

from the Mission. 570 

When over weary ways, by long and peril- 
ous marches, 
She had attained at length the depths of 

the Michigan forests, 
Found she the hunter's lodge deserted and 

fallen to ruin ! 

Thus did the long sad years glide on. 
and in seasons and places 

Divers and distant far was seen the wan- 
dering maiden ; — 

Now in the Tents of Grace of the meek 
Moravian Missions, 

Now in the noisy camps and the battle-fields 
of the army, 

Now in secluded hamlets, in towns and 
populous cities. 

Like a phantom she came, and passed away 
unremembered. 

Fair was she and young, when in hope be- 
gan the long journey; 580 

Faded was she and old, when in disappoint- 
ment it ended. 

Each succeeding year stole something away 
from her beauty, 

Leaving behind it, broader and deeper, the 
gloom and the shadow. 

Then there appeared and spread faint 
streaks of gray o'er her fore- 
head, 

Dawn of another life, that broke o'er her 
earthly horizon, 

As in the eastern sky the first faint streaks 
of the morning. 



146 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



In that delightful land which is washed by 

the Delaware waters, 
Guarding in sylvan shades the name of 

Penn the apostle, 
Stands on the banks of its beautiful stream 

the city he founded. 
There all the air is balm, and the peach is 

the emblem of beauty, 59 o 

And the streets still reecho the names of 

the trees of the forest, 
As if they fain would appease the Dryads 

whose haimts they molested. 
There from the troubled sea had Evange- 

bne landed, an exile, 
Finding among the children of Penn a home 

and a country. 
There old Ren£ Leblanc had died; and 

when he departed, 
Saw at his side only one of all his hundred 

descendants. 
Something at least there was in the friendly 

streets of the city. 
Something that spake to her heart, and 

made her no longer a stranger; 
And her ear was pleased with the Thee and 

Thou of the Qiiakers, 
For it recalled the past, the old Acadian 

country, 600 

Where all men were equal, and all were 

brothers and sisters. 
So, when the fruitless search, the disap- 
pointed endeavor, 
Ended, to recommence no more upon earth, 

uncomplaining, 
Thither, as leaves to the light, were 

turned her thoughts and her foot- 
steps. 
As from the mountain's top the rainy mists 

of the morning 
Roll away, and afar we behold the land- 
scape below us, 

1 I fear that I cannot establish by any historic 
proof the identity of the old building you speak of in 
your kind letter, with that in which Evangeline found 
Gabriel. A great many years ago, strolling through 
the streets of Philadelphia, I passed an old almshouse 
within high brick walls, and with trees growing in its 
enclosure. The quiet and seclusion of the place . . . 
impressed me deeply. This was long before the poem 
was written and before I had heard the tradition on 
which it was founded. But remembering the place, I 
chose it for the final scene. (Longfellow, in a let- 
ter to Miss E. S. Phelps, March 12, 1876 ; Life, vol. iii, 
pp. 259, 260.) 

This visit to Philadelphia was made fifty years be- 
fore, in IS'26, when Longfellow was waiting at New 
York for the ship which was to take him on his first 
trip to Europe. 



Sim-illumined, with shining rivers and cities 

and hamlets, 
So fell the mists from her mind, and she 

saw the world far below her, 
Dark no longer, but all illumined with love ; 

and the pathway 
Which she had climbed so far, lying smooth 

and fair in the distance. 610 

Gabriel was not forgotten. Within her 

heart was his image, 
Clothed in the beauty of love and youth, as 

last she beheld him, 
Only more beautiful made by his death- like 

silence and absence. 
Into her thoughts of him time entered not, 

for it was not. 
Over him years had no power; he was not 

changed, but transfigured; 
He had become to her heart as one who is 

dead, and not absent; 
Patience and abnegation of self, and devo- 
tion to others, 
This was the lesson a life of trial and sor- 
row had taught her. 
So was her love diffused, but, like to some 

odorous spices, 
Suffered no waste nor loss, though filling 

the air with aroma. 620 

Other hope had she none, nor wish in life, 

but to follow 
Meekly, with reverent steps, the sacred 

feet of her Saviour. 
Thus many years she lived as a Sister of 

Mercy; frequenting 
Lonely and wretched roofs in the crowded 

lanes of the city, 
Where distress and want concealed them- 
selves from the sunlight, 
Where disease and sorrow in garrets lan- 
guished neglected. 
Night after night, when the world was 

asleep, as the watchman repeated 
Loud, through the gusty streets, that all 

was well in the city. 
High at some lonely window he saw the 

light of her taper. 
Day after day, in the gray of the dawn, as 

slow through the suburbs 630 

Plodded the German farmer, with flowers 

and fruits for the market, 
Met he that meek, pale face, returning home 

from its watchings. 

Then it came to pass that a pestilence 
fell on the city, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



!47 



Presaged by wondrous signs, and mostly by 

flocks of wild pigeons, 
Darkening the sun in t their flight, with 

naught in their craws but an acorn. 
And, as the tides of the sea arise in the 

month of September, 
Flooding some silver stream, till it spreads 

to a lake in the meadow, 
So death flooded life, and, o'erflowing its 

natural margin, 
Spread to a brackish lake, the silver stream 

of existence. 
Wealth had no power to bribe, nor beauty 

to charm, the oppressor; 640 

But all perished alike beneath the scourge 

of his anger; — 
Only, alas ! the poor, who had neither 

friends nor attendants, 
Crept away to die in the almshouse, home 

of the homeless. 
Then in the suburbs it stood, in the midst 

of meadows and woodlands; — 
Now the city surrounds it; but still, with 

its gateway and wicket 
Meek, in the midst of splendor, its humble 

walls seemed to echo 
Softly the words of the Lord: 'The poor 

ye always have with you.' 
Thither, by night and by day, came the 

Sister of Mercy. The dying 
Looked up into her face, and thought, in- 
deed, to behold there 
Gleams of celestial light encircle her fore- 
head with splendor, 650 
Such as the artist paints o'er the brows of 

saints and apostles, 
Or such as hangs by night o'er a city seen 

at a distance. 
Unto their eyes it seemed the lamps of the 

city celestial, 
Into whose shining gates erelong their 

spirits would enter. 

Thus, on a Sabbath morn, through the 
streets, deserted and silent, 

Wending her quiet way, she entered the 
door of the almshouse. 

Sweet on the summer air was the odor of 
flowers in the garden; 

And she paused on her way to gather the 
fairest among them, 

That the dying once more might rejoice in 
their fragrance and beauty. 

Then, as she mounted the stairs to the cor- 
ridors, cooled by the eas<>wind, 660 



Distant and soft on her ear fell the 

chimes from the belfry of Christ 

Church, 
While, intermingled with these, across the 

meadows were wafted 
Sounds of psalms, that were sung by the 

Swedes in their church at Wicaco. 
Soft as descending wings fell the calm of 

the hour on her spirit: 
Something within her said, ' At length thy 

trials are ended; ' 
And, with light in her looks, she entered 

the chambers of sickness. 
Noiselessly moved about the assiduous, 

careful attendants, 
Moistening the feverish lip, and the aching 

brow, and in silence 
Closing the sightless eyes of the dead, and 

concealing their faces, 
Where on their pallets they lay, like drifts 

of snow by the roadside. 670 

Many a languid head, upraised as Evange- 
line entered, 
Turned on its pillow of pain to gaze while 

she passed, for her presence 
Fell on their hearts like a ray of the sun 

on the walls of a prison. 
And, as she looked around, she saw how 

Death, the consoler, 
Laying his hand upon many a heart, had 

healed it forever. 
Many familiar forms had disappeared in 

the night time; 
Vacant their places were, or filled already 

by strangers. 

Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a 

feeling of wonder, 
Still she stood, with her colorless lips 

apart, while a shudder 
Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, 

the flowerets dropped from her fin- 
gers, 680 
And from her eyes and cheeks the light and 

bloom of the morning. 
Then there escaped from her lips a cry of 

such terrible anguish, 
That the dying heard it, and started np 

from their pillows. 
On the pallet before her was stretched the 

form of an old man. 
Long, and thin, and gray were the locks 

that shaded his temples; 
But, as he lay in the morning light, his 

face for a moment 



14S 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Seemed to assume once more the forms of 

its earlier manhood; 
So are wont to be changed the faces of 

those who a re living. 
Hot and red on his lips stfll burned the 

flush of the fever, 
As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had 

besprinkled its portals, 690 

That the Angel of Death might see the 

sign, and pass over. 
Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and 

his spirit exhausted 
Seemed to be sinking down through infinite 

depths in the darkness, 
Darkness of slumber and death, forever 

sulking and sinking. 
Then through those realms of shade, in 

multiplied re verberations. 
Heard he that cry of pain, and through 

the hush that succeeded 
Whispered a gentle voice, in accents tender 

and saint-like, 
1 Gabriel ! O my beloved ! ' and died away 

into silence, 
Then he beheld, in a dream, once more 

the home of his childhood; 
Green Acadian meadows, with sylvan rivers 

among them, 7 co 

Village, and mountain, and woodlands; and, 

walking under their shadow, 
As in the days of her youth, Evangeline 

rose in his vision. 
Tears came into his eyes; and as slowly he 

lifted his eyelids, 
Vanished the vision away, but Evangeline 

knelt by his bedside. 
Vainly he strove to whisper her name, for 

the accents unuttered 
Died on his lips, and their motion revealed 

what his tongue would have spoken. 
Vainly he strove to rise; and Evangeline, 

kneeling beside him, 
Kissed his dying lips, and laid his head on 

her bosom. 
Sweet was the light of his eyes ; but it sud- 
denly sank into darkness, 
As when a lamp is blown out by a gust of 

wind at a casement. 7 io 

All was ended now, the hope, and the 
fear, and the sorrow, 



All the aching of heart, the restless, unsat- 
istied longing, 

All the dull, deep pain, and constant an- 
guish of patience ! 

And, as she pressed once more the lifeless 
head to her bosom. 

Meekly she bowed her own, and murmured, 
' Father, 1 thank thee ! ' 



Still stands the forest primeval; but far 
away from its shadow, 

Side by side, in their nameless graves, the 
lovers are sleeping. 

Under the humble walls of the little Catho- 
lic churchyard. 

In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown 
and unnoticed. 

Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flow- 
ing beside them, 720 

Thousands of throbbing hearts, where 
theirs are at rest and forever, 

Thousands of aching brains, where theirs 
no longer are busy, 

Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs 
have ceased from their labors, 

Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have 
completed their journey 1 

Still stands the forest primeval; but un- 
der the shade of its branches 

Dwells another race, with other customs 
and language. 

Only along the shore of the mournful and 
misty Atlantic 

Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fa- 
thers from exile 

Wandered back to their native land to die 
in its bosom. 

In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the 
loom are still busy; 730 

Maidens still wear their Norman caps and 
their kirtles of homespun, 

And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's 
story, 

While from its rocky caverns the deep- 
voiced, neighboring ocean 

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers 
the wail of the forest. 

1S45-47. 1847. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



149 



WANDERER'S NIGHT-SONGS 

(WANDREKS NACHTLIED AND EIN 
GLEICHES) 

FROM GOETHE 



Thou that from the heavens art, 
Every pain and sorrow stillest, 
And the doubly wretched heart 
Douhly witli refreshment fillest, 
I am weary with contending ! 
Why this rapture and unrest ? 
Peace descending 
Come, ah, come into my breast ! 



O'er all the hill-tops 

Is quiet now, 

In all the tree-tops 

Hearest thou 

Hardly a hreath; 

The birds are asleep in the trees: 

Wait; soon like these 

Thou too shalt rest. 



1846, 1870. 



1870. 



THE BUILDERS 

All are architects of Fate, 

Working in these walls of Time; 

Some with massive deeds and great, 
Some with ornaments of rhyme. 

Nothing useless is, or low; 

Each thing in its place is best; 
And what seems but idle show 

Strengthens and supports the rest. 

For the structure that we raise, 

Time is with materials filled; 1 

Our to-days and yesterdays 

Are the blocks with which we build. 

Truly shape and fashion these; 

Leave no yawning gaps between; 
Think not, because no man sees, 

Such things will remain unseen. 

In the elder days of Art, 

Builders wrought with greatest care 
Each minute and unseen part; 

For the Gods see everywhere. ; 



Let us do our work as well, 
Both the unseen and the seen; 

Make the house, where Gods may dwell, 
Beautiful, entire, and clean. 

Else our lives are incomplete, 
Standing in these walls of Time, 

Broken stairways, where the feet 
Stumble as they seek to climb. 

Build to-day, then, strong and sure, 
With a firm and ample base; 30 

And ascending and secure 

Shall to-morrow find its place. 

Thus alone can we attain 

To those turrets, where the eye 

Sees the world as one vast plain, 
And one boundless reach of sky. 
1846. 1849. 



RESIGNATION 1 

There is no flock, however watched and 
tended, 

But one dead lamb is there ! 
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 

But has one vacant cliair ! 

The air is full of farewells to the dying, 

And mournings for the dead; 
The heart of Rachel, for her children cry- 
ing, 

Will not be comforted ! 

Let us be patient ! These severe afflictions 
Not from the ground arise, 2 10 

But oftentimes celestial benedictions 
Assume this dark disguise. 

We see but dimly through the mists and 
vapors; 

Amid these earthly damps 
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers 

May be heaven's distant lamps. 

1 See the Life ofLonafsllow,YOiL ii, pp. 120-131, on the 
death of Fanny Longfellow and her burial, September 
11 and 12. 1848; and the entry in Longfellow's Journal 
a month later, November 12 : ' An inappeasable longing 
to see her comes over me at times, which I can hardly 
control.' 

See also the letter from Edward Everett, Life, vol. 
ii, p. 165. 

2 ' Although affliction cometli not forth of the dust, 
neither doth trouble spring out of the ground.' Job 
v, 6. (Quoted by Lonofkm.ow.j 



i5° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



There is no Death ! What seems so is tran- 
sition; 

This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life elysian, 

Whose portal we call Death. 20 

She is not dead, — the child of our affec- 
tion, — 
But gone imto that school 
Where she no longer needs our poor protec- 
tion, 
And Christ himself doth rule. 

In that great cloister's stillness and seclu- 
sion, 
By guardian angels led, 
Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollu- 
tion, 
She lives whom we call dead. 

Day after day we think what she is doing 
In those bright realms of air; 30 

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, 
Behold her grown more fair. 

Thus do we walk with her, and keep un- 
broken 
The bond which nature gives, 
Thinking that our remembrance, though 
unspoken, 
May reach her where she lives. 

Not as a child shall we again behold her; 

For when with raptures wild 
In our embraces we again enfold her, 

She will not be a child; 40 

But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion, 

Clothed with celestial grace; 
And beautiful with all the soul's expansion 

Shall we behold her face. 

And though at times impetuous with emo- 
tion 
And anguish long suppressed, 
The swelling heart heaves moaning like the 
ocean, 
That cannot be at rest, — 

We will be patient, and assuage the feel- 
ing 

We may not wholly stay; 50 

By silence sanctifying, not concealing, 

The grief that must have way. 
1848. 1849. 



CHILDREN 1 

Come to me, O ye children ! 

For I hear you at your play, 
And the questions that perplexed me 

Have vanished quite away. 

Ye open the eastern windows, 

That look towards the sun, 
Where thoughts are singing swallows 

And the brooks of morning rim. 

In your hearts are the birds and the sun- 
shine, 

In your thoughts the brooklet's flow, 10 
But in mine is the wind of Autumn 

And the first fall of the snow. 

Ah ! what would the world be to us 
If the children were no more ? 

We should dread the desert behind us 
Worse than the dark before. 

What the leaves are to the forest, 

With light and air for food, 
Ere their sweet and tender juices 

Have been hardened into wood, — 20 

That to the world are children; 

Through them it feels the glow 
Of a brighter and sunnier climate 

Than reaches the trunks below. 

Come to me, O ye children ! 

And whisper in my ear 
What the birds and the winds are singing: 

In your sunny atmosphere. 

For what are all our contrivings, 

And the wisdom of our books, 30 

When compared with your caresses, 
And the gladness of your looks ? 

Ye are better than all the ballads 

That ever were sung or said; 
For ye are living poems, 

And all the rest axe dead. 
1849. (1858.) 

GASPAR BECERRA 

By his evening fire the artist 
Pondered o'er his secret shame; 

1 See note on ' The Children's Hour : ' and the Life 
of Longfellow, vol. ii, pp. 1SS, 1S9, 3TC, 390-393. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



iSi 



Baffled, weary, and disheartened, 

Still he mused, and dreamed of fame. 

'T was an image of the Virgin 
That had tasked his utmost skill; 

But, alas ! his fair ideal 

Vanished and escaped him still. 

From a distant Eastern island 

Had the precious wood been brought; 

Day and night the anxious master 
At his toil untiring wrought; 

Till, discouraged and desponding, 

Sat he now in shadows deep, 
And the day's humiliation 

Found oblivion in sleep. 

Then a voice cried, ' Rise, O master ! 

From the burning brand of oak 
Shape the thought that stirs within thee ! ' — 

And the startled artist woke, — 

Woke, and from the smoking embers 
Seized and quenched the glowing wood; 

And therefrom he carved an image, 
And he saw that it was good. 

thou sculptor, painter, poet ! 

Take this lesson to thy heart: 
That is best which lieth nearest; 

Shape from that thy work of art. 
1849. 1849. 



THE BUILDING OF THE SHIP 

' Build me straight, O worthy Master ! 

Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel, 
That shall laugh at all disaster, 

And with wave and whirlwind wrestle ! ' 

The merchant's word 

Delighted the Master heard; 

For his heart was in his work, and the heart 

Giveth grace unto every Art. 

A quiet smile played round his lips, 

As the eddies and dimples of the tide 10 

Play round the bows of ships 

That steadily at anchor ride. 

And with a voice that was full of glee, 

He answered, ' Erelong we will launch 

A vessel as goodly, and strong, and stanch, 

As ever weathered a wintry sea ! ' 

And first with nicest skill and art, 



Perfect and finished in every part, 
A little model the Master wrought, 
Which should be to the larger plan 20 

What the child is to the man, 
Its counterpart in miniature ; 
That with a hand more swift and sure 
The greater labor might be brought 
To answer to his inward thought. 
And as he labored, his mind ran o'er 
The various ships that were built of yore, 
And above them all, and strangest of all 
Towered the Great Harry, 1 crank and tall, 
Whose picture was hanging on the wall, 30 
With bows and stern raised high in air, 
And balconies hanging here and there, 
And signal lanterns and flags afloat, 
And eight round towers, like those that 

frown 
From some old castle, looking down 
Upon the drawbridge and the moat. 
And he said with a smile, ' Our ship, I wis, 
Shall be of another form than this ! ' 
It was of another form, indeed; 
Built for freight, and yet for speed, 40 

A beautiful and gallant craft; 
Broad in the beam, that the stress of the 

blast, 
Pressing down upon sail and mast, 
Might not the sharp bows overwhelm ; 
Broad in the beam, but sloping aft 
With graceful curve and slow degrees, 
That she might be docile to the helm, 
And that the currents of parted seas, 
Closing behind, with mighty force, 
Might aid and not impede her course. 50 

In the ship-yard stood the Master, 
With the model of the vessel, 
That should laugh at all disaster, 
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle ! 

Covering many a rood of ground, 

Lay the timber piled around; 

Timber of chestnut, and elm, and oak, 

And scattered here and there, with these, 

The knarred and crooked cedar knees ; 

Brought from regions far away, 60 

From Pascagoula's sunny bay, 

And the banks of the roaring Roanoke ! 

Ah ! what a wondrous thing it is 

To note how many wheels of toil 

1 There was an English warship of this name under 
Henry VII, and another, which Longfellow here de- 
scribes, under Henry VIII. See note in the Riverside 
Literature Series. 



!52 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



One thought, one word, can set in motion ! 
There 's not a ship that sails the ocean, 
But every climate, every soil, 
Must bring its tribute, great or small, 
And help to build the wooden wall ! 

The sun was rising o'er the sea, 70 

And long the level shadows lay, 

As if they, too, the beams would be 

Of some great, airy argosy, 

Framed and launched in a single day. 

That silent architect, the sun, 

Had hewn and laid them every one, 

Ere the work of man was yet begun. 

Beside the Master, when he spoke, 

A youth, against an anchor leaning, 

Listened, to catch his slightest meaning, 80 

Only the long waves, as they broke 

In ripples on the pebbly beach, 

Interrupted the old man's speech. 

Beautiful they were, in sooth, 

The old man and the fiery youth ! 

The old man, in whose busy brain 

Many a ship that sailed the main 

Was modelled o'er and o'er again; 

The fiery youth, who was to be 

The heir of his dexterity, 9 o 

The heir of his house, and his daughter's 

hand, 
When he had built and launched from land 
What the elder head had planned. 

' Thus,' said he, ' will we build this ship ! 

Lay square the blocks upon the slip, 

And follow well this plan of mine. 

Choose the timbers with greatest care ; 

Of all that is unsound beware ; 

For only what is sound and strong 

To this vessel shall belong. 100 

Cedar of Maine and Georgia pine 

Here together shall combine. 

A goodly frame, and a goodly fame, 

And the Union be her name ! 

For the day that gives her to the sea 

Shall give my daughter unto thee ! ' 

The Master's word 

Enraptured the young man heard; 

And as he turned his face aside, 

With a look of joy and a thrill of pride no 

Standing before 

Her father's door, 

He saw the form of his promised bride. 

The sun shone on her golden hair, 



And her cheek was glowing fresh and fair, 

With the breath of morn and the soft sea air. 

Like a beauteous barge was she, 

Still at rest on the sandy beach, 

Just beyond the billow's reach; 

But he 120 

Was the restless, seething, stormy sea ! 

Ah, how skilful grows the hand 

That obeyeth Love's command ! 

It is the heart, and not the brain, 

That to the highest doth attain, 

And he who followeth Love's behest 

Far excelleth all the rest ! 

Thus with the rising of the sun 
Was the noble task begun, 
And soon throughout the ship-yard's 
bovmds 130 

Were heard the intermingled somids 
Of axes and of mallets, plied 
With vigorous arms on every side; 
Plied so deftly and so well, 
That, ere the shadows of evening fell, 
The keel of oak for a noble ship, 
Scarfed and bolted, straight and strong, 
Was lying ready, and stretched along 
The blocks, well placed upon the slip. 
Happy, thrice happy, every one 140 

Who sees his labor well begun, 
And not perplexed and multiplied, 
By idly waiting for time and tide ! 

And when the hot, long day was o'er, 

The yoimg man at the Master's door 

Sat with the maiden calm and still, 

And within the porch, a little more 

Removed beyond the evening chill, 

The father sat, and told them tales 

Of wrecks in the great September gales, 150 

Of pirates coasting the Spanish Main, 

And ships that never came back again, 

The chance and change of a sailor's life, 

Want and plenty, rest and strife, 

His roving fancy, like the wind, 

That nothing can stay and nothing can 

bind, 
And the magic charm of foreign lands, 
With shadows of palms, and shining sands, 
Where the tumbling surf, 
O'er the coral reefs of Madagascar, 160 

Washes the feet of the swarthy Lascar, 
As he lies alone and asleep on the turf. 
And the trembling maiden held her breath 
At the tales of that awful, pitiless sea, 
With all its terror and mystery, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



iS3 



The dim, dark sea, so like unto Death, 
That divides and yet unites mankind ! 
And whenever the old man paused, a gleam 
From the bowl of his pipe would awhile 

illume 
The silent group in the twilight gloom, 170 
And thoughtful faces, as in a dream; 
And for a moment one might mark 
What had been hidden by the dark, 
That the head of the maiden lay at rest, 
Tenderly, on the young man's breast ! 

Day by day the vessel grew, 

With timbers fashioned strong and true, 

Stemson and keelson and sternson-knee, 

Till, framed with perfect symmetry, 

A skeleton ship rose up to view ! 180 

And around the bows and along the side 

The heavy hammers and mallets plied, 

Till after many a week, at length, 

Wonderful for form and strength, 

Sublime in its enormous bulk, 

Loomed aloft the shadowy hulk ! 

And around it columns of smoke, upwreath- 

Rose from the boiling, bubbling, seething 
Caldron, that glowed, 

And overflowed i 9 o 

With the black tar, heated for the sheath- 
ing. 
And amid the clamors 
Of clattering hammers, 
He who listened heard now and then 
The song of the Master and his men: — 

' Build me straight, O worthy Master, 
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel, 

That shall laugh at all disaster, 

And with wave and whirlwind wrestle ! ' 

With oaken brace and copper band, 200 

Lay the rudder on the sand, 

That, like a thought, should have control 

Over the movement of the whole; 

And near it the anchor, whose giant hand 

Would reach down and grapple with the 

land, 
And immovable and fast 
Hold the great ship against the bellowing 

blast ! 
And at the bows an image stood, 1 



1 Compare the story by Hawthorne, ' Drowne's 
Wooden Image,' in Mosses from, an old Manse; and the 
entry in Longfellow's Journal, March 14, 1856. {Life, 
vol. ii, p. 307.) 



By a cunning artist carved in wood, 

With robes of white, that far behind 210 

Seemed to be fluttering in the wind. 

It was not shaped in a classic mould, 

Not like a Nymph or Goddess of old, 

Or Naiad rising from the water, 

But modelled from the Master's daughter ! 

On many a dreary and misty night, 

'T will be seen by the rays of the signal 

light, 
Speeding along through the rain and the 

dark, 
Like a ghost in its snow-white sark, 
The pilot of some phantom bark, 220 

Guiding the vessel, in its flight, 
By a path none other knows aright ! 

Behold, at last, 
Each tall and tapering mast 
Is swung into its place; 
Shrouds and stays 
Holding it firm and fast ! 2 

Long ago, 

In the deer-haunted forests of Maine, 
When upon mountain and plain 230 

Lay the snow, 

They fell, — those lordly pines ! 
Those grand, majestic pines ! 
'Mid shouts and cheers 
The jaded steers, 
Panting beneath the goad, 
Dragged down the weary, winding road 
Those captive kings so straight and tall, 
To be shorn of their streaming hair, 
And naked and bare, 240 

To feel the stress and the strain 
Of the wind and the reeling main, 
Whose roar 

Would remind them forevermore 
Of their native forests they should not see 
again. 



2 I wish to anticipate a criticism on this passage, by 
stating that sometimes, though not usually, vessels are 
launched fully sparred and rigged. I have availed my- 
self of the exception as better suited to my purposes 
than the general rule ; but the reader will see that it is 
neither a blunder nor a poetic license. On this subject 
a friend in Portland, Maine, writes me thus : ' In this 
State, and also, I am told, in New York, ships are 
sometimes rigged upon the stocks, in order to save 
time, or to make a show. There waB a fine large ship 
launched last summer at Ellsworth, fully sparred and 
rigged. Some years ago a ship was launched here, with 
her rigging, spars, sails, and cargo aboard. She sailed 
the next day and — was never heard of again ! I hope 
this will not be the fate of your poem ! ' (Longfel- 

1 LOW.) 



154 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And everywhere 
The slender, graceful spars 
Poise aloft in the air, 
And at the mast-head, 

White, blue, and red, 250 

A flag unrolls the stripes and stars. 
Ah ! when the wanderer, lonely, friendless, 
In foreign harbors shall behold 
That flag unrolled, 
'T will be as a friendly hand 
Stretched out from his native land, 
Filling his heart with memories sweet and 
endless ! 

All is finished ! and at length 
Has come the bridal day 
Of beauty and of strength. 260 

To-day the vessel shall be launched ! 
With fleecy clouds the sky is blanched, 
And o'er the bay, 
Slowly, in all his splendors dight, 
The great sun rises to behold the sight. 
The ocean old, 
Centuries old, 

Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled, 
Paces restless to and fro, 
Up and down the sands of gold. 270 

His beating heart is not at rest; 
And far and wide, 
With ceaseless flow, 
His beard of snow 

Heaves with the heaving of his breast. 
He waits impatient for his bride. 
There she stands, 
With her foot upon the sands, 
Decked with flags and streamers gay, 
In honor of her marriage day, 280 

Her snow-white signals fluttering, blend- 
ing, 
Round her like a veil descending, 
Ready to be 
The bride of the gray old sea. 

On the deck another bride 

Is standing by her lover's side. 

Shadows from the flags and shrouds, 

Like the shadows cast by clouds, 

Broken by many a sudden fleck, 

Fall around them on the deck. 290 

The prayer is said, 

The service read, 

The joyous bridegroom bows his head; 

And in tears the good old Master 

Shakes the brown hand of his son, 



Kisses his daughter's glowing cheek 

In silence, for he cannot speak, 

And ever faster 

Down his own the tears begin to run. 

The worthy pastor — 30 o 

The shepherd of that wandering flock, 

That has the ocean for its wold, 

That has the vessel for its fold, 

Leaping ever from rock to rock — 

Spake, with accents mild and clear, 

Words of warning, words of cheer, 

But tedious to the bridegroom's ear. 

He knew the chart 

Of the sailor's heart, 

All its pleasures and its griefs, 31c 

All its shallows and rocky reefs, 

All those secret currents, that flow 

With such resistless undertow, 

And lift and drift, with terrible force, 

The will from its moorings and its course. 

Therefore he spake, and thus said he : — 

' Like unto ships far off at sea, 

Outward or homeward bound, are we. 

Before, behind, and all around, 

Floats and swings the horizon's bound, 320 

Seems at its distant rim to rise 

And climb the crystal wall of the skies, 

And then again to turn and sink, 

As if we could slide from its outer brink. 

Ah ! it is not the sea, 

It is not the sea that sinks and shelves, 

But ourselves 

That rock and rise 

With endless and uneasy motion, 

Now touching the very skies, 330 

Now sinking into the depths of ocean. 

Ah ! if our souls but poise and swing 

Like the compass in its brazen ring, 

Ever level and ever true 

To the toil and the task we have to do, 

We shall sail securely, and safely reach 

The Fortunate Isles, on whose shining beach 

The sights we see, and the sounds we 

hear, 
Will be those of joy and not of fear ! ' 

Then the Master, 340 

With a gesture of command, 

Waved his hand; 

And at the word, 

Loud and sudden there was heard, 

All around them and below, 

The sound of hammers, blow on blow, 

Knocking away the shores and spurs. 

And see I she stirs ! 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



*55 



She starts, — she moves, — she seems to 

feel 
The thrill of life along her keel, 350 

And, spurning with her foot the ground, 
With one exulting, joyous hound, 
She leaps into the ocean's arms ! 

And lo ! from the assembled crowd 
There rose a shout, prolonged and loud, 
That to the ocean seemed to say, 
• Take her, O bridegroom, old and gray, 
Take her to thy protecting arms, 
With all her youth and all her charms ! 

How beautiful she is ! How fair 360 

She lies within those arms, that press 

Her form with many a soft caress 

Of tenderness and watchful care ! 

Sail forth into the sea, O ship ! 

Through wind and wave, right onward 

steer ! 
The moistened eye, the trembling lip, 
Are not the signs of doubt or fear. 

Sail forth into the sea of life, 

O gentle, loving, trusting wife, 

And safe from all adversity 370 

Upon the bosom of that sea 

Thy comings and thy goings be ! 

For gentleness and love and trust 

Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; 

And in the wreck of noble lives 

Something immortal still survives ! 

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State ! 
Sail on, O Union, strong and great ! 
Humanity with all its fears, 
With all the hopes of future years, 380 

Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! 
We know what Master laid thy keel, 
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel, 
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, 
What anvils rang, what hammers beat, 
In what a forge and what a heat 
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! 
Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 
'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 
'T is but the flapping of the sail, 39 o 

And not a rent made by the gale ! 
In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 
In spite of false lights on the shore, 
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! 
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, 
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our 
tears, 



Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 
Are all with thee, — are all with thee ! x 
1849. 1849. 2 



THE LADDER OF SAINT 
AUGUSTINE 

Saint Augustine ! well hast thou said, 3 
That of our vices we can frame 

A ladder, if we will but tread 

Beneath our feet each deed of shame ! 

All common things, each day's events, 
That with the hour begin and end, 

Our pleasures and our discontents, 
Are rounds by which we may ascend. 

The low desire, the base design, 

That makes another's virtues less ; 10 

The revel of the ruddy winej 

And all occasions of excess; 

The longing for ignoble things; 

The strife for triumph more than truth; 
The hardening of the heart, that brings 

Irreverence for the dreams of youth; 

All thoughts of ill ; all evil deeds, 

That have their root in thoughts of 

Whatever hinders or impedes 

The action of the nobler will; — 20 



1 These lines, written twelve years before the begin- 
ning of the Civil War (and substituted for a weaker 
ending with which Longfellow was dissatisfied — see the 
Life, vol. iii, pp. 363, 443^1), seemed word by word to 
fit the circumstances and feelings of the nation in that 
great struggle, and during its progress roused thousands 
of audiences to passionate enthusiasm. Lincoln's feel- 
ing for them typifies that of the whole people. Mr. 
Noah Brooks in his paper on Lincoln's Imagination 
(Scribner's Monthly, August, 1879), mentions that he 
found the President one day attracted by these stanzas, 
quoted in a political speech. ' Knowing the whole 
poem,' he adds, ' as one of my early exercises in reci- 
tation, I began, at his request, with the description of 
the launch of the ship, and repeated it to the end. As 
he listened to the last lines, his eyes filled with tears, 
and his cheeks were wet. He did not speak for some 
minutes, but finally said, with simplicity : " It is a won- 
derful gift to be able to stir men like that." ' (Quoted 
in the Cambridge Edition of Longfellow.) The first 
public reading of the poem, by Fanny Kemble, is de- 
scribed in Longfellow's Journal, February 12, 1850. 
Life, vol. ii, p. 172. 

2 The Seaside and the Fireside, in which ' The 
Building of the Ship ' holds the first place, is dated 
1850 ; but the book was actually published late in 1849. 

3 The words of St. Augustine are, ' De vitiis nostris 
scalam nobis facimus, si vitia ipsa calcamufl.' — Sermon 
III. De A scensione. (Longfellow.) 



i56 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



All these must first be trampled down 
Beneath our feet, if we would gain 

In the bright fields of fair renown 
The right of eminent domain. 

We have not wings, we cannot soar; 

But we have feet to scale and climb 
By slow degrees, by more and more, 

The cloudy summits of our time. 

The mighty pyramids of stone 

That wedge-like cleave the desert airs, 30 
When nearer seen, and better known, 

Are but gigantic flights of stairs. 

The distant mountains, that uprear 
Their solid bastions to the skies, 

Are crossed by pathways, that appear 
As we to higher levels rise. 

The heights by great men reached and 
kept 

Were not attained by sudden flight, 
But they, while their companions slept, 

Were toiling upward in the night. 4 o 

Standing on what too long we bore 

With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, 

We may discern — unseen before — 
A path to higher destinies, 

Nor deem the irrevocable Past 
As wholly wasted, wholly vain, 

If, rising on its wrecks, at last 
To something nobler we attain. 1 

1850. (1858.) 



DAYLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT 

In broad daylight, and at noon, 
Yesterday I saw the moon 
Sailing high, but faint and white, 
As a schoolboy's paper kite. 

In broad daylight, yesterday, 
I read a Poet's mystic lay; 
And it seemed to me at most 
As a phantom, or a ghost. 

But at length the feverish day 
Like a passion died away, 

1 Compare Tennyson (' In Memoriam ') : — 

' Men may rise on stepping-stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things.' 



And the night, serene and still, 
Fell on village, vale, and hill. 

Then the moon, in all her pride, 
Like a spirit glorified, 
Filled and overflowed the night 
With revelations of her light. 

And the Poet's song again 
Passed like music through my brain; 
Night interpreted to me 
All its grace and mystery. 
152. (1858.) 



THE WARDEN OF THE CINQUE 
PORTS 2 

A mist was driving down the British Chan- 
nel, 
The day was just begun, 
And through the window-panes, on floor 
and panel, 
Streamed the red autumn sun. 

It glanced on flowing flag and rippling 
pennon, 
And the white sails of ships; 
And, from the frowning rampart, the black 
cannon 
Hailed it with feverish lips. 

Sandwich and Romney, Hastings, Hithe, 
and Dover 
Were all alert that day, 10 

To see the French war-steamers speeding 
over, 
When the fog cleared away. 

Sullen and silent, and like couchant 
lions, 
Their cannon, through the night, 
Holding their breath, had watched, in grim 
defiance, 
The sea-coast opposite. 

And now they roared at drum-beat from 
their stations 
On every citadel; 
Each answering each, with morning saluta- 
tions, 
That all was well. 20 



2 The Duke of Wellington, who died September 13, 
1852. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



i57 



And down the coast, all taking up the 
burden, 

Replied the distant forts, 
As if to summon from his sleep the Warden 

And Lord of the Cinque Ports. 

Him shall no sunshine from the fields of 
azure, 
No drum-beat from the wall, 
No morning gun from the black fort's em- 
brasure, 
Awaken with its call ! 

No more, surveying with an eye impartial 
The long line of the coast, 3q 

Shall the gaunt figure of the old Field 
Marshal 
Be seen upon his post ! 

For in the night, unseen, a single warrior, 

In sombre harness mailed, 
Dreaded of man, and surnamed the De- 
stroyer, 

The rampart wall had scaled. 

He passed into the chamber of the sleeper, 

The dark and silent room, 
And as he entered, darker grew, and deeper, 

The silence and the gloom. 4Q 

He did not pause to parley or dissemble, 

But smote the Warden hoar; 
Ah ! what a blow ! that made all England 
tremble 

And groan from shore to shore. 

Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon 
waited, 

The sun rose bright o'erhead ; 
Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated 

That a great man was dead. 
1852. (1858.) 

THE TWO ANGELS 1 

Two angels, one of Life and one of Death, 
Passed o'er our village as the morning 
broke ; 

1 In a letter of April 25, 1855, Longfellow speaks of 
this poem as ' written on the birth of my younger 
daughter, and the death of the young and beautiful wife 
of my neighbor and friend, the poet Lowell. It will 
serve as an answer to one of your questions about life 
and its many mysteries. To these dark problems there 
is no other solution possible, except the one word Pro- 
vidence.' (Life, vol. ii, p. 285.) 



The dawn was on their faces, and be- 
neath, 
The sombre houses hearsed with plumes 
of smoke. 

Their attitude and aspect were the same, 
Alike their features and their robes of 
white; 
But one was crowned with amaranth, as 
with flame, 
And one with asphodels, like flakes of 
light. 

I saw them pause on their celestial way; 
Then said I, with deep fear and doubt 
oppressed, i 

' Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou be- 
tray 
The place where thy beloved are at 
rest ! ' 

And he who wore the crown of asphodels, 
Descending, at my door began to knock, 

And my soul sank within me, as in wells 
The waters sink before an earthquake's 
shock. 

I recognized the nameless agony, 

The terror and the tremor and the 

pain, 

That oft before had filled or haunted 

me, 

And now returned with threefold strength 

again. 20 

The door I opened to my heavenly guest, 
And listened, for I thought I heard God's 
voice; 
And, knowing whatsoe'er He sent was 
best, 
Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice. 

Then with a smile, that filled the house 
with light, 
' My errand is not Death, but Life,' he 
said; 
And ere I answered, passing out of sight, 
On his celestial embassy he sped. 

'T was at thy door, O friend ! and not at 

mine, 29 

The angel with the amaranthine wreath, 

Pausing, descended, and with voice divine 

Whispered a word that had a sound like 

Death. 



i5« 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom, 
A shadow on those features fair and 
thin; 
And softly, from that hushed and darkened 
room, 
Two angels issued, where hut one went 
in. 

All is of God ! If He but wave his hand, 
The mists collect, the rain falls thick and 
loud, 



Till, with a smile of light on sea and land, 

Lo ! He looks back from the departing 

cloud. 40 

Angels of Life and Death alike are his; 
Without his leave they pass no threshold 
o'er; 
Who, then, would wish or dare, believing 
this, 
Against his messengers to shut the door ? 
1S5S. (1858.) 



THE SONG OF HIAWATHA 1 



INTRODUCTION " 

Should you ask me, whence these stories ? 
Whence these legends and traditions, 
With the odors of the forest, 
W'ith the dew and damp of meadows, 
With the curling smoke of wigwams, 

1 Those to whom ' Hiawatha ' is familiar from their 
childhood, but who feel it to be hardly fit food for ma- 
ture intellects, and those who are wearied by its repe- 
titions, its simplicity, and the monotony of its rhythm, 
should reread at least the Introduction, and Cantos iii 
(Hiawatha's Childhood'), vii (His Sailing), x (.His Woo- 
ing), xx (The Famine), and xxii (Hiawatha's Depart- 
ure). The whole poem, however, without omissions, 
is necessary to any real knowledge of Longfellow's 
work or of American poetry. The simplicity of his own 
character enabled him to reproduce the effects of prim- 
itive poetry and legend better than other modern poets 
have done, and to create what is at least our nearest 
approach to an American epic. It is greatly superior to 
all other attempts at epic treatment of the Indian le- 
gends. Bayard Taylor said of it : ' It will be parodied, 
perhaps ridiculed, in many quarters, but it will live 
after the Indian race has vanished from our Continent, 
and there will be no parodies then.' Emerson called it 
' sweet and wholesome as maize. ' 

Longfellow wrote ' Hiawatha ' with more enthusiasm 
than any other of his poems. Cf. the Journal, October 
19,1S54: "'Hiawatha - ' occupies and delights me. Have 
I no misgivings about it ? Yes, sometimes. Then the 
theme seizes me and hurries me away, and they vanish.' 
(Life, vol. ii, p. 277.) ' The hero,' he wrote to Freilig- 
rath (who afterward translated "Hiawatha" into Ger- 
man), 'is a kind of American Prometheus.' From the 
first he felt sure of his subject and his metre : ' I have 
at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the American 
Indians, which seems to me the right one, and the only. 
It is to weave together their beautiful traditions into a 
whole. I have hit upon a measure, too, which I think 
the right and only one for such a theme.' (Journal, 
June 22, 1854.) 

The metre was avowedly taken from that of the Fin- 
nish epic Kalevala, which he had read with Freiligrath 
twelve years before. See Freiligrath's letter in the 
London Athenceum, December 22, 1S55. 

On the sources from which Longfellow drew his ma- 
terial, see his own notes given below. 

Further, on ' Hiawatha,' see : — 

Life, vol. ii, pp. 272-311. 

Longfellow (Alice M.), A Visit to Hiawatha's People. 

Schoolcraft (Henry R.), The Myth of Hiawatha and 



With the rushing of great rivers, 
With, their frequent repetitions, 
And their wild reverberations, 
As of thunder hi the moim tains ? 

I should answer, I should tell you, 10 
• From the forests and the prairies, 
From the great lakes of the Northland, 
From the land of the Ojibways, 
From the land of the Daeotahs, 
From the mountains, moors, and fenlands 
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, 
Feeds among the reeds and rushes. 

other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the 
North American Indians. 

Broili (Ottol, Die Hauptquellen Longfellows Song of 
Hiawatha. Wurzburg, 189S. 

Lang (Andrew), Letters on Literature. 

Cracroft, Essays, vol. ii (on the translation of part6of 
1 Hiawatha ' into Latin, for school use, by F. W. New- 
man). 

Hale (E. E.), in the North American Review, January, 
1S56. 

Chasles (Philarete), in the Journal des Dibats, April 
20, 1856. 

MonttSgut (Emile), in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
July, 1857. 

Hale (Henry), ' Hiawatha plaj - ed by real Indians,' in 
the Critic, July, 1P05. 

8 This Indian Edda — if I may so call it — is founded 
on a tradition, prevalent among the North American 
Indians, of a personage of miraculous birth, who was 
sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fish- 
ing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. He 
was known among different tribes by the several names 
of Michabou, Chiabo, Manabozo, Tarenya-wagon and 
Hiawatha. Mr. Schoolcraft gives an account of him in 
his Algic Researches, vol. i, p. 134, and in his History, 
Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the 
United States, part iii, p. 314, maybe found the Iroquois 
form of the tradition, derived from the verbal narra- 
tions of an Onondaga chief. 

Into this old tradition I have woven other curious 
Indian legends, drawn chiefly from the various and val- 
uable writings of Mr. Schoolcraft, to whom the literary 
world is greatly indebted for his indefatigable zeal in 
rescuing from oblivion so much of the legendary lore of 
the Indians. 

The scene of the poem is among the Ojibways on the 
southern shore of Lake Superior, in the region between 
the Pictured Rocks and the Graud Sable. (Longfellow.) 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



*59 



I repeat them as I heard them 

From the lips of Nawadaha, 

The musician, the sweet singer.' 20 

Should you ask where Nawadaha 
Found these songs so wild and wayward, 
Found these legends and traditions, 
I should answer, I should tell you, 
' In the bird's-nests of the forest, 
In the lodges of the beaver, 
In the hoof-prints of the bison, 
In the eyry of the eagle ! 

• All the wild-fowl sang them to him, 
In the moorlands and the fen-lands, 30 

In the melancholy marshes; 
Chetowaik, the plover, sang them, 
Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa, 
The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, 
And the grouse, the Mushkodasa ! ' 

If still further you should ask me, 
Saying, ' Who was Nawadaha ? 
Tell us of this Nawadaha,' 
I should answer your inquiries 
Straightway in such words as follow. 40 

' In the vale of Tawasentha, 1 
In the green and silent valley, 
By the pleasant water-courses, 
Dwelt the singer Nawadaha. 
Round about the Indian village 
Spread the meadows and the corn-fields, 
And beyond them stood the forest, 
Stood the groves of singing pine-trees, 
Green in Summer, white in Winter, 
Ever sighing, ever singing. 50 

' And the pleasant water-courses, 
You could trace them through the valley, 
By the rushing in the Spring-time, 
By the alders in the Summer, 
By the white fog in the Autumn, 
By the black line in the Winter; 
And beside them dwelt the singer, 
In the vale of Tawasentha, 
In the green and silent valley. 

' There he sang of Hiawatha, 60 

Sang the Song of Hiawatha, 
Sang his wondrous birth and being, 
How he prayed and how he fasted, 
How he lived, and toiled, and suffered, 
That the tribes of men might prosper, 
That he might advance his people ! ' 

Ye who love the haunts of Nature, 
Love the sunshine of the meadow, 
Love the shadow of the forest, 
Love the wind among the branches, 7 o 

1 This valley, now called Norman's Kill, is in Albany 
County, New York. (Lokgfellow.) 



And the rain-shower and the snow-storm, 
And the rushing of great rivers 
Through their palisades of pine-trees, 
And the thunder in the mountains, 
Whose innumerable echoes 
Flap like eagles in their eyries ; — 
Listen to these wild traditions, 
To this Song of Hiawatha ! 

Ye who love a nation's legends, 
Love the ballads of a people, 80 

That like voices from afar off 
Call to us to pause and listen, 
Speak in tones so plain and childlike, 
Scarcely can the ear distinguish 
Whether they are sung or spoken; — 
Listen to this Indian Legend, 
To this Song of Hiawatha ! 

Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, 
Who have faith in God and Nature, 
Who believe that in all ages 90 

Every human heart is human, 
That in even savage bosoms 
There are longings, yearnings, strivings 
For the good they comprehend not, 
That the feeble hands and helpless, 
Groping blindly in the darkness, 
Touch God's right hand in that darkness 
And are lifted up and strengthened ; — 
Listen to this simple story, 
To this Song of Hiawatha ! 100 

Ye, who sometimes, in your rambles 
Through the green lanes of the country, 
Where the tangled barberry-bushes 
Hang their tufts of crimson berries 
Over stone walls gray with mosses, 
Pause by some neglected graveyard, 
For a while to muse, and ponder 
On a half -effaced inscription, 
Written with little skill of song-craft, 
Homely phrases, but each letter no 

Full of hope and yet of heart-break, 
Full of all the tender pathos 
Of the Here and the Hereafter; — 
Stay and read this rude inscription, 
Read this Song of Hiawatha ! 



I 



THE PEACE-PIPE 2 

On the Mountains of the Prairie, 
On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry, 

2 Mr. Catlin, in his Letters and Xotes on the Manners, 
Customs, and Condition of the North American In- 
dians, voL ii, p. ICO, gives an interesting account of the 



i6o 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Gitehe Manito, the mighty. 

He the Master of Life, descending, 

Oil the red crags of the quarry 

Stood erect, and called the nations, 
Called the tribes of men together. 

From his footprints flowed a river, 
Leaped into the light of morning, 
O'er the precipice plunging downward 10 
Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet. 
And the Spirit, stooping earthward, 
With his finger on the meadow 
Traced a winding pathway for it, 
Saying to it, ' Run hi this way ! ' 

From the red stone of the quarry 
With his hand he broke a fragment, 
Moulded it into a pipe-head, 
Shaped and fashioned it with figures; 
From the margin of the river 2 o 

Took a long reed for a pipe-stem, 
With its dark green leaves upon it; 
Filled the pipe with bark of willow, 
With the bark of the red willow; 
Breathed upon the neighboring forest, 
Made its great boughs chafe together, 
Till in flame they burst and kindled; 
And erect upon the mountains, 
Gitehe Manito, the mighty, 
Smoked the calumet, the Peace-Pipe, 30 
As a signal to the nations. 

And the smoke rose slowly, slowly, 
Through the tranquil air of morning, 
First a single line of darkness, 
Then a denser, bluer vapor, 



Coteait des Prairies, and the Red Pipestone Quarry. 
He says : — 

' Here (according to their traditions) happened the 
mysterious birth of the red pipe, which has blown its 
fumes of peace and war to the remotest corners of the 
continent ; which has visited every warrior, and passed 
through its reddened stem the irrevocable oath of war 
and desolation. And here, also, the peace-breathing 
calumet, was born, and fringed with the eagle's quills, 
which has shed its thrilling fumes over the land, and 
soothed the fury of the relentless savage. 

' The Great Spirit at an ancient period here called the 
Indian nations together, and, standing on the precipice 
of the red pipe-stone rock, broke from its wall a piece, 
and made a huge pipe by turning it in his hand, which 
he smoked over them, and to the North, the South, the 
East, and the West, and told them that this stone was 
red, — that it was their flesh, — that they must use it for 
their pipes of peace, — that it belonged to them all, and 
that the war-club and scalping-knife must not be raised 
on its ground. At the last whiff of his pipe his head 
went into a great cloud, and the whole surface of the 
rock for several miles was melted and glazed ; two great 
ovens were opened beneath, and two women (guardian 
spirits of the place) entered them in a blaze of fire ; and 
they are heard there yet (Tso-mec-cos-tee and Tso-me- 
cos-te-won-dee), answering to the invocations of the 
high-priests or mediciue-men, who consult them when 
they are visitors to this sacred place.' (Longfellow.) 



Then a snow-white cloud unfolding, 
Like the tree-tops of the forest, 
Ever rising, rising, rising, 
Till it touched the top of heaven, 
Till it broke against the heaven, 
And rolled outward all around it. 

From the Yale of Tawasentha, 
From the Valley of Wyoming, 
From the groves of Tuscaloosa, 
From the far-off Rocky Mountains, 
From the Northern lakes and rivers 
All the tribes beheld the signal, 
Saw the distant smoke ascending, 
The Pukwana of the Peace-Pipe. 

And the Prophets of the nations 50 

Said: < Behold it, the Pukwana ! 
By this signal from afar off, 
Bending like a wand of willow, 
Waving like a hand that beckons, 
Gitehe Manito, the mighty, 
Calls the tribes of men together, 
Calls the warriors to his council ! ' 

Down the rivers, o'er the prairies, 
Came the warriors of the nations, 
Came the Delawares and Mohawks, 60 

Came the Choctaws and Camanches, 
Came the Shoshonies and Blackfeet, 
Came the Pawnees and Omahas, 
Came the Mandans and Dacotaks, 
Came the Hurons and Ojibways, 
All the warriors drawn together 
By the signal of the Peace-Pipe, 
To the Mountains of the Prairie, 
To the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry. 

And they stood there on the meadow, 70 
With their weapons and their war-gear, 
Painted like the leaves of Autumn, 
Painted like the sky of morning, 
Wildly glaring at each other; 
In their faces stern defiance, 
In their hearts the feuds of ages, 
The hereditary hatred, 
The ancestral thirst of vengeance. 

Gitehe Manito, the mighty, 
The creator of the nations, 80 

Looked upon them with compassion, 
With paternal love and pity; 
Looked upon their wrath and wrangling 
But as quarrels among children, 
But as feuds and fights of children ! 

Over them he stretched his right hand, 
To subdue their stubborn natures, 
To allay their thirst and fever, 
By the shadow of his right hand; 
Spake to them with voice majestic 90 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



161 



As the sound of far-off waters, 

Falling into deep abysses, 

Warning, chiding, spake in this wise: — 

' O my children ! my poor children ! 
Listen to the words of wisdom, 
Listen to the words of warning, 
From the lips of the Great Spirit, 
From the Master of Life, who made you ! 

' I have given you lands to hunt in, 
I have given you streams to fish in, ioo 

I have given you bear and bison, 
I have given you roe and reindeer, 
I have given you brant and beaver, 
Filled the marshes full of wild-fowl, 
Filled the rivers full of fishes; 
Why then are you not contented ? 
Why then will you hunt each other ? 

' I am weary of your quarrels, 
Weary of your wars and bloodshed, 
Weary of your prayers for vengeance, no 
Of your wranglings and dissensions; 
All your strength is in your union, 
All your danger is in discord; 
Therefore be at peace henceforward, 
And as brothers live together. 

' I will send a Prophet to you, 
A Deliverer of the nations, 
Who shall guide you and shall teach you, 
Who shall toil and suffer with you. 
If you listen to his counsels, 120 

You will multiply and prosper; 
If his warnings pass unheeded, 
You will fade away and perish ! 

' Bathe now in the stream before you, 
Wash the war-paint from your faces, 
Wash the blood-stains from your fingers, 
Bury your war-clubs and your weapons, 
Break the red stone from this quarry, 
Mould and make it into Peace-Pipes, 
Take the reeds that grow beside you, 130 
Deck them with your brightest feathers, 
Smoke the calumet together, 
And as brothers live henceforward ! ' 

Then upon the ground the warriors 
Threw their cloaks and shirts of deer-skin, 
Threw their weapons and their war-gear, 
Leaped into the rushing river, 
Washed the war-paint from their faces. 
Clear above them flowed the water, 
Clear and limpid from the footprints 140 
Of the Master of Life descending; 
Dark below them flowed the water, 
Soiled and stained with streaks of crimson, 
As if blood were mingled with it ! 

From the river came the warriors, 



Clean and washed from all their war-paint; 
On the banks their clubs they buried, 
Buried all their warlike weapons. 
Gitche Manito, the mighty, 
The Great Spirit, the creator, 150 

Smiled upon his helpless children ! 

And in silence all the warriors 
Broke the red stone of the quarry, 
Smoothed and formed it into Peace-Pipes, 
Broke the long reeds by the river, 
Decked them with their brightest feathers, 
And departed each one homeward, 
While the Master of Life, ascending, 
Through the opening of cloud-curtains, 
Through the doorways of the heaven, 160 
Vanished from before their faces, 
In the smoke that rolled around him, 
The Pukwana of the Peace-Pipe ! 



II 



THE FOUR WINDS 



—J 



' Honor be to Mudjekeewis ! ' 
Cried the warriors, cried the old men, 
When he came in triumph homeward 
With the sacred Belt of Wampum, 
From the regions of the North- Wind, 
From the kingdom of Wabasso, 
From the land of the White Rabbit. 

He had stolen the Belt of Wampum 
From the neck of Mishe-Mokwa, 
From the Great Bear of the mountains, 10 
From the terror of the nations, 
As he lay asleep and cumbrous 
On the summit of the mountains, 
Like a rock with mosses on it, 
Spotted brown and gray with mosses. 

Silently he stole upon him 
Till the red nails of the monster 
Almost touched him, almost scared him, 
Till the hot breath of his nostrils 
Warmed the hands of Mudjekeewis, 20 

As he drew the Belt of Wampum 
Over the round ears, that heard not, 
Over the small eyes, that saw not, 
Over the long nose and nostrils, 
The black muffle of the nostrils, 
Out of which the heavy breathing 
Warmed the hands of Mudjekeewis. 

Then he swung aloft his war-club, 
Shouted loud and long his war-cry, 
Smote the mighty Mishe-Mokwa 30 

In the middle of the forehead, 
Right between the eyes he smote him. 



162 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



With the heavy blow bewildered, 
Rose the Great Bear of the mountains; 
But his knees beneath him trembled. 
And he whimpered like a woman, 
As he reeled and staggered forward, 
As he sat upon his haunches; 
And the mighty Mudjekeewis, 
Standing fearlessly before him, 
Taunted him in loud derision, 
Spake disdainfully in this wise: — 

' Hark you, Bear ! you arc 1 a eoward; 
And no Brave, as you pretended; 
Else you would not ory and whimper 
1 ,ike a miserable woman ! 
Bear ! you know our tribes arc hostile, 
Long have been at war together; 
Now you find that we are strongest, 
You go sneaking in the forest, 
You go hiding in the mountains ! 
Had you conquered me in battle 
Not a groan would I have uttered; 
But you, Bear ! sit here and whimper, 
And disgrace your tribe by crying, 
Like a wretched Shaugodaya, 
Like a cowardly old woman ! ' 

Then again he raised his war-club, 
Smote again the Mishc-Mokwa 
In the middle of his forehead. 
Broke his skull, as ice is broken 
When one goes to fish in winter. 
Thus was slain the Mishe-Mokwa, 
He the Great Bear of the mountains, 
He the terror of the nations. 

' Honor be to Mudjekeewis I ' 
With a shout exclaimed the people, 
1 Honor be to Mudjekeewis ! 
Henoeforth he shall he the West-Wind, 
And hereafter and Eoreyer 

Shall he hold supremo dominion 

Over all the winds of heaven. 
Call him no more Mudjekeewis, 
Call him Kabeyun, the' West- Wind ! ' 

Thus was Mudjekeewis chosen 
Father of the Winds of Heaven. 
For himself he kept the West-Wind, 
Gave the others to his children; 



1 This anecdote is from Heckewelder. In his ac- 
count of the Indian Nations, ho describes an Indian 
hunter as addressing a bear in nearly these words. ' I 
was present,' he says, ' at the delivery of this curious 
invective ; when the hunter had despatched the bear, I 
asked him how he thought that poor animal could un- 
derstand what ho said to it. " Oil," said he in answer, 
"the bear understood me very well ; did you not ob- 
serve how ashamed bo looked while I was upbraiding 
him?" ' — Transactions of the American Philosophical 
Society, vol. i. p. 240. (Longfellow.) 



Unto Wahun gave the East-Wind, 
Gave the South to Shawondasee, 8o 

And the North- Wind, wild and cruel, 
To the fierce Kabibonokka. 

Young and beautiful was Wabnn; 
He it was who brought the morning, 
He it was whose silver arrows 
Chased the dark o'er hill and valley; 
He it was whose cheeks were painted 
Witli the brightest streaks of crimson, 
And whose voice awoke the village. 
Called the deer and called the hunter. 90 

Lonely in the sky was Wahun; 
Though the birds sang gayly to him, 
Though the wild-flowers of the meadow 
Filled the air with odors for him; 
Though the forests and the rivers 
Sang and shouted at his coming, 
Still his heart was sad within him, 
For he was alone in heaven. 

Hut one morning, gazing earthward, 
While the village still was sleeping, 100 

And the fog lay on the river, 
Like a. ghost, that goes at sunrise, 
lie beheld a maiden walking 
All alone upon a meadow, 
Gathering water-flags and rushes 

By a river in the meadow. 

Every morning, gazing earthward, 

Still the first thing he beheld there 

Was her blue eyes looking at him, 

Two blue lakes among the rushes. no 

And he loved the lonely maiden, 

Who thus waited for his coming; 

For they both were solitary, 

She on earth and he in heaven. 

And he wooed her with caresses, 
Wooed her with his smile of sunshine, 
With his Battering words he wooed her, 
With his sighing and his singing. 
Gentlest whispers in the branches, 
Softest music, sweetest odors, rao 

Till he drew her to his bosom, 
Folded in his robes of crimson, 
Till into a star he changed her, 
Trembling still upon his bosom; 
And forever in the heavens 
They are seen together walking, 
Wahun and the Wahun-Anmmg, 
Wahun and the Star of Morning. 

But the fierce Knb'bonokka 
Had his dwelling among icebergs, 130 

In the everlasting snow-drifts, 
In the kingdom of YYabasso, 
In the land of the White Rabbit. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



163 



He it was whose hand in Autumn 
Painted all the trees with scarlet, 
Stained the leaves with red and yellow; 
He it was who sent the snow-flakes, 
Sifting, hissing through the forest, 
Froze the ponds, the lakes, the rivers, 
Drove the loon and sea-gull southward, 140 
Drove the cormorant and curlew 
To their nests of sedge and sea-tang 
In the realms of Shawondasee. 
-^)nce the fierce Kabibonokka 
Issued from his lodge of snow-drifts, 
From his home among the icebergs, 
And his hair, with snow besprinkled, 
Streamed behind him like a river, 
Like a black and wintry river, 
As he howled and hurried southward, 150 
Over frozen lakes and moorlands. 

There among the reeds and rushes 
Found he Shingebis, the diver, 
Trailing strings of fish behind him, 
O'er the frozen fens and moorlands, 
Lingering still among the moorlands, 
Though his tribe had long departed 
To the land of Shawondasee. 

Cried the fierce Kabibonokka, 
' Who is this that dares to brave me ? 160 
Dares to stay in my dominions, 
When the Wawa has departed, 
When the wild-goose has gone southward, 
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, 
Long ago departed southward ? 
I will go into his wigwam, 
I will put his smouldering fire out ! ' 

And at night Kabibonokka 
To the lodge came wild and wailing, 
Heaped the snow in drifts about it, 170 

Shouted down into the smoke-flue, 
Shook the lodge-poles in his fury, 
Flapped the curtain of the door-way. 
Shingebis, the diver, feared not, 
Shingebis, the diver, cared not; 
Four great logs had he for firewood, 
One for each moon of the winter, 
And for food the fishes served him. 
By his blazing fire he sat there, 
Warm and merry, eating, laughing, 180 

Singing, ' O Kabibonokka, 
You are but my fellow-mortal ! ' 

Then Kabibonokka entered, 
And though Shingebis, the diver, 
Felt his presence by the coldness, 
Felt his icy breath upon him, 
Still he did not cease his singing, 
Still he did not leave his laughing, 



Only turned the log a little, 

Only made the fire burn brighter, 190 

Made the sparks fly up the smoke-flue. 

From Kabibonokka's forehead, 
From his snow-besprinkled tresses, 
Drops of sweat fell fast and heavy, 
Making dints upon the ashes, 
As along the eaves of lodges, 
As from drooping boughs of hemlock, 
Drips the melting snow in spring-time, 
Making hollows in the snow-drifts. 

Till at last he rose defeated, 200 

Could not bear the heat and laughter, 
Could not bear the merry singing, 
But rushed headlong through the door-way, 
Stamped upon the crusted snow-drifts, 
Stamped upon the lakes and rivers, 
Made the snow upon them harder, 
Made the ice upon them thicker, 
Challenged Shingebis, the diver, 
To come forth and wrestle with him, 
To come forth and wrestle naked 210 

On the frozen fens and moorlands. 

Forth went Shingebis, the diver, 
Wrestled all night with the North- Wind, 
Wrestled naked on the moorlands 
With the fierce Kabibonokka, 
Till his pantmg breath grew fainter, 
Till his frozen grasp grew feebler, 
Till he reeled and staggered backward, 
And retreated, baffled, beaten, 
To the kingdom of Wabasso, 220 

To the land of the White Rabbit, 
Hearing still the gusty laughter, 
Hearing Shingebis, the diver, 
Singing, ' O Kabibonokka, 
You are but my fellow-mortal ! ' 

Shawondasee, fat and lazy, 
Had his dwelling far to southward, 
In the drowsy, dreamy sunshine, 
In the never-ending Summer. 
He it was who sent the wood-birds, 230 

Sent the robin, the Opechee, 
Sent the bluebird, the Owaissa, 
Sent the Shawshaw, sent the swallow, 
Sent the wild-goose, Wawa, northward, 
Sent the melons and tobacco, 
And the grapes in purple clusters. 

From his pipe the smoke ascending 
Filled the sky with haze and vapor, 
Filled the air with dreamy softness, 
Gave a twinkle to the water, 240 

Touched the rugged hills with smooth- 
ness, 
Brought the tender Indian Summer 



164 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



To the melancholy north-land, 

In the dreary Moon of Snow-shoes. 

£"Xistless, careless Shawondasee ! 

In his life he had one shadow, 

In his heart one sorrow had he. 

Once, as he was gazing northward, 

Far away upon a prairie 

He beheld a maiden standing, 250 

Saw a tall and slender maiden 

All alone upon a prairie; 

Brightest green were all her garments, 

And her hair was like the sunshine. 

Day by day he gazed upon her, 
Day by day he sighed with passion, 
Day by day his heart within him 
Grew more hot with love and longing 
For the maid with yellow tresses. 
But he was too fat and lazy 260 

To bestir himself and woo her. 
Yes, too indolent and easy 
To pursue her and persuade her; 
So he only gazed upon her, 
Only sat and sighed with passion 
For the maiden of the prairie. 

Till one morning, looking northward, 
He beheld her yellow tresses 
Changed and covered o'er with white- 
ness, 
Covered as with whitest snow-flakes. 270 
' Ah ! my brother from the North-land, 
From the kingdom of Wabasso, 
From the land of the White Rabbit ! 
You have stolen the maiden from me, 
You have laid your hand upon her, 
You have wooed and won my maiden, 
With your stories of the North-land ! ' 

Thus the wretched Shawondasee 
Breathed into the air his sorrow; 
And the South-Wind o'er the prairie 280 
Wandered warm with sighs of passion, 
With the sighs of Shawondasee, 
Till the air seemed full of snow-flakes, 
Full of thistle-down the prairie, 
And the maid with hair like sunshine 
Vanished from his sight forever; 
Never more did Shawondasee 
See the maid with yellow tresses ! 

Poor, deluded Shawondasee ! 
'T was no woman tbat you gazed at, 290 
'T was no maiden that you sighed for, 
'T was the prairie dandelion 
That through all the dreamy Summer 
You had gazed at with such longing, 
You had sighed for with such passion, 
And had puffed away forever, 



Blown into the air with sighing. 
Ah ! deluded Shawondasee ! 

Thus the Four Winds were divided; 
Thus the sons of Mudjekeewis 
Had their stations in the heavens, 
At the corners of the heavens; 
For lumself the West- Wind only 
Kept the mighty Mudjekeewis. 



Ill 

HIAWATHA'S CHILDHOOD 

Downward through the evening twilight, 

In the days that are forgotten, 

In the miremembered ages, 

From the full moon fell Nokomis, 

Fell the beautiful Nokomis, 

She a wife, but not a mother. 

She was sporting with her women, 
Swinging in a swing of grape-vines, 
When her rival the rejected, 
Full of jealousy and hatred, 10 

Cut the leafy swing asunder, 
CuTin twain the twisted grape-vines, 
And Nokomis fell affrighted 
Downward through the evening twilight, 
On the Muskoday, the meadow, 
On the prairie full of blossoms. 
' See ! a star falls ! ' said the people ; 
' From the sky a star is falling ! ' 

There among the ferns and mosses, 
There among the prairie lilies, 20 

On the Muskoday, the meadow, 
In the moonlight and the starlight, 
Fair Nokomis bore a daughter. 
And she called her name Wenonah, 
As the first-born of her daughters. 
And the daughter of Nokomis 
Grew up like the prairie lilies, 
Grew a tall and slender maiden, 
With the beauty of the moonlight, 
With the beauty of the starlight. 30 

And Nokomis warned her often, 
Saying oft, and oft repeating, 
' Oh, beware of Mudjekeewis, 
Of the West- Wind, Mudjekeewis; 
Listen not to what he tells you; 
Lie not down upon the meadow, 
Stoop not down among the lilies, 
Lest the West- Wind come and harm you ! ' 

But she heeded not the warning, 
Heeded not those words of wisdom, 4 o 

And the West- Wind came at evening, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



165 



Walking lightly o'er the prairie, 

Whispering to the leaves and blossoms, 

Bending low the flowers and grasses, 

Found the beautiful Wenonah, 

Lying there among the lilies, 

Wooed her with his words of sweetness, 

Wooed her with his soft caresses, 

Till she bore a son in sorrow, 

Bore a son of love and sorrow. 50 

Thus was born my Hiawatha, 
Thus was born the child of wonder; 
But the daughter of Nokomis, 
Hiawatha's gentle mother, 
In her anguish died deserted 
By. the West- Wind, false and faithless, 
By the heartless Mudjekeewis. 

For her daughter long and loudly 
Wailed and wept the sad Nokomis^ ^ •- 
' Oh that I were dead ! ' she murmured, 60 
' Oh that I were dead, as thou art ! 
No more work, and no more weeping, 
Wahonowin ! Wahonowin ! ' 

/ By the shores of Gitche Gumee, 

I By the shining Big-Sea- Water, 
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, 
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. 

/' Dark behind it rose the forest, 
Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, 
Rose the firs with cones upon them; 70 

Bright before it beat the water, 

• Beat the clear and sunny water, 

VBeat the shining Big-Sea- Water. 

There the wrinkled old Nokomis 
Nursed the little Hiawatha, 
Rocked him in his linden cradle, 
Bedded soft in moss and rushes, 
Safely bound. with reindeer sinews; 
Stilled his fretful wail by saying, 
' Hush ! the Naked Bear will hear thee ! ' So 
Lulled him into slumber, singing, 
' Ewa-yea ! my little owlet ! 
Who is this, that lights the wigwam ? 
With his great eyes lights the wigwam ? 
Ewa-yea ! my little owlet ! ' 

Many things Nokomis taught him 
Of the stars that shine in heaven; 
Showed him Ishkoodah, the comet, 
Ishkoodah, with fiery tresses; 
Showed the Death-Dance of the spirits, go 
Warriors with their plumes and war- 
clubs, 
Flaring far away to northward 
In the frosty nights of Winter; 
Showed the broad white road in heaven, 
Pathway of the ghosts, the shadows, 



Running straight across the heavens, 
Crowded with the ghosts, the shadows. 

At the door on summer evenings 
Sat the little Hiawatha; 
Heard the whispering of the pine-trees, 
Heard the lapping of the waters, 101 

Sounds of music, words of wonder; 
' Minne-wawa ! ' said the pine-trees, 
' Mudway-aushka ! ' said the water. 

Saw the fire-fly, Wah-wah-taysee, 
Flitting through the dusk of evening, 
With the twinkle of its candle 
Lighting up the brakes and bushes, 
And he sang the song of children, 
Sang the song Nokomis taught him: no 
' Wah-wah-taysee, little fire-fly, 
Little, flitting, white-fire insect, 
Little, dancing, white-fire creature, 
Light me with your little candle, 
Ere upon my bed I lay me, 
Ere in sleep I close my eyelids ! ' 

Saw the moon rise from the water 
Rippling, rounding from the water, 
Saw the flecks and shadows on it, 
Whispered, ' What is that, Nokomis ? ' 120 
And the good Nokomis answered: 
' Once a warrior, very angry, 
Seized his grandmother, and threw her 
Up into the sky at midnight; 
Right against the moon he threw her; 
'T is her body that you see there.' 

Saw the rainbow in the heaven, 
In the eastern sky, the rambow, 
Whispered, ' What is that, Nokomis ? ' 
And the good Nokomis answered: 130 

' 'T is the heaven of flowers you see there ; 
All the wild-flowers of the forest, 
All the lilies of the prairie, 
When on earth they fade and perish, 
Blossom in that heaven above us.' 

When he heard the owls at midnight, 
Hooting, laughing hi the forest, 
' What is that ? ' he cried in terror, 
' What is that,' he said, ' Nokomis ? ' 
And the good Nokomis answered: 140 

' That is but the owl and owlet, 
Talking in their native language, 
Talking, scolding at each other.' 

Then the little Hiawatha 
Learned of every bird its language, 
Learned their names and all their secrets, 
How they built their nests in Summer, 
Where they hid themselves in Winter, 
Talked with them whene'er he met them, 
Called them ' Hiawatha's Chickens.' 150 



i66 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Of all boasts he learned the language] 
Learned their names and all their secrets, 
How the beavers built their lodges, 
"Where the squirrels hid their aeorus, 
How the reindeer ran so swiftly. 
Why the rabbit was so timid, 
Talked with them whene'er he met them, 
Called them * Hiawatha's Brothers.' 

Then Iagoo, the great boaster, 
He the marvellous story-teller. 160 

He the traveller ami the talker, 
He the friend of old Nokomis, 
Made a bow for Hiawatha: 
From a branch of ash he made it, 
From an oak-bough made the arrows, 
Tipped with flint, and winged with feathers, 
And the cord he made of deer-skin. 

Then he said to Hiawatha : 
1 Go, my son, into the forest, 
Where the red deer herd together, 170 

Kill for us a famous roebuck, 
Kill for lis a deer with antlers ! ' 

Forth into the forest straightway 
All alone walked Hiawatha 
Proudly, with his bow and arrows : 
And the birds sang round him, o'er him, 
' Do not shoot us, Hiawatha ! ' 
Sang the robin, the Opechee, 
Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa, 
' Do not shoot us, Hiawatha ! ' 1S0 

Up the oak-tree, close beside him, 
Sprang the squirrel, Adjidaumo, 
In and o\it among the branches, 
Coughed and chattered from the oak-tree, 
Laughed, and said between his laughing, 
' Do not shoot me, Hiawatha ! ' 

And the rabbit, from his pathway 
Leaped aside, and at a distance 
Sat erect upon his haunches. 
Half in fear and half in frolic, 190 

Saying to the little hunter, 
' Do not shoot me, Hiawatha ! ' 

But be heeded not, nor heard them, 
For his thoughts were with the red deer; 
On their tracks his eyes were fastened, 
Leading downward to the river, 
To the ford across the river, 
And as one in slumber walked be. 

Hidden in the alder-bushes, 
There he waited till the deer came, 200 

Till he saw two antlers lifted, 
Saw two eyes look from the thicket, 
Saw two nostrils point to windward. 
And a deer came down the pathway, 
Flecked with leafy light and shadow. 



And his heart within him fluttered, 

Trembled like the leaves above him, 

Like the birch-leaf palpitated, 

As the deer came down the pathway. 

Then, upon one knee uprising, 210 

Hiawatha aimed an anew; 
Scarce a twig moved with his motion, 
Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled. 
But the wary roebuck started, 
Stamped with all his hoofs together, 
Listened with one foot uplifted, 
Leaped as if to meet the arrow; 
Ah ! the singing, fatal arrow, 
Like a wasp it buzzed and stung him ! 

Dead he lay there in the forest. 
By the ford across the river; 
Beat his timid heart no longer, 
But the heart of Hiawatha 
Throbbed and shouted and exulted, 
As he bore the red deer homeward, 
And Iagoo and Nokomis 
Hailed bis coming with applauses. 

From the red deer's hide Nokomis 
Made a cloak for Hiawatha, 
From the red deer's flesh Nokomis .-.; • 

Made a banquet to his honor. 
All the village came and feasted, 
All the guests praised Hiawatha, 
Called him Strong-Heart, Soan-ge-taha ! 
Called him Loon-Heart, Mahn-go-taysee ! 



IV 

HIAWATHA AND MUDJEKEEWIS 

Out of childhood into manhood 
Now had grown my Hiawatha, 
Skilled in all the craft of hunters, 
Learned in all the lore of old men, 
In all youthful sports and pastimes, 
In all manly arts and labors. 

Swift of foot was Hiawatha; 
He could shoot an arrow from him, 
And run forward with such fleetness, 
That the arrow fell behind him ! ic 

Strong of arm was Hiawatha; 
He could shoot ten arrows upward, 
Shoot them with such strength and swift- 
ness, 
That the tenth had left the bow-string 
Fro the first to earth had fallen ! 

He had mittens, Minjekahwun, 
Magic mittens made of deer-skin ; 
When upon his hands he wore them, 



HENRY WADSVVORTH LONGFELLOW 



167 



He could smite the rocks asunder, 

He could grind them into powder. 20 

He had moccasins enchanted, 

Magic moccasins of dccr-skin; 

When he hound them round his ankles, 

When upon his feet he tied them, 

At each stride a mile he measured ! 

Much he questioned old Nokomis 
Of his father Mudjekeewis; 
Learned from her the fatal secret 
Of the heauty of his mother, 
Of the falsehood of his father; 30 

And his heart was hot within him, 
Like a living coal liis heart was. 

Then he said to old Nokomis, 
' I will go to Mudjekeewis, 
See how fares it with my father, 
At the doorways of the West- Wind, 
At the portals of the Sunset ! ' 

From his lodge went Hiawatha, 
Dressed for travel, armed for hunting; 
Dressed in deer-skin shirt and leggings, 40 
Richly wrought with quills and wampum; 
On his head his eagle-feathers, 
Round his waist his helt of wampum, 
In his hand his how of ash-wood, 
Strung with smews of the reindeer; 
In his quiver oaken arrows, 
Tipped with jasper, winged with feathers; 
With his mittens, Minjekahwun, 
With his moccasins enchanted. 

Warning said the old Nokomis, 50 

' Go not forth, O Hiawatha ! 
To the kingdom of the West-Wind, 
To the realms of Mudjekeewis, 
Lest he harm you with his magic, 
Lest he kill you with his cunning ! ' 

But the fearless Hiawatha 
Heeded not her woman's warning; 
Forth he strode into the forest, 
At each stride a mile he measured; 
Lurid seemed the sky ahove him, 60 

Lurid seemed the earth heneath him, 
Hot and close the air around him, 
Filled with smoke and fiery vapors, 
As of hurning woods and prairies, 
For his heart was hot within him, 
Like a living coal his heart was. 

So he journeyed westward, westward, 
Left the fleetest deer hehind him, 
Left the antelope and bison; 
Crossed the rushing Esconaba, 7 o 

Crossed the mighty Mississippi, 
Passed the Mountains of the Prairie, 
Passed the land of Crows and Foxes, 



Passed the dwellings of the Blackfeet, 
Came unto the Rocky Mountains, 
To the kingdom of the West-Wind, 
Where upon the gusty summits 
Sat the ancient Mudjekeewis, 
Ruler of the winds of heaven. 

Filled with awe was Hiawatha 80 

At the aspect of his father. 
On the air about him wildly 
Tossed and streamed his cloudy tresses, 
Gleamed like drifting snow his tresses, 
Glared like Ishkoodah, the comet, 
Like the star with fiery tresses. 

Filled with joy was Mudjekeewis 
When he looked on Hiawatha, 
Saw his youth rise up before him 
In the face of Hiawatha, 90 

Saw the beauty of Weuonah 
From the grave rise up before him. 

' Welcome ! ' said he, ' Hiawatha, 
To the kingdom of the West-Wind ! 
Long have I been waiting for you ! 
Youth is lovely, age is lonely, 
Youth is fiery, age is frosty; 
You bring back the days departed, 
You bring back my youth of passion, 
And the beautiful Wenonah ! ' 100 

Many days they talked together, 
Questioned, listened, waited, answered; 
Much the mighty Mudjekeewis 
Boasted of his ancient prowess, 
Of his perilous adventures, 
His indomitable courage, 
His invulnerable body. 

Patiently sat Hiawatha, 
Listening to his father's boasting; 
With a smile he sat and listened, no 

Uttered neither threat nor menace, 
Neither word nor look betrayed him, 
But his heart was hot within him, 
Like a living coal his heart was. 

Then he said, ' O Mudjekeewis, 
Is there nothing that can harm you ? 
Nothing that you are afraid of ? ' 
And the mighty Mudjekeewis, 
Grand and gracious in his boasting, 
Answered, saying, ' There is nothing, 120 
Nothing but the black rock yonder, 
Nothing but the fatal Wawbeek ! ' 

And he looked at Hiawatha 
With a wise look and benignant, 
With a countenance paternal, 
Looked with pride upon the beauty 
Of his tall and graceful figure, 
Saying, ' my Hiawatha I 



1 68 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Is there anything oan harm you ? 
Anything you are afraid of ? ' 130 

But the wary Hiawatha 
Paused awhile, as if uncertain, 
Held his peaee, as if resolving. 
And then answered, • There is nothing, 
Nothing but the hulrush yonder. 
Nothing but the great Apukwa ! 

And as Mudjekeewis, rising. 
Stretched his hand to pluck the hul- 
rush, 
Hiawatha cried in terror, 
Cried in well-dissembled terror, 140 

* Kago ! fcago ! do not touch it ! ' 
' Ah, kaween ! ' said Mudjekeewis, 
' No indeed, I will not touch it ! ' 

Then they talked of other matters; 
First of Hiawatha's brothers, 
First of Wabun, of the East-Wind, 
Of the South- Wind, Shawondasee, 
Of the North, Kabibonokka; 
Then of Hiawatha's mother, 
Of the beautiful Wenonah, 150 

Of her birth upon the meadow, 
Of her death, as old Nokomis 
Had remembered and related. 

And he cried, • O Mudjekeewis, 
It was you who killed Wenonah, 
Took her young life and her beauty, 
Broke the Lily of the Prairie, 
Trampled it beneath your footsteps; 
You confess it ! you confess it ! ' 
And the mighty Mudjekeewis 160 

Tossed upon the wind his tresses, 
Bowed his hoary head in anguish, 
With a silent nod assented. 

Then up started Hiawatha, 
And with threatening look and gesture 
Laid his hand upon the black rock, 
On the fatal Wawbeek laid it, 
With his mittens, Minjekahwun, 
Rent the jutting crag asunder. 
Smote and crushed it into fragments, 170 
Hurled them madly at his father, 
The remorseful Mudjekeewis, 
For his heart was hot within him, 
Like a living coal his heart was. 

But the ruler of the West-Wind 
Blew the fragments backward from him, 
With the breathing of his nostrils, 
With the tempest of his anger, 
Blew them back at his assailant; 
Seized the bulrush, the Apukwa, 1S0 

Dragged it with its roots and fibres 
From the margin of the meadow, 



From its ooze the giant bulrush; 
Long and loud laughed Hiawatha ! 

Then began the deadly conflict, 
Hand to hand among the mountains ; 
From his eyry screamed the eagle. 
The Keneu, the great war-eagle. 
Sat upon the crags around them. 
Wheeling flapped his wings above them. 190 

Like a tall tree in the tempest 
Bent and lashed the giant bulrush; 
And in masses huge and heavy 
Crashing fell the fatal Wawbeek; 
Till the earth shook with the tumult 
And confusion of the battle, 
And the air was full of shoutings, 
And the thunder of the mountains, 
Starting, answered, 'Baim-wawa ! ' 

Hack retreated Mudjekeewis, 200 

Rushing westward o'er the mountains, 
Stumbling westward down the mountains, 
Three whole days retreated fighting, 
Still pursued by Hiawatha 
To the doorways of the AYest-Wiud, 
To the portals of the Sunset, 
To the earth's remotest border, 
Where into the empty spaces 
Sinks the sun, as a flamingo 
Drops into her nest at nightfall .mo 

In the melancholy marshes. 

' Hold ! ' at length cried Mudjekeewis, 
' Hold, my son, my Hiawatha ! 
'T is impossible to kill me, 
For you cannot kill the immortal. 
I have put you to this trial, 
But to know and prove your courage; 
Now receive the prize of valor ! 

1 Go back to your home and people, 
Live among them, toil among them, 220 

Cleanse the earth from all that harms it, 
Clear the fishing-grounds and rivers. 
Slay all monsters and magicians, 
All the Wendigoes, the giants, 
All the serpents, the Kenabeeks, 
As I slew the Mishe-Mokwa, 
Slew the Great Bear of the mountains. 

• And at last when Death draws near you, 
When the awful eyes of Pauguk 
Glare upon you in the darkness, 230 

I will share my kingdom with you. 
Ruler shall you be thenceforward 
Of the Northwest- Wind, Keewaydin, 
Of the home-wind, the Keewaydin.' 

Thus was fought that figmous battle 
In the dreadful days of Shah-shah, 
In the days long since departed, 



HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 



169 



In the kingdom of the West-Wind. 

Still the hunter sees its traces 

Scattered far o'er hill and valley; 240 

Sees the giant bulrush growing 

By the ponds and water-courses, 

Sees the masses of the Wawbeek 

Lying still in every valley. 

Homeward now went Hiawatha; 
Pleasant was the landscape round him, 
Pleasant was the air above him, 
For the bitterness of anger 
Had departed wholly from him, 
From his brain the thought of vengeance, 250 
From his heart the burning fever. 

Only once his pace he slackened, 
Only once he paused or halted, 
Paused to purchase heads of arrows 
Of the ancient Arrow-maker, 
In the land of the Dacotahs, 
Where the Falls of Minnehaha 
Flash and gleam among the oak-trees, 
Laugh and leap into the valley. 1 

There the ancient Arrow-maker 260 

Made his arrow-heads of sandstone, 
Arrow-heads of chalcedony, 
Arrow-heads of flint and jasper, 
Smoothed and sharpened at the edges, 
Hard and polished, keen and costly. 

With him dwelt his dark-eyed daughter 
Wayward as the Minnehaha, 
With her moods of shade and sunshine, 
Eyes that smiled and frowned alternate, 
Feet as rapid as the river, 270 

Tresses flowing like the water, 
And as musical a laughter: 
And he named her from the river, 
From the water-fall he named her, 
Minnehaha, Laughing Water. 

Was it then for heads of arrows, 
Arrow-heads of chalcedony, 
Arrow-heads of flint and jasper, 
That my Hiawatha halted 
In the land of the Dacotahs ? 280 

Was it not to see the maiden, 
See the face of Laughing Water 
Peeping from behind the curtain, 
Hear the rustling of her garments 
From behind the waving curtain, 



1 'The scenery about Fort Snelling in rich in beauty. 
The Falls of St. Anthony are familiar to travellers, and 
to readers of Indian sketches. Between the fort and 
these falls are the " Little Falls," forty feet in height, 
on a stream that empties into the Mississippi. The 
Indians called them Sline-hah-hah, or " laughing 
waters." ' — Mrs. Eastman's Dacotah, or Legends of the 
Sioux, Introd. p. ii. (Longfellow.) 



As one sees the Minnehaha 
Gleaming, glancing through the branches, 
As one hears the Laughing Water 
From behind its screen of branches ? 

Who shall say what thoughts and visions 
Fill the fiery brains of young men ? 290 

Who shall say what dreams of beauty 
Filled the heart of Hiawatha ? 
All he told to old Nokomis, 
When he reached the lodge at sunset, 
Was the meeting with his father, 
Was his fight with Mudjekeewis; 
Not a word he said of arrows, 
Not a word of Laughing Water. 



HIAWATHA'S FASTING 2 

You shall hear how Hiawatha 
Prayed and fasted in the forest, 
Not for greater skill in hunting, 
Not for greater craft in fishing, 
Not for triumphs in the battle, 
And renown among the warriors, 
But for profit of the people, 
For advantage of the nations. 

First he built a lodge for fasting, 
Built a wigwam in the forest, i< 

By the shining Big-Sea- Water, 
In the blithe and pleasant Spring-time, 
In the Moon of Leaves he built it, . 
And, with dreams and visions many, 
Seven whole days and nights he fasted. 

On the first day of his fasting 
Through the leafy woods he wandered; 
Saw the deer start from the thicket, 
Saw the rabbit in his burrow, 
Heard the pheasant, Bena, drumming, 2< 
Heard the squirrel, Adjidaumo, 
Rattling in his hoard of acorns, 
Saw the pigeon, the Omeme, 
Building nests among the pine-trees, 
And in flocks the wild-goose, Wawa, 
Flying to the fen-lands northward, 
Whirring, wailing far above him. 
' Master of Life I ' he cried, desponding, 
' Must our lives depend on these things ? ' 

On the next day of his fasting 3( 

By the river's brink he wandered, 
Through the Muskoday, the meadow, 
Saw the wild rice, Mahnomonee, 
Saw the blueberry, Meenahga, 
And the strawberry, Odahmin, 

2 See Longfellow's note on section xiii, p. 188. 



170 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And the gooseberry, Shahboniin, 
And the grape-vine, the Bemahgut, 
Trailing o'er the ald.er-braneb.es, 

Filling all the air with fragrance ! 

' Master of Life ! ' he cried, desponding, 40 

1 Must our lives depend on these things ? ' 

On the third day of his fasting 
By the lake he sat and pondered, 
By the still, transparent water; 
Saw the sturgeon, Nahma, leaping, 
Scattering drops like beads of wampum, 
Saw the yellow perch, the Sahwa, 
Like a sunbeam m the water, 
Saw the pike, the Maskenozha, 
And the herring, Okahahwis, 50 

And the Shawgash.ee, the craw-fish ! 

• Master of Life ! ' he cried, desponding, 

• Must our lives depend on these things ? ' 

On the fourth day of his fasting 
In his lodge he lay exhausted ; 
From his couch of leaves and branches 
Gazing with half-open eyelids, 
Full of shadowy dreams and visions, 
On the dizzy, swimming landscape, 
On the gleaming of the water, 60 

On the splendor of the sunset. 

And he saw a youth approaching, 
' Dressed in garments green and yellow, 
I Coming through the purple twilight, 
Through the splendor of the sunset; 
Plumes of green bent o'er his forehead, 
And his hah" was soft and golden. 

Standing at the open doorway, 
Long he looked at Hiawatha, 
Looked with pity and compassion 70 

On his wasted form and features, 
And, in accents like the sighing 
Of the South-Wind in the tree-tops, 
Said he, ' O my Hiawatha ! 
All your prayers are heard in heaven, 
For you pray not like the others; 
Not for greater skill in hunting, 
Not for greater craft in fishing, 
Not for triumph in the battle, 
Nor renown among the warriors, So 

, But for profit of the people, 
For advantage of the nations. 

' From the Master of Life descending, 
I, the friend of man, Mondamin, 
Come to warn you and instruct you, 
How by struggle and by labor 
(You shall gain what you have prayed for. 
Rise up from your bed of branches, 
Rise, youth, and wrestle with me ! ' 

Faint with famine, Hiawatha 90 



Started from his bed of branches, 
From the twilight of his wigwam 
Forth into the Hush of sunset 
Came, and wrestled with Mondamin; 
At his touch he felt new coinage 
Throbbing in his brain and bosom, 
Felt new life and hope and vigor 
Rim through every nerve and fibre. 

So they wrestled there together 
In the glory of the sunset, 100 

And the more they strove and struggled, 
Stronger still grew Hiawatha ; 
Till the darkness fell around them, 
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, 
From her nest among the pine-trees, 
Gave a cry of lamentation, 
Gave a scream of pain and famine. 

' 'T is enough ! ' then said Mondamin, 
Smiling upon Hiawatha, 
' But to-morrow, when the sim sets, no 

I will come again to try you.' 
And he vanished, and was seen not; 
Whether sinking as the rain sinks, 
Whether rising as the mists rise, 
Hiawatha saw not, knew not, 
Only saw that he had vanished, 
Leaving him alone and fainting, 
With the misty lake below him, 
And the reeling stars above him. 

On the morrow and the next day, 120 

When the sun through heaven descending, 
Like a red and burning cinder 
From the hearth of the Great Spirit, 
Fell into the western waters, 
Came Mondamin for the trial, 
For the strife with Hiawatha ; 
Came as silent as the dew comes, 
From the empty air appearing, 
Into empty air returning, 
Taking shape when earth it touches, 130 
But invisible to all men 
In its coming and its going. 

Thrice they wrestled there together 
In the glory of the sunset, 
Till the darkness fell around them, 
Till the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, 
From her nest among the pine-trees, 
Lettered her loud cry of famine, 
And Mondamin paused to listen. 

Tall and beautiful he stood there, 4c 

In his garments green and yellow; 
To and fro his plumes above him 
Waved and nodded with his breathing, 
And the sweat of the encounter 
Stood like drops of dew upon him. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



171 



And he cried, ' O Hiawatha ! 
Bravely have you wrestled with me, 
Thrice have wrestled stoutly with me, 
And the Master of Life, who sees us, 
He will give to you the triumph ! ' 1 50 

Then he smiled, and said : ' To-morrow 
Is the last day of your conflict, 
Is the last day of your fasting. 
You will conquer and o'ercome me; 
Make a bed for me to lie in, 
Where the rain may fall upon me, 
Where the sun may come and warm me; 
Strip these garments, green and yellow, 
Strip this nodding plumage from me, » 
Lay me in the earth, and make it 160 

Soft and loose and light above me. 

' Let no hand disturb my slumber, 
Let no weed nor worm molest me, 
Let not Kahgahgee, the raven, 
Come to haunt me and molest me, 
Only come yourself to watch me, 
Till I wake, and start, and quicken, 
Till I leap into the sunshine.' 

And thus saying, he departed; 
Peacefully slept Hiawatha, 170 

But he heard the Wawonaissa, 
Heard the whippoorwill complaining, 
Perched upon his lonely wigwam; 
Heard the rushing Sebowisha, 
Heard the rivulet rippling near him, 
Talking to the darksome forest; 
Heard the sighing of the branches, 
As they lifted and subsided 
At the passing of the night-wind, 
Heard them, as one hears in slumber 180 
Far-off murmurs, dreamy whispers: 
Peacefully slept Hiawatha. 

On the morrow came Nokomis, 
On the seventh day of his fasting, 
Came with food for Hiawatha, 
Came imploring and bewailing, 
Lest his hunger should o'ercome him, 
Lest his fasting should be fatal. 

But he tasted not, and touched not, 
Only said to her, ' Nokomis, 190 

Wait until the sun is setting, 
Till the darkness falls around us, 
Till the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, 
Crying from the desolate marshes, 
Tells us that the day is ended.' 

Homeward weeping went Nokomis, 
Sorrowing for her Hiawatha, 
Fearing lest his strength should fail him, 
Lest his fasting should be fatal. 
He meanwhile sat weary waiting 200 



For the coming of Mondamin, 
Till the shadows, pointing eastward, 
Lengthened over field and forest, 
Till the sun dropped from the heaven, 
Floating on the waters westward, 
As a red leaf in the Autumn 
Falls and floats upon the water, 
Falls and sinks into its bosom. 

And behold ! the young Mondamin, 
With his soft and shining tresses, 210 

With his garments green and yellow, 
With his long and glossy plumage, 
Stood and beckoned at the doorway. 
And as one in slumber walking, 
Pale and haggard, but undaunted, 
From the wigwam Hiawatha 
Came and wrestled with Mondamin. 

Round about him spun the landscape, 
Sky and forest reeled together, 
And his strong heart leaped within him, 220 
As the sturgeon leaps and struggles 
In a net to break its meshes. 
Like a ring of fire around him 
Blazed and flared the red horizon, 
And a hundred suns seemed looking 
At the combat of the wrestlers. 

Suddenly upon the greensward 
All alone stood Hiawatha, 
Panting with his wild exertion, 
Palpitating with the struggle; 230 

And before him breathless, lifeless, 
Lay the youth, with hair dishevelled, 
Plumage torn, and garments tattered, 
Dead he lay there in the sunset. 

And victorious Hiawatha 
Made the grave as he commanded, 
Stripped the garments from Mondamin, 
Stripped his tattered plumage from him, 
Laid him in the earth, and made it 
Soft and loose and light above him; 240 

And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, 
From the melancholy moorlands, 
Gave a cry of lamentation, 
Gave a cry of pain and anguish ! 
/ Homeward then went Hiawatha 
To the lodge of old Nokomis, 
And the seven days of his fasting 
Were accomplished and completed. 
But the place was not forgotten 
Where he wrestled with Mondamin; 25< 
Nor forgotten nor neglected 
Was the grave where lay Mondamin, 
Sleeping in the rain and sunshine, 
Where his scattered plumes and garments 
Faded in the rain and sunshine. 



172 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Day by day did Hiawatha 
Go to wait and watch beside it; 
Kept the dark mould soft above it, 
Kept it clean from weeds and insects. 
Drove away, with scoffs and shoutings, 260 
Kahgahgee, the king of ravens. 

Till at length a small green feather 
From the earth shot slowly upward, 
Then another and another, 
And before the Summer ended 
Stood the maize in all its beawty, 
With its shining robes about it, 
And its long, soft, yellow tresses; 
And in rapture Hiawatha 
Cried aloud, ' It is Mondamin ! 270 

Yes, the friend of man, Mondamin ! ' 

Then he called to old Nokomis 
And Iagoo, the great boaster, 
Showed them where the maize was grow- 
ing. 
Told them of his wondrous vision, 
Of his wrestling and his triumph, 
Of this new gift to the nations, 
Which should be their food forever. 

And still later, when the Autumn 
Changed the long, green leaves to yellow, 280 
And the soft and juicy kernels 
Grew like wampmn hard and yellow, 
Then the ripened ears he gathered, 
Stripped the withered husks from off 

them, 
As he once had stripped the wrestler, 
Gave the first Feast of Mondamin, 
And made known unto the people 
This new gift of the Great Spirit. 



VI 

HIAWATHA'S FRIENDS 

Two good friends had Hiawatha, 

Singled out from all the others, 

Bound to him in closest union, 

And to whom he gave the right hand 

Of his heart, in joy and sorrow; 

Chibiabos, the musician, 

And the very strong man, Kwasind. 

Straight between them ran the pathway, 
Never grew the grass upon it; 
Singing birds, that utter falsehoods, 10 

Story-tellers, mischief-makers, 
Foimd no eager ear to listen, 
Could not breed ill-will between them, 
For they kept each other's counsel, 



Spake with naked hearts together, 
Pondering much and much contriving 
How the tribes of men might prosper. 

Most beloved by Hiawatha 
Was the gentle Chibiabos, 
He the best of all musicians, 30 

He the sweetest of all singers. 
Beautiful and childlike was he, 
Brave as man is, soft as woman, 
Pliant as a wand of willow, 
Stately as a deer with antlers. 

When he sang, the village listened; 
All the warriors gathered round him, 
All the women came to hear him; 
Now he stirred their souls to passion, 
Now he melted them to pity. 30 

From the hollow reeds he fashioned 
Flutes so musical and mellow, 
That the brook, the Sebowisha, 
Ceased to murmur in the woodland, 
That the wood-birds ceased from singing, 
And the squirrel, Adjidannio, 
Ceased his chatter in the oak-tree, 
And the rabbit, the Wabasso, 
Sat upright to look and listen. 

Yes, the brook, the Sebowisha, 40 

Pausing, said, ' O Chibiabos, 
Teach my waves to flow in music, 
Softly as your words in singing ! ' 

Yes, the bluebird, the Owaissa, 
Envious, said, • O Chibiabos, 
Teach me tones as wild and wayward, 
Teach me songs as full of frenzy ! ' 

Yes, the robin, the Opechee, 
Joyous, said, ' O Chibiabos, 
Teach me tones as sweet and tender, 50 
Teach me songs as full of gladness ! ' 

And the whippoorwill, Wawonaissa, 
Sobbing, said, ' O Chibiabos, 
Teach me tones as melancholy, 
Teach me songs as fidl of sadness ! ' 

All the many sounds of nature 
Borrowed sweetness from his singing; 
All the hearts of men were softened 
By the pathos of his music ; 
For he sang of peace and freedom, 60 

Sang of beauty, love, and longing; 
Sang of death, and life undying 
In the Islands of the Blessed, 
In the kingdom of Ponemah, 
In the land of the Hereafter. 

Very dear to Hiawatha 
Was the gentle Chibiab'^, 
He the best of all musicians. 
He the sweetest of all sino-ers ; 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



*73 



For his gentleness he loved him, 70 

And the magic of his singing. 

Dear, too, unto Hiawatha 
Was the very strong man, Kwasind, 
He the strongest of all mortals, 
He the mightiest among many; 
For his very strength he loved him, 
For his strength allied to goodness. 

Idle in his youth was Kwasind, 
Very listless, dull, and dreamy, 
Never played with other children, 80 

Never fished and never hunted, 
Not like other children was he; 
But they saw that much he fasted, 
Much his Manito entreated, 
Much besought his Guardian Spirit. 

1 Lazy Kwasind ! ' said his mother, 
' In my work you never help me ! 
In the Summer you are roaming 
Idly in the fields and forests; 
In the Winter you are cowering go 

O'er the firebrands in the wigwam ! 
In the coldest days of Winter 
1 must break the ice for fishing; 
With my nets you never help me ! 
At the door my nets are hanging, 
Dripping, freezing with the water; 
Go and wring them, Yenadizze ! 
Go and dry them in the sunshine ! ' 

Slowly, from the ashes, Kwasind 
Rose, but made no angry answer; 100 

From the lodge went forth in silence, 
Took the nets, that hung together, 
Dripping, freezing at the doorway; 
Like a wisp of straw he wrung them, 
Like a wisp of straw he broke them, 
Could not wring them without breaking, 
Such the strength was in his fingers. 

' Lazy Kwasind ! ' said his father, 
' In the hunt you never help me ; 
Every bow you touch is broken, no 

Snapped asunder every arrow; 
Yet come with me to the forest, 
You shall bring the hunting home- 
ward.' 

Down a narrow pass they wandered, 
Where a brooklet led them onward, 
Where the trail of deer and bison 
Marked the soft mud on the margin, 
Till they found all further passage 
Shut against them, barred securely 
By the trunks of trees uprooted, 120 

Lying lengthwise, lying crosswise, 
And forbidding further passage. 

' We must go back,' said the old man, 



' O'er these logs we cannot clamber; 

Not a woodcliuck could get through them, 

Not a squirrel clamber o'er them ! ' 

And straightway his pipe he lighted, 

And sat down to smoke and ponder. 

But before his pipe was finished, 

Lo ! the path was cleared before him; 130 

All the trunks had Kwasind lifted, 

To the right hand, to the left hand, 

Shot the pine-trees swift as arrows, 

Hurled the cedars light as lances. 

' Lazy Kwasind ! ' said the young men, 
As they sported in the meadow: 
' Why stand idly looking at us, 
Leaning on the rock behind you ? 
Come and wrestle with the others, 
Let us pitch the quoit together ! ' 140 

Lazy Kwasind made no answer, 
To their challenge made no answer, 
Only rose, and slowly turning, 
Seized the huge rock in his fingers, 
Tore it from its deep foundation, 
Poised it in the air a moment, 
Pitched it sheer into the river, 
Sheer into the swift Pauwating, 
Where it still is seen in Summer. 

Once as down tliat foaming river, 150 
Down the rapids of Pauwating, 
Kwasind sailed with his companions, 
In the stream he saw a beaver, 
Saw Ahmeek, the King of Beavers, 
Struggling with the rushing currents, 
Rising, sinking in the water. 

Without speaking, without pausing, 
Kwasind leaped into the river, 
Plunged beneath the bubbling surface, 
Through the whirlpools chased the beaver, 
Followed him among the islands, 161 

Stayed so long beneath the water, 
That his terrified companions 
Cried, ' Alas ! good-by to Kwasind ! 
We shall never more see Kwasind ! ' 
But he reappeared triumphant, 
And upon his shining shoulders 
Brought the beaver, dead and drip- 
ping, 
Brought the King of all the Beavers. 

And these two, as I have told you, 170 
Were the friends of Hiawatha, 
Chibiabos, the musician, 
And the very strong man, Kwasind. 
Long they lived in peace together, 
Spake with naked hearts together, 
Pondering much and much contriving 
How the tribes of men might prosper. 



*74 



CHIEF AMERICAN TOFTS 



VII 

HIAWATHA'S SAILING 

• Givk me of your bark, Birch-tree ! 
Of your yellow bark. Birch-tree ! 
Growing by tbo rushing river. 
Tall and stately in the valley ! 
1 a light eanoe will build me. 
Build a swift Cheemauu tor sailing-, 
That shall float upon the river. 
Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, 
Like a yellow water-lily ! 

' bay aside your eloak. Birch-tree ! io 
bay aside your white-skin wrapper. 
For the Summer-time is coming, 
And the sun is v> arm in heaven. 
And you need no white-skin wrapper ! ' 

Thus aloud cried Hiawatha 
In the solitary forest. 
By the rushing Taquamonaw. 
When the birds were singing gayly, 
In the Moon of Leaves were singing. 
And the sun, from sleep awaking, 20 

Started up and said, ' Behold me ! 
Ghee/is, the great Sun, behold me ! ' 

And the tree with all its branches 
Rustled in the breeze of morning, 
Saying, with a sigh of patience, 
' Take my cloak, O Hiawatha ! ' 

With his knife the tree he girdled 
Just beneath its lowest branches, 
Just above the roots, he cut it, 
Till the sap came oonng outward; 30 

Down the trunk, from top to bottom. 
Sheer he deft the bark asunder, 
With a wooden wedge he raised it, 
Stripped it from the trunk unbroken. 

' Give me of your boughs. O Cedar ! 
Of your strong and pliant branches, 
My eanoe to make more steady. 
Make more strong - and firm beneath me ! ' 

Through the summit of the Cedar 
Went a sound, a ery of horror, 4 o 

Went a murmur of resistance ; 
But it whispered, bending downward, 
« Take my boughs. O Hiawatha ! ' 

Down he hewed the boughs of eedar, 
Shaped them straightway to a frame-work. 
Like two bows he formed and shaped them. 
Like two bended bows together. 

' Give me of your roots, O Tamarack ! 
Of your fibrous roots, O Larch-tree ! 
My canoe to bind together, 50 

So to bind the ends together 



That the water may not enter, 
That the river may not wet me ! ' 

And the Larch, with all its fibres, 
Shivered in the air of morning, 
Touched his forehead with its tassels. 
Said, with one long sigh of sorrow, 

• Take them all. Hiawatha ! ' 

From the earth he tore the fibres, 
Tore the tough roots of the l.areh-tree. 60 
Closely sewed the bark together. 
Bound it closely to the frame-work. 

' Give me of your balm, O Fir-tree ! 
Of your balsam and your resin. 
So bo elose the seams together 
That the water may not enter. 
That the river may not wet me ! ' 

And the Fir-tree, tall ami sombre, 
Sobbed through all its robes of darkness, 
Rattled like a shore with pebbles, 
Answered wailing, answered weeping, 
' Take my balm. O Hiawatha ! ' 

And he took the tears of balsam. 
Took the resin of the Fir-tree, 
Smeared therewith each seam and fissure. 
Made each crevice safe from water. 

' Give me of your quills, O Hedgehog ! 
All your quills. O Kagh, the Hedgehog ! 
I will make a neeklaee of them. 
Make a girdle for my beauty. >. 

And two stars to deck her bosom ! ' 

From a hollow tree the Hedgehog 
With his sleepy eyes looked at him, 
Shot his shining quills, like arrows. 
Saying with a drowsy murmur, 
Through the tangle of his whiskers, 

• Take my quills, O Hiawatha ! ' 

From the ground the quills he gathered. 
All the little shining arrows. 
Stained them red and blue and yellow. 
With the juice of roots and berries; 
Into his canoe he wrought them, 
Round its waist a shining girdle. 
Round its bows a gleaming necklace, 
On its breast two stars resplendent. 

Thus the Birch Canoe was builded 
In the valley, by the river. 
In the bosom of the forest; 
And the forest's life was in it, 
All its mystery and its magic, .., 

All the lightness of the birch-tree, 
All the toughness of the eedar. 
All the larch's supple sinews: 
And it floated on the river 
Like a yellow leaf in Autumn, 
Like a yellow water-lily. 



HEXKY WADSWORTH LOXGI'LLLOW 



J 75 



Paddles none had Hiawatha, 
Paddles none li<: had or needed, 
For his thoughts at paddles served him, 
And his wishes served to snide him; no 
Swift, or slow at will be glided, 
Veered to right or left at pleasure. 

Then he called aloud to Kwasind, 
To bia iVicii'l, the strong man, Kwasind, 
Saying, ' Help me clear this river 
Of its sunken logs and sand-bars.' 

Straight into the river Kwasind 
Plunged as if he irere an otter, 
Dived as if he were a beaver, 

Stood op to his waist in water, 120 

To his arm-pits in the river, 

Swam and shouted in the river, 

Tugged at sunken logs and branches, 

With his hand:: he scooped the sand-bars, 
With hi.; feet the ooze and tangle. 

And thus sailed my Hiawatha 
Down the rushing Taquamenaw, 

Sailed through all its bends and windings, 

Sailed through all it-, deeps and shall o 

While his friend, the strong man. K wa- 
sind, 130 

Swam the deeps, the shallows waded. 

[Jp and down the river went they, 
Jn and out among its islands, 
Cleared its bed of root and sand-bar, 

Dragged the de-ad trees from its channel, 

Blade its passage safe and eertain, 
Made a pathway for the people, 

From its springs among the mountains, 
To the waters of Pauwating, 

To the bay of Tacjuamenaw. 140 



VIII 

HIAWATHA'S FISHING 

FOKTH upon the Oitcbe Ournee, 
On the shining Big-Sea-Water, 

With his fishing-line of eedar, 
Of the twisted bark of eedar, 

Forth to catch tin- sturgeon Xahma, 

Mi .he-Xahma, King of I'i-.hcs, 

In his birch canoe exulting 

All alone went Hiawatha. 

Through the elear, tra.nspa.rent water 
lie could see the fishes swimming 
Far down in the depth below him; 

See the yellow perch, the Sahwa, 

Like a sunbeam in the water, 

See the Shawgashee, the eraw-fisb, 



Like a spider On the bottom, 

On the whit/: and sandy bottom. 
At the stern sat Hiawatha, 

With his fishing-line of eedar; 

In his plumes the breeze of morning 

Played as in the hemlock branches; 20 

On the bows, with tail erected, 
Sat the squirrel, Adjidaumo; 

In bis fur the breeze of morning 

Played as in the prairie grasses* 

On the white sand of the bottom 

Lay the monster Mishe-Nahma, 

Lay the sturgeon, King of Fishe ; 

Through his gills he breathed the water, 

With his fins he fanned and winnowed, 
With his tail he swept the sand-floor. 30 

There be lay in all his armor; 
On each side a shield to guard him, 
Plates of bone upon his forehead, 
Down hi sides and back and shoulders 

of bone with spines projecting! 
Painted was he with in war-paints, 

Stripes of yellow, red, and azure, 

of brown and spots of sable; 
And be lay there on the bottom, 

Fanning with his fins of purple, 40 

As above him Hiawatha 

In hi 1 birch canoe came sailing, 

With his fishing-line of cedar. 

'Take my bait,' cried Hiawatha, 
Down into the depth-, beneath him, 

'Take my bait, O Sturgeon, Nahmal 

Come up from below the water, 
Let us see which is the stronger!' 
And he dropped his line of cedar 
Through the elear, transparent water, 50 
Waited vainly for an an-. wer, 
Long sat waiting for an an 
And repeating loud and louder, 
'Take my bait, O King of FKhes! ' 
Quiet lay the sturgeon, Xahma, 

Fanning slowly in the water, 

Looking up at Hiawatha., 
Listening to big call and clamor, 

His unnecessary tumult, 

Till he wearied of the shouting; 60 

And he said to the Kenozha, 
To the pike, the Ma kenozha, 
'Take the bait of this rude fellow, 

Breafc the line of Hiawatha! ; 
In his fingers 1 1 is vatha 

Felt the loose line jerk and tighten; 
As he drew it in, it tugged 
That the birch canoe stood endwise, 
Like a birch log in the water, 



176 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



With the squirrel, Adjidaumo, 7 o 

Perched and frisking on the summit. 

Full of scorn was Hiawatha 
When he saw the fish rise upward, 
Saw the pike, the Maskenozha, 
Coming nearer, nearer to him, 
And he shouted through the water, 
'Esa! esa! shame upon you! 
Yon are but the pike, Kenozha, 
You are not the fish I wanted, 
You are not the King of Fishes! ' 80 

Keeling downward to the bottom 
Sank the pike hi great confusion, 
And the mighty sturgeon, Nahma, 
Said to Ugudwash, the sun-fish, 
To the bream, with scales of crimson, 
' Take the bait of this great boaster, 
Break the line of Hiaw T atha ! ' 

Slowly upward, wavering, gleaming, 
Rose the Ugudwash, the sun-fish, 
Seized the line of Hiawatha, 9 o 

Swung with all his weight upon it, 
Made a whirlpool in the water, 
Whirled the birch canoe in circles, 
Round and round in gurgling eddies, 
Till the circles in the water 
Reached the far-off sandy beaches, 
Till the water-flags and rushes 
Nodded on the distant margins. 

But when Hiawatha saw him 
Slowly rising through the water, 100 

Lifting up his disk refulgent, 
Loud he shouted in derision, 
'Esa! esa! shame upon you! 
You are Ugudwash, the sun-fish, 
You are not the fish I wanted, 
You are not the King of Fishes ! ' 

Slowly downward, wavering, gleaming, 
Sank the Ugudwash, the sun-fish, 
And again the sturgeon, Nahma, 
Heard the shout of Hiawatha, no 

Heard his challenge of defiance, 
The unnecessary tumult, 
Ringing far across the w r ater. 

From the white sand of the bottom 
Up he rose with angry gesture, 
Quivering in each nerve and fibre, 
Clashing all his plates of armor, 
Gleaming bright with all his war-paint; 
In his wrath he darted upward, 
Flashing leaped into the sunshine, 120 

Opened his great jaws, and swallowed 
Both canoe and Hiawatha. 

Down into that darksome cavern 
Plunged the headlong Hiawatha, 



As a log on some black river 
Shoots and plunges down the rapids, 
Found himself in litter darkness, 
Groped about in helpless wonder, 
Till he felt a great heart beating, 
Throbbing in that utter darkness. 130 

And he smote it in his anger, 
With his fist, the heart of Nahma, 
Felt the mighty King of Fishes 
Shudder through each nerve and fibre, 
Heard the water gurgle round him 
As he leaped and staggered through it, 
Sick at heart, and faint and weary. 

Crosswise then did Hiawatha 
Drag his birch-canoe for safety, 
Lest from out the jaws of Nahma, 140 

In the turmoil and confusion, 
Forth he might be hurled and perish. 
And the squirrel, Adjidaumo, 
Frisked and chattered very gayly, 
Toiled and tugged with Hiawatha 
Till the labor was completed. 

Then said Hiawatha to him, 
' O my little friend, the squirrel, 
Bravely have you toiled to help me ; 
Take the thanks of Hiawatha, 150 

And the name which now he gives you; 
For hereafter and forever 
Boys shall call you Adjidaumo, 
Tail-in-air the boys shall call you ! ' 

And again the sturgeon, Nahma, 
Gasped and quivered in the water, 
Then was still, and drifted landward 
Till he grated on the pebbles, 
Till the listening Hiawatha 
Heard him grate upon the margin, 160 

Felt him strand upon the pebbles, 
Knew that Nahma, King of Fishes, 
Lay there dead upon the margin. 

Then he heard a clang and flapping, 
As of many wings assembling, 
Heard a screaming and confusion, 
As of birds of prey contending, 
Saw a gleam of light above him, 
Shining through the ribs of Nahma, 
Saw the glittering eyes of sea-gulls, 170 
Of Kayoshk, the sea-gidls, peering, 
Gazing at him through the opening, 
Heard them saying to each other, 
' 'T is our brother, Hiawatha ! ' 

And he shouted from below them, 
Cried exulting from the caverns: 
' O ye sea-gulls ! O my brothers ! 
I have slain the sturgeon, Nahma; 
Make the rifts a little larger, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



177 



With your claws the openings widen, 180 

Set me free from this dark prison, 

And henceforward and forever 

Men shall speak of your achievements, 

Calling you Kayoshk, the sea-gulls, 

Yes, Kayoshk, the Noble Scratchers ! ' 

And the wild and clamorous sea-gulls 
Toiled with beak and claws together, 
Made the rifts and openings wider 
In the mighty ribs of Nahma, 
And from peril and from prison, 190 

From the body of the sturgeon, 
From the peril of the water, 
They released my Hiawatha. 

He was standing near his wigwam, 
On the margin of the water, 
And he called to old Nokomis, 
Called and beckoned to Nokomis, 
Pointed to the sturgeon, Nahma, 
Lying lifeless on the pebbles, 
With the sea-gulls feeding on him. 200 

' I have slain the Mishe-Nahma, 
Slam the King of Fishes ! ' said he ; 
' Look ! the sea-gulls feed upon him, 
Yes, my friends Kayoshk, the sea-gulls; 
Drive them not away, Nokomis, 
They have saved me from great peril 
In the body of the sturgeon, 
Wait until their meal is ended, 
Till their craws are full with feasting, 
Till they homeward fly, at sunset, 210 

To their nests among the marshes; 
Then bring all your pots and kettles, 
And make oil for us in Winter.' 

And she waited till the sun set, 
Till the pallid moon, the Night-sun, 
Rose above the tranquil water, 
Till Kayoshk, the sated sea-gulls, 
From their banquet rose with clamor, 
And across the fiery sunset 
Winged their way to far-off islands, 220 
To their nests among the rushes. 

To his sleep went Hiawatha, 
And Nokomis to her labor, 
Toiling patient in the moonlight, 
Till the sun and moon changed places, 
Till the sky was red with sunrise, 
And Kayoshk, the hungry sea-gulls, 
Came back from the reedy islands, 
Clamorous for their morning banquet. 

Three whole days and nights alternate 230 
Old Nokomis and the sea-gulls 
Stripped the oily flesh of Nahma, 
Till the waves washed through the rib- 
bones, 



Till the sea-gulls came no longer, 
And upon the sands lay nothing 
But the skeleton of Nahma. 



IX 



HIAWATHA AND THE PEARL-FEATHER 

On the shores of Gitche Gumee, 
Of the shining Big-Sea- Water, 
Stood Nokomis, the old woman, 
Pointing with her finger westward, 
O'er the water pointing westward, 
To the purple clouds of sunset. 

Fiercely the red sun descending 
Burned his way along the heavens, 
Set the sky on fire behind him, 
As war-parties, when retreating, 10 

Burn the prairies on their war-trail; 
And the moon, the Night-sun, eastward, 
Suddenly starting from his ambush, 
Followed fast those bloody footprints, 
Followed in that fiery war-trail, 
With its glare upon his features. 

And Nokomis, the old woman, 
Pointing with her finger westward, 
Spake these words to Hiawatha: 
' Yonder dwells the great Pearl-Feather, 20 
Megissogwon, 'the Magician, 
Manito of Wealth and Wampum, 
Guarded by his fiery serpents, 
Guarded by the black pitch-water. 
You can see his fiery serpents, 
The Kenabeek, the great serpents, 
Coiling, playing in the water; 
You can see the black pitch-water 
Stretching far away beyond them, 
To the purple clouds of sunset ! 30 

' He it was who slew my father, 
By his wicked wiles and cunning, 
When he from the moon descended, 
When he came on earth to seek me. 
He, the mightiest of Magicians, 
Sends the fever from the marshes, 
Sends the pestilential vapors, 
Sends the poisonous exhalations, 
Sends the white fog from the fen-lands, 
Sends disease and death among us ! 40 

' Take your bow, O Hiawatha, 
Take your arrows, jasper-headed, 
Take your war-club, Puggawaugun, 
And your mittens, Minjekahwun, 
And your birch-canoe for sailing, 
And the oil of Mishe-Nahma, 
So to smear its sides, that swiftly 



178 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



You may pass the black pitch- water; 
Slay this merciless magician, 
Save the people from the fever 50 

That he breathes across the fen-lands, 
And avenge my father's murder ! ' 

Straightway then my Hiawatha 
Armed himself with all his war-gear, 
Launched his birch-canoe for sailing; 
With his palm its sides he patted, 
Said with glee, ' Cheemami, my darling, 
O my Birch-canoe ! leap forward, 
Where you see the fiery serpents, 
Where you see the black pitch- water ! ' 60 

Forward leaped Cheemaun exulting, 
And the noble Hiawatha 
Sang his war-song wild and woful, 
And above him the war-eagle, 
The Keneu, the great war-eagle, 
Master of all fowls with feathers, 
Screamed and hurtled through the heavens. 

Soon he reached the fiery serpents, 
The Kenabeek, the great serpents, 
Lying huge upon the water, 70 

Sparkling, rippling in the water, 
Lying coiled across the passage, 
With their blazing crests uplifted, 
Breathing fiery fogs and vapors, 
So that none could pass beyond them. 

But the fearless Hiawatha 
Cried aloud, and spake in this wise, 
' Let me pass my way, Kenabeek, 
Let me go upon my journey ! ' 
And they answered, hissing fiercely, 80 

With their fiery breath made answer: 
' Back, go back ! O Shaugodaya ! 
Back to old Nokomis, Faint-heart ! ' 

Then the angry Hiawatha 
Raised his mighty bow of ash-tree, 
Seized his arrows, jasper-headed, 
Shot them fast among the serpents; 
Every twanging of the bow-string 
Was a war-cry and a death-cry, 
Every whizzing of an arrow 90 

Was a death-song of Kenabeek. 

Weltering in the bloody water, 
Dead lay all the fiery serpents, 
And among them Hiawatha 
Harmless sailed, and cried exulting: 
' Onward, O Cheemaun, my darling ! 
Onward to the black pitch-water ! ' 

Then he took the oil of Nahma, 
And the bows and sides anointed, 
Smeared them well with oil, that swiftly 
He might pass the black pitch-water. 101 

All night long he sailed upon it, 



Sailed upon that sluggish water, 
Covered with its mould of ages, 
Black with rotting water-rushes, 
Rank with flags and leaves of lilies, 
Stagnant, lifeless, dreary, dismal, 
Lighted by the shimmering moonlight, 
And by will-o'-the-wisps illumined, 
Fires by ghosts of dead men kindled, no 
In their weary night-encampments. 

All the air was white with moonlight, 
All the water black with shadow, 
And around him the Suggema, 
The mosquito, sang his war-song, 
And the fire-flies, Wah-wah-taysee, 
Waved their torches to mislead him; 
And the bull-frog, the Dahinda, 
Thrust his head into the moonlight, 
Fixed his yellow eyes upon him, 120 

Sobbed and sank beneath the surface; 
And anon a thousand whistles, 
Answered over all the fen-lands, 
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, 
Far off on the reedy margin, 
Heralded the hero's coming. 

Westward thus fared Hiawatha, 
Toward the realm of Megissogwon, 
Toward the land of the Pearl-Feather, 
Till the level moon stared at him, 130 

In his face stared pale and haggard, 
Till the sun was hot behind him, 
Till it burned upon his shoulders, 
And before him on the upland 
He could see the Shining Wigwam 
Of the Manito of Wampum, 
Of the mightiest of Magicians. 

Then once more Cheemaun he patted, 
To his birch-canoe said, ' Onward ! ' 
And it stirred in all its fibres, 140 

And with one great bound of triumph 
Leaped across the water-lilies, 
Leaped through tangled flags and rushes, 
And upon the beach beyond them 
Dry-shod landed Hiawatha. 

Straight he took his bow of ash-tree, 
On the sand one end he rested, 
With his knee he pressed the middle, 
Stretched the faithful bow-string tighter, 
Took an arrow, jasper-headed, 150 

Shot it at the Shining Wigwam, 
Sent it singing as a herald, 
As a bearer of his message, 
Of his challenge loud and lofty: 
' Come forth from your lodge, Pearl-Fea- 
ther ! 
Hiawatha waits your coming ! ' 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



179 



Straightway from the Shining Wigwam 
Came the mighty Megissogwon, 
Tall of stature, broad of shoulder, 
Dark and terrible in aspect, 160 

Clad from head to foot in wampum, 
Armed with all his warlike weapons, 
Painted like the sky of morning, 
Streaked with crimson, blue, and yel- 
low, 
Crested with great eagle-feathers, 
Streaming upward, streaming outward. 

' Well I know you, Hiawatha ! ' 
Cried he in a voice of thunder, 
In a tone of loud derision. 
' Hasten back, O Shaugodaya ! 170 

Hasten back among the women, 
Back to old Nokomis, Faint-heart ! 
I will slay yon as you stand there, 
As of old I slew her father ! ' 

But my Hiawatha answered, 
Nothing daunted, fearing nothing: 
'Big words do not smite like war-clubs, 
Boastful breath is not a bow-string, 
Taunts are not so sharp as arrows, 
Deeds are better things than words are, 180 
Actions mightier than boastings ! ' 

Then began the greatest battle 
That the sun had ever looked on, 
That the war-birds ever witnessed. 
All a summer's day it lasted, 
From the sunrise to the sunset; 
For the shafts of Hiawatha 
Harmless hit the shirt of wampum, 
Harmless fell the blows he dealt it 
With his mittens, Minjekahwun, 190 

Harmless fell the heavy war-club; 
It could dash the rocks asunder, 
But it could not break the meshes 
Of that magic shirt of wampum. 

Till at sunset Hiawatha, 
Leaning on his bow of ash-tree, 
Wounded, weary, and desponding, 
With Ins mighty war-club broken, 
With his mittens torn and tattered, 
And three useless arrows only, 200 

Paused to rest beneath a pine-tree, 
From whose branches trailed the mosses, 
And whose trunk was coated over 
With the Dead-man's Moccasin-leather, 
With the fungus white and yellow. 

Suddenly from the boughs above him 
Sang the Mama, the woodpecker: 
' Aim your arrows, Hiawatha, 
At the head of Megissogwon, 
Strike the tuft of hair upon it, 210 



At their roots the long black tresses ; 
There alone can he be wounded ! ' 

Winged with feathers, tipped with jasper, 
Swift flew Hiawatha's arrow, 
Just as Megissogwon, stooping, 
Raised a heavy stone to throw it. 
Full upon the crown it struck him, 
At the roots of his long tresses, 
And he reeled and staggered forward, 
Plunging like a wounded bison, 220 

Yes, like Pezhekee, the bison, 
When the snow is on the prairie. 

Swifter flew the second arrow, 
In the pathway of the other, 
Piercing deeper than the other, 
Wounding sorer than the other; 
And the knees of Megissogwon 
Shook like windy reeds beneath him, 
Bent and trembled like the rushes. 

But the third and latest arrow 230 

Swiftest flew, and wounded sorest, 
And the mighty Megissogwon 
Saw the fiery eyes of Pauguk, 
Saw the eyes of Death glare at him, 
Heard his voice call in the darkness; 
At the feet of Hiawatha 
Lifeless lay the great Pearl-Feather, 
Lay the mightiest of Magicians. 

Then the grateful Hiawatha 
Called the Mama, the woodpecker, 240 

From his perch among the branches 
Of the melancholy pine-tree, 
And, in honor of his service, 
Stained with blood the tuft of feathers 
On the little head of Mama; 
Even to this day he wears it, 
Wears the tuft of crimson feathers, 
As a symbol of his service. 

Then he stripped the shirt of wampum 
From the back of Megissogwon, 250 

As a trophy of the battle, 
As a signal of his conquest. 
On the shore he left the body, 
Half on land and half in water, 
In the sand his feet were buried, 
And his face was in the water. 
And above him, wheeled and clamored 
The Keneu, the great war-eagle, 
Sailing round in narrower circles, 
Hovering nearer, nearer, nearer. ;6o 

From the wigwam Hiawatha 
Bore the wealth of Megissogwon, 
All his wealth of skins and wampum, 
Furs of bison and of beaver, 
Furs of sable and of ermine, 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Wanipuux-JifiltsLaiid strings and pouches, 
Quivers wrought with beads of wampum, 
Filled with arrows, silver-headed. 

Homeward then he sailed exulting, 269 
Homeward through the black pitch-water, 
Homeward through the weltering serpents 
With the trophies of the battle, 
With a shout and song of triumph. 

On the shore stood old Nokomis, 
On the shore stood Chibiabos, 
And the very strong man, Kwasind, 
Waiting for the hero's coming, 
Listening to his songs of triumph. 
And the people of the village 
Welcomed him with songs and dances, 280 
Made a joyous feast, and shouted: 
' Honor be to Hiawatha ! 
He has slam the great Pearl-Feather, 
Slam the mightiest of Magicians, 
Him, who sent the fiery fever, 
Sent the white fog from the fen-lands, 
Sent disease and death among us ! ' 

Ever dear to Hiawatha 
Was the memory of Mama ! 
And in token of his friendship, 290 

As a mark of his remembrance, 
He adorned and decked his pipe-stem 
With the crimson tuft of feathers, 
With the blood-red crest of Mama. 
But the wealth of Megissogwon, 
All the trophies of the battle, 
He divided with his people, 
Shared it equally among them. 



X 

HIAWATHA'S WOOING 

' As unto the bow the cord is, 

So unto the man is woman; 

Though she bends him, she obeys him, 

Though she draws him, yet she follows; 

Useless each without the other ! ' 

Thus the youthful Hiawatha 
Said withm himself and pondered, 
Much perplexed by various feelings, 
Listless, longing, hoping, fearing, 
Dreaming still of Minnehaha, 
Of the lovely Laughing Water, 
In the land of the Dacotahs. 

' Wed a maiden of your people,' 
Warning said the old Nokomis; 
' Go not eastward, go not westward, 
For a stranger, whom we know not ! 



Like a fire upon the hearth-stone 

Is a neighbor's homely daughter, 

Like the starlight or the moonlight 

Is the handsomest of strangers ! ' 20 

Thus dissuading spake Nokomis, 
And my Hiawatha answered 
Only this: 'Dear old Nokomis, 
Very pleasant is the firelight, 
But I like the starlight better, 
Better do I like the moonlight ! ' 

Gravely then said old Nokomis: 
' Bring not here an idle maiden, 
Brmg not here a useless woman, 
Hands unskilful, feet un willing; 30 

Bring a wife with nimble fingers, 
Heart and hand that move together, 
Feet that run on willing errands ! ' 

Smiling answered Hiawatha: 
' In the land of the Dacotahs 
Lives the Arrow-maker's daughter, 
Minnehaha, Laughing Water, 
Handsomest of all the women. 
I will bring her to your wigwam, 
She shall run upon your errands, 40 

Be your starlight, moonlight, firelight, 
Be the sunlight of my people ! ' 

Still dissuading said Nokomis: 
e Bring not to my lodge a stranger 
From the land of the Dacotahs ! 
Very fierce are the Dacotahs, 
Often is there war between us, 
There are feuds yet unforgotten, 
Wounds that ache and still may open ! ' 

Laughing answered Hiawatha: 50 

' For that reason, if no other, 
Would I wed the fair Dacotah, 
That our tribes might be united, 
That old feuds might be forgotten, 
And old wounds be healed forever ! ' 

Thus departed Hiawatha 
To the land of the Dacotahs, 
To the land of handsome women; 
Striding over moor and meadow, 
Through interminable forests, 60 

Through uninterrupted silence. 

With his moccasins of magic, 
At each stride a mile he measured; 
Yet the way seemed long before him, 
And his heart outran his footsteps; 
And he journeyed without resting, 
Till he heard the cataract's laughter, 
Heard the Falls of Minnehaha 
Calling to him through the silence. 
' Pleasant is the sound ! ' he murmured, 70 
' Pleasant is the voice that calls me ! ' 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



On the outskirts of the forests, 
'Twixt the shadow and the sunshine, 
Herds of fallow deer were feeding, 
But they saw not Hiawatha; 
To his bow he whispered, ' Fail not ! ' 
To his arrow whispered, ' Swerve not ! ' 
Sent it singing on its errand, 
To the red heart of the roebuck; 
Threw the deer across his shoulder, 80 

And sped forward without pausing. 

At the doorway of his wigwam 
Sat the ancient Arrow-maker, 
In the land of the Dacotahs, 
Making arrow-heads of jasper, 
Arrow-he ads of cliatcedonjr - " 
At his side, in : aliTaerT)eauty, 
Sat the lovely Minnehaha, 
Sat his daughter, Laughing Water, 
Plaiting mats of flags and rushes ; 90 

Of the past the old man's thoughts were, 
And the maiden's of the future. 

He was thinking, as he sat there, 
Of the days when with such arrows 
He had struck the deer and bison, 
On the Muskoday, the meadow; 
Shot the wild goose, flying southward, 
On the wing, the clamorous Wawa; 
Thinking of the great war-parties, 
How they came to buy his arrows, 100 

Could not fight without his arrows. 
Ah, no more such noble warriors 
Could be found on earth as they were ! 
Now the men were all like women, 
Only used their tongues for weapons ! 

She was thinking of a hunter, 
From another tribe and country, 
Young and tall and very handsome, 
Who one morning, in the Spring-time, 
Came to buy her father's arrows, no 

Sat and rested in the wigwam, 
Lingered long about the doorway, 
Looking back as he departed. 
She had heard her father praise him, 
Praise his courage and his wisdom; 
Would he come again for arrows 
To the Falls of Minnehaha ? 
On the mat her hands lay idle, 
And her eyes were very dreamy. 

Through their thoughts they heard a foot- 
step, 120 
Heard a rustling in the branches, 
And with glowing cheek and forehead, 
With the deer upon his shoulders, 
Suddenly from out the woodlands 
Hiawatha stood before them. 



Straight the ancient Arrow-maker 
Looked up gravely from his labor, 
Laid aside the unfinished arrow, 
Bade him enter at the doorway, 
Saying, as he rose to meet him, 130 

' Hiawatha, you are welcome ! ' 

At the feet of Laughing Water 
Hiawatha laid his burden, 
Threw the red deer from his shoulders; 
And the maiden looked up at him, 
Looked up from her mat of rushes, 
Said with gentle look and accent, 
' You are welcome, Hiawatha ! ' 

Very spacious was the wigwam, 
Made of deer-skins dressed and whitened, 140 
With the Gods of the Dacotahs 
Drawn and painted on its curtains, 
And so tall the doorway, hardly 
Hiawatha stooped to enter, 
Hardly touched his eagle-feathers 
As he entered at the doorway. 
I Then uprose the Laughing Water, 
From the ground fair Minnehaha, 
Laid aside her mat unfinished, 
Brought forth food and set before them, 150 
Water brought them from the brooklet, 
Gave them food in earthen vessels, 
Gave them drink in bowls of bass-wood, 
Listened while the guest was speaking, 
Listened while her father answered, 
But not once her lips she opened, 
Not a single word she uttered. 

Yes, as in a dream she listened 
To the words of Hiawatha, 
As he talked of old Nokomis, 160 

Who had nursed him in his childhood, 
As he told of his companions, 
Chibiabos, the musician, 
And the very strong man, Kwasind, 
And of happiness and plenty 
In the land of the Ojibways, 
In the pleasant land and peaceful. 

' After many years of warfare, 
Many years of strife and bloodshed, 
There is peace between the Ojibways 170 
And the tribe of the Dacotahs.' 
Thus continued Hiawatha, 
And then added, speaking slowly, 
' That this peace may last forever, 
And our hands be clasped more closely, 
And our hearts be more united, 
Give me as my wife this maiden, 
Minnehaha, Laughing Water, 
Loveliest of Dacotah Women ! ' 

And the ancient Arrow-maker 180 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Paused a moment ere he answered, 
Smoked a little while in silence, 
Looked at Hiawatha proudly, 
Fondly looked at Laughing Water, 
And made answer very gravely: 
' Yes, if Minnehaha wishes; 
Let your heart speak, Minnehaha ! ' 

And the lovely Laughing Water 
Seemed more lovely as she stood there, 
Neither willing nor reluctant, 190 

As she went to Hiawatha, 
Softly took the seat beside him, 
While she said, and blushed to say it, 
' I will follow you, my husband ! ' 

This was Hiawatha's wooing ! 
Thus it was he won the daughter 
Of the ancient Arrow-maker, 
In the land of the Dacotahs ! 

From the wigwam he departed, 
Leading with him Laughing Water; 200 
Hand in hand they went together, 
Through the woodland and the meadow, 
Left the old man standing lonely 
At the doorway of his wigwam, 
Heard the Falls of Minnehaha 
Calling to them from the distance, 
Crying to them from afar off, 
' Fare thee well, O Minnehaha ! ' 

And the ancient Arrow-maker 
Turned again unto his labor, 210 

Sat down by his sunny doorway, 
Murmuring to himself, and saying: 
' Thus it is our daughters leave us, 
Those we love, and those who love us ! 
Just when they have learned to help us, 
When we are old and lean upon them, 
Comes a youth with flaunting feathers, 
With his flute of reeds, a stranger 
Wanders piping through the village, 
Beckons to the fairest maiden, 220 

And she follows where he leads her, 
Leaving all things for the stranger ! ' 

Pleasant was the journey homeward, 
Through interminable forests, 
Over meadow, over mountain, 
Over river, hill, and hollow. 
Short it sfeemed to Hiawatha, 
Though they journeyed very slowly, 
Though his pace he checked and slackened 
To the steps of Laughing Water. 230 

Over wide and rushing rivers 
In his arms he bore the maiden; 
Light he thought her as a feather, 
As the plume upon his head-gear; 
Cleared the tangled pathway for her, 



Bent aside the swaying branches, 

Made at night a lodge of branches, 

And a bed with boughs of hemlock, 

And a fire before the doorway 

With the dry cones of the pine-tree. 240 

All the travelling winds went with them, 
O'er the meadows, through the forest; 
All the stars of night looked at them, 
Watched with sleepless eyes their slumber; 
From his ambush in the oak-tree 
Peeped the squirrel, Adjidaumo, 
Watched with eager eyes the lovers; 
And the rabbit, the Wabasso, 
Scampered from the path before them, 
Peering, peeping from his burrow, 250 

Sat erect upon his haunches, 
Watched with curious eyes the lovers. 

Pleasant was the journey homeward ! 
All the birds sang loiid and sweetly 
Songs of happiness and heart's-ease; 
Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa, 
' Happy are you, Hiawatha, 
Having such a wife to love you ! ' 
Sang the robin, the Opechee, 
' Happy are you, Laughing Water, 260 

Having such a noble husband ! ' 

From the sky the sun benignant 
Looked upon them through the branches, 
Saying to them, ' O my children, 
Love is sunshine, hate is shadow, 
Life is checkered shade and sunshine, 
Bide by love, O Hiawatha ! ' 

From the sky the moon looked at them, 
Filled the lodge with mystic splendors, 
Whispered to them, ' O my children, 270 
Day is restless, night is quiet, 
Man imperious, woman feeble ; 
Half is mine, although I follow; 
Rule by patience, Laughing Water ! ' 

Thus it was they journeyed homeward; 
Thus it was that Hiawatha 
To the lodge of old Nokomis 
Brought the moonlight, starlight, firelight, 
Brought the sunshine of his people, 
Minnehaha, Laughing Water, 280 

Handsomest of all the women 
In the land of the Dacotahs, 
In the land of handsome women. 



XI 

hiawatha's wedding-feast 

You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
How the handsome Yenadizze 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



183 



Danced at Hiawatha's wedding; 

How the gentle Chibiabos, 

He the sweetest of musicians, 

Sang his songs of love and longing; 

How Iagoo, the great boaster, 

He the marvellous story-teller, 

Told his tales of strange adventure, 

That the feast might be more joyous, 10 

That the time might pass more gayly, 

And the guests be more contented.' 

Sumptuous was the feast Nokomis 
Made at Hiawatha's wedding; 
All the bowls were made of bass-wood, 
White and polished very smoothly, 
All the spoons of horn of bison, 
Black and polished very smoothly. 

She had sent through all the village 
Messengers with wands of willow, 20 

As a sign of invitation, 
As a token of the feasting; 
And the wedding guests assembled, 
Clad in all their richest raiment, 
Robes of fur and belts of wampum, 
Splendid with their paint and plumage, 
Beautiful with beads and tassels. 

First they ate the sturgeon, Nahma, 
And the pike, the Maskenozha, 
Caught and cooked by old Nokomis; 30 

Then on pemican they feasted, 
Pemican and buffalo marrow, 
Haunch of deer and hump of bison, 
Yellow cakes of the Mondamin, 
And the wild rice of the river. 

But the gracious Hiawatha, 
And the lovely Laughing Water, 
And the careful old Nokomis, 
Tasted not the food before them, 
Only waited on the others, 40 

Only served their guests in silence. 

And when all the guests had finished, 
Old Nokomis, brisk and busy, 
From an ample pouch of otter, 
Filled the red-stone pipes for smoking 
With tobacco from the South-land, 
Mixed with bark of the red willow, 
And with herbs and leaves of fragrance. 

Then she said, ' O Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Dance for us your merry dances, 50 

Dance the Beggar's Dance to please us, 
That the feast may be more joyous, 
That the time may pass more gayly, 
And our guests be more contented ! ' • 

Then the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
He the idle Yenadizze, 
He the merry mischief-maker, 



Whom the people called the Storm-Fool, 
Rose among the guests assembled. 

Skilled was he in sports and pastimes, 60 
In the merry dance of snow-shoes, 
In the play of quoits and ball-play ; 
Skilled was he in games of hazard, 
In all games of skill and hazard, 
Pugasaing, the Bowl and Counters, 
Kuntassoo, the Game of Plum-stones. 
Though the warriors called him Faint- 
Heart, 
Called him coward, Shaugodaya, 
Idler, gambler, Yenadizze, 
Little heeded he their jesting, 70 

Little cared he for their insults, 
For the women and the maidens 
Loved the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis. 

He was dressed in shirt of doeskin, 
White and soft, and fringed with ermine, 
All inwrought with beads of wampum ; 
He was dressed in deer-skin leggings, 
Fringed with hedgehog quills and ermine, 
And in moccasins of buck-skin, 79 

Thick with quills and beads embroidered. 
On his head were plumes of swan's down, 
On his heels were tails of foxes, 
In one hand a fan of feathers, 
And a pipe was in the other. 

Barred with streaks of red and yellow, 
Streaks of blue and bright vermilion, 
Shone the face of Pau-Puk-Keewis. 
From his forehead fell his tresses, 
Smooth, and parted like a woman's, 
Shining bright with oil, and plaited, 90 

Hung with braids of scented grasses, 
As among the guests assembled, 
To the sound of flutes and singing, 
To the sound of drums and voices, 
Rose the handsome Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
And began his mystic dances. 

First he danced a solemn measure, 
Yery slow in step and gesture, 
In and out among the pine-trees, 
Through the shadows and the sunshine, 100 
Treading softly like a panther. 
Then more swiftly and still swifter, 
Whirling, spinning round in circles, 
Leaping o'er the guests assembled, 
Eddying round and round the wigwam, 
Till the leaves went whirling with him, 
Till the dust and wind together 
Swept in eddies round about him. 

Then along the sandy margin 
Of the lake, the Big-Sea-Water, no 

On he sped with frenzied gestures, 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Stamped upon the sand, and tossed it 
Wildly in the air around him; 
Till the wind became a whirlwind, 
Till the sand was blown and sifted 
Like great snowdrifts o'er the landscape, 
Heaping all the shores with Sand Dimes, 
Sand Hills of the Nagow Wudjoo ! x 

Thus the merry Pau-Puk-Keewis 
Danced his Beggar's Dance to please 
them, 120 

And, returning, sat down laughing 
There among the guests assembled, 
Sat and fanned himself serenely 
With his fan of turkey-feathers. 

Then they said to Chibiabos, 
To the friend of Hiawatha, 
To the sweetest of all smgers, 
To the best of all musicians, 
' Sing to us, O Chibiabos ! 
Songs of love and songs of longing, 130 

That the feast may be more joyous, 
That the time may pass more gayly, 
And our guests be more contented ! ' 

And the gentle Chibiabos 
Sang in accents sweet and tender, 
Sang in tones of deep emotion, 
Songs of love and songs of longing; 
Looking still at Hiawatha, 
Looking at fair Laughing Water, 
Sang he softly, sang in this wise: 140 

' Onaway ! Awake, beloved ! 
Thou the wild-flower of the forest ! 
Thou the wild-bird of the prairie ! 
Thou with eyes so soft and fawn-like ! 

' If thou only lookest at me, 
I am happy, I am happy, 
As the lilies of the prairie, 
When they feel the dew upon them ! 

' Sweet thy breath is as the fragrance 
Of the wild-flowers in the morning, 150 

As their fragrance is at evening, 
In the Moon when leaves are falling. 

' Does not all the blood within me 
Leap to meet thee, leap to meet thee, 
As the springs to meet the sunshine, 
La the Moon when nights are brightest ? 

' Onaway ! my heart sings to thee, 
Sings with joy when thou art near me, 
As the sighing, singing branches 
In the pleasant Moon of Strawberries ! 160 

' When thou art not pleased, beloved, 

1 A description of the Grand Sable, or great sand- 
dunes of Lake Superior, is given in Poster and Whit- 
ney's Report on the Geology of the Lake Superior Land 
District, part ii, p. 131. (Longfellow.) 



Then my heart is sad and darkened, 

As the shining river darkens 

When the clouds drop shadows on it ! 

' When thou smilest, my beloved, 
Then my troubled heart is brightened, 
As hi sunshine gleam the ripples 
That the cold wind makes in rivers. 

' Smiles the earth, and smile the waters, 
Smile the cloudless skies above us, 170 

But I lose the way of smiling 
When thou art no longer near me ! 

' I myself, myself ! behold me ! 
Blood of my beating heart, behold me ! 
Oh awake, awake, beloved ! 
Onaway ! awake, beloved ! ' 2 

Thus the gentle Chibiabos 
Sang his song of love and longing; 
And Iagoo, the great boaster, 
He the marvellous story-teller, 180 

He the friend of old Nok'omis, 
Jealous of the sweet musician, 
Jealous of the applause they gave him, 
Saw in all the eyes around him, 
Saw in all their looks and gestures, 
That the wedding guests assembled 
Longed to hear his pleasant stories, 
His immeasurable falsehoods. 

Very boastful was Iagoo ; 
Never heard he an adventure 190 

But himself had met a greater; 
Never any deed of daring 
But himself had done a bolder; 
Never any marvellous story 
But himself could tell a stranger. 

Would you listen to his boasting, 
Would you only give him credence, 
No one ever shot an arrow 
Half so far and high as he had; 
Ever caught so many fishes, 200 

Ever killed so many reindeer, 
Ever trapped so many beaver ! 

None could run so fast as he could, 
None could dive so deep as he could, 
None could swim so far as he could, 
None had made so many journeys, 
None had seen so many wonders, 
As this wonderful Iagoo, 
As this marvellous story-teller ! 

Thus his name became a by-word 210 
And a jest among the people; 
And whene'er a boastful hunter 
Praised his own address too highly, 
Or a warrior, home returning, 

2 The original of this song may be found in LittelPs 
Living Age, vol. xxxv, p. 45. (Longfellow.) 






HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



185 



Talked too much of his achievements, 
All his hearers cried ' Iagoo ! 
Here 's Iagoo come among us ! ' 

He it was who carved the cradle 
Of the little Hiawatha, 
Carved its framework out of linden, 220 
Bound it strong with reindeer sinews ; 
He it was who taught him later 
How to make his bows and arrows, 
How to make the bows of ash-tree, 
And the arrows of the oak-tree. 
So among the guests assembled 
At my Hiawatha's wedding 
Sat Iagoo, old and ugly, 
Sat the marvellous story-teller. 

And they said, ' O good Iagoo, 230 

Tell us now a tale of wonder, 
Tell us of some strange adventure, 
That the feast may be more joyous, 
That the time may pass more gayly, 
And our guests be more contented ! ' 

And Iagoo answered straightway, 
' You shall hear a tale of wonder, 
You shall hear the strange adventures 
Of Osseo, the Magician, 
From the Evening Star descended.' 240 



XII 

THE SON OF THE EVENING STAR 

Can it be the sun descending 
O'er the level plain of water? 
Or the Red Swan floating, flying, 
Wounded by the magic arrow, 
Staining all the waves with crimson, 
With the crimson of its life-blood, 
Filling all the air with splendor, 
With the splendor of its plumage ? 

Yes; it is the sun descending, 
Sinking down into the water ; 
All the sky is stained with purple, 
All the water flushed with crimson ! 
No; it is the Red Swan floating, 
Diving down beneath the water; 
To the sky its wings are lifted, 
With its blood the waves are reddened ! 

Over it the Star of Evening 
Melts and trembles through the purple, 
Hangs suspended in the twilight. 
No; it is a bead of wampum 
On the robes of the Great Spirit 
As he passes through the twilight, 
Walks in silence through the heavens. 



This with joy beheld Iagoo 
And he said hi haste : ' Behold it ! 
See the sacred Star of Evening ! 
You shall hear a tale of wonder, 
Hear the story of Osseo, 
Son of the Evening Star, Osseo ! 

' Once, in days no more remembered, 30 
Ages nearer the beginning, 
When the heavens were closer to us, 
And the Gods were more familiar, 
In the North-land lived a hunter, 
With ten young and comely daughters, 
Tall and lithe as wands of willow; 
Only Oweenee, the youngest, 
She the wilful and the wayward, 
She the silent, dreamy maiden, 
Was the fairest of the sisters. 40 

' All these women married warriors, 
Married brave and haughty husbands; 
Only Oweenee, the youngest, 
Laughed and flouted all her lovers, 
All her young and handsome suitors, 
And then married old Osseo, 
Old Osseo, poor and ugly, 
Broken with age and weak with coughing, 
Always coughing like a squirrel. 

' Ah, but beautiful within him 50 

Was the spirit of Osseo, 
From the Evening Star descended, 
Star of Evening, Star of Woman, 
Star of tenderness and passion ! 
All its fire was in his bosom, 
All its beauty in his spirit, 
All its mystery in his being, 
All its splendor in his language ! 

' And her lovers, the rejected, 
Handsome men with belts of wampum, 60 
Handsome men with paint and feathers, 
Pointed at her in derision, 
Followed her with jest and laughter. 
But she said : " I care not for you, 
Care not for your belts of wampum, 
Care not for your paint and feathers, 
Care not for your jests and laughter; 
I am happy with Osseo ! " 

' Once to some great feast invited, 
Through the damp and dusk of evening, 70 
Walked together the ten sisters, 
Walked together with their husbands; 
Slowly followed old Osseo, 
With fair Oweenee beside him ; 
All the others chatted gayly, 
These two only walked in silence. 

' At the western sky Osseo 
Gazed intent, as if imploring, 



i86 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Often stopped and gazed imploring 

At the trembling Star of Evening, 80 

At the tender Star of Woman; 

And they heard him murmur softly, 

"A h, showain nemeshin, Nosa ! 

Pity, pity me, my father ! " 

" Listen ! " said the eldest sister, 

" He is praying to his father ! 

What a pity that the old man 

Does not stumble in the pathway, 

Does not break his neck by falling ! " 

And they laughed till all the forest 90 

Rang with their unseemly laughter. 

' On their pathway through the wood- 
lands 
Lay an oak, by storms uprooted, 
Lay the great tnmk of an oak-tree, 
Buried half in leaves and mosses, 
Mouldering, crumbling, huge and hollow. 
And Osseo, when he saw it, 
Gave a shout, a cry of anguish, 
Leaped into its yawning cavern, 
At one end went in an old man, 100 

Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly; 
From the other came a young man, 
Tall and straight and strong and handsome. 

' Thus Osseo was transfigured, 
Thus restored to youth and beauty; 
But, alas for good Osseo, 
And for Oweenee, the faithful ! 
Strangely, too, was she transfigured. 
Changed into a weak old woman, 
With a staff she tottered onward, no 

Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly ! 
And the sisters and their husbands 
Laughed until the echoing forest 
Rang with their unseemly laugbter. 

' But Osseo turned not from her, 
Walked with slower step beside her, 
Took her hand, as brown and withered 
As an oak-leaf is in Winter, 
Called her sweetheart, Nenemoosha, 
Soothed her with soft words of kindness, 120 
Till they reached the lodge of feasting, 
Till they sat down in the wigwam, 
Sacred to the Star of Evening, 
To the tender Star of Woman. 

' Wrapt in visions, lost in dreaming, 
At the banquet sat Osseo; 
All were merry, all were happy, 
All were joyous but Osseo. 
Neither food nor drink he tasted, 
Neither did he speak nor listen, 130 

But as one bewildered sat he, 
Looking dreamily and sadly, 



First at Oweenee, then upward 
At the gleaming sky above them. 

' Then a voice was heard, a whisper, 
Coming from the starry distance, 
Coming from the empty vastness, 
Low, and musical, and tender ; 
And the voice said: " O Osseo ! 
O my son, my best beloved ! 140 

Broken are the spells that boimd you, 
All the charms of the magicians, 
All the magic powers of evil ; 
Come to me; ascend, Osseo ! 

' " Taste the food that stands before you: 
It is blessed and enchanted, 
It has magic virtues in it, 
It will change you to a spirit. 
All your bowls and all your kettles 
Shall be wood and clay no longer; 150 

But the bowls be changed to wampum, 
And the kettles shall be silver; 
They shall shine like shells of scarlet, 
Like the fire shall gleam and glimmer. 

' " And the women shall no longer 
Bear the dreary doom of labor, 
But be changed to birds, and glisten 
With the beauty of the starlight, 
Painted with the dusky splendors 
Of the skies and clouds of evening ! " 160 

' What Osseo heard as whispers, 
What as words he comprehended, 
Was but music to the others, 
Music as of birds afar off, 
Of the whippoorwill afar off, 
Of the lonely Wawonaissa 
Singing in the darksome forest. 

' Then the lodge began to tremble, 
Straight began to shake and tremble, 
And they felt it rising, rising, 170 

Slowly through the air ascending, 
From the darkness of the tree-tops 
Forth into the dewy starlight, 
Till it passed the topmost branches; 
And behold ! the wooden dishes 
All were changed to shells of scarlet ! 
And behold ! the earthen kettles 
All were changed to bowls of silver ! 
And the roof-poles of the wigwam 
Were as glittering rods of silver, 180 

And the roof of bark upon them 
As the shining shards of beetles. 

' Then Osseo gazed around him, 
And he saw the nine fair sisters, 
All the sisters and their husbands, 
Changed to birds of various plumage. 
Some were jays and some were magpies, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



187 



Others thrushes, others blackbirds; 
And they hopped, and sang, and twittered, 
Perked and fluttered all their feathers, 190 
Strutted in their shining plumage, 
And their tails like fans unfolded. 

' Only Oweenee, the youngest, 
Was not changed, but sat in silence, 
Wasted, wrinkled, old, and ugly, 
Looking sadly at the others; 
Till Osseo, gazing upward, 
Gave another cry of anguish, 
Such a cry as he had uttered 
By the oak-tree in the forest. 200 

' Then returned her youth and beauty, 
And her soiled and tattered garments 
Were transformed to robes of ermine, 
And her staff became a feather, 
Yes, a shining silver feather ! 

' And again the wigwam trembled, 
Swayed and rushed through airy currents, 
Through transparent cloud and vapor, 
And amid celestial splendors 
On the Evening Star alighted, 210 

As a snow-flake falls on snow-flake, 
As a leaf drops on a river, 
As the thistle-down on water. 

' Forth with cheerful words of welcome 
Came the father of Osseo, 
He with radiant locks of silver, 
He with eyes serene and tender. 
And he said : ". My son, Osseo, 
Hang the cage of birds you bring there, 
Hang the cage with rods of silver, 220 

And the birds with glistening feathers, 
At the doorway of my wigwam." 

' At the door he hung the bird-cage, 
And they entered in and gladly 
Listened to Osseo's father, 
Ruler of the Star of Evening, 
As he said : " O my Osseo ! 
I have had compassion on you, 
Given you back your youth and beauty, 
Into birds of various plumage 230 

Changed your sisters and their husbands; 
Changed them thus because they mocked 

you 
In the figure of the old man, 
In that aspect sad and wrinkled, 
Could not see your heart of passion, 
Could not see your youth immortal; 
Only Oweenee, the faithful, 
Saw your naked heart and loved you. 

' " In the lodge that glimmers yonder, 
In the little star that twinkles 240 

Through the vapors, on the left hand, 



Lives the envious Evil Spirit, 

The Wabeno, the magician, 

Who transformed you to an old man. 

Take heed lest his beams fall on you, 

For the rays he darts around him 

Are the power of his enchantment, 

Are the arrows that he uses." 

' Many years, in peace and quiet, 
On the peaceful Star of Evening 250 

Dwelt Osseo with his father; 
Many years, in song and flutter, 
At the doorway of the wigwam, 
Hung the cage with rods of silver, 
And fair Oweenee, the faithful, 
Bore a son unto Osseo, 
With the beauty of his mother, 
With the courage of his father. 

' And the boy grew up and prospered, 
And Osseo, to delight him, 260 

Made him little bows and arrows, 
Opened the great cage of silver, 
And let loose his aunts and uncles, 
All those birds with glossy feathers, 
For his little son to shoot at. 

' Round and round they wheeled and 
darted, 
Filled the Evening Star with music, 
With their songs of joy and freedom ; 
Filled the Evening Star with splendor, 
With the fluttering of their plumage; 270 
Till the boy, the little hunter, 
Bent his bow and shot an arrow, 
Shot a swift and fatal arrow, 
And a bird, with shining feathers, 
At his feet fell wounded sorely. 

' But, O wondrous transformation ! 
' T was no bird he saw before him, 
'T was a beautiful young woman, 
With the arrow in her bosom ! 

' When her blood fell on the planet, 280 
On the sacred Star of Evening, 
Broken was the spell of magic, 
Powerless was the strange enchantment, 
And the youth, the fearless bowman, 
Suddenly felt himself descending, 
Held by unseen hands, but sinking 
Downward through the empty spaces, 
Downward through the clouds and vapors, 
Till he rested on an island, 
On an island, green and grassy, 290 

Yonder in the Big-Sea- Water. 

' After him he saw descending 
All the birds with shining feathers, 
Fluttering, falling, wafted downward, 
Like the painted leaves of Autumn; 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 






And the lodge with poles of silver, 
With its roof like wings of beetles, 
Like the shining shards of beetles, 
By the winds of heaven uplifted, 
Slowly sank upon the island, 300 

Bringing back the good Osseo, 
Bringing Oweenee, the faithful. 

* Then the birds, again transfigured, 
Reassurned the shape of mortals, 
Took their shape, but not their stature; 
They remained as Little People, 
Like the pygmies, the Puk-Wudjies, 
And on pleasant nights of summer, 
When the Evening Star was shining, 
Hand in hand they danced together 310 

On the island's craggy headlands, 
On the sand-beach low and level. 

' Still their glittering lodge is seen there, 
On the tranquil Summer evenings, 
And upon the shore the fisher 
Sometimes hears their happy voices, 
Sees them dancing in the starlight ! ' 

When the story was completed, 
When the wondrous tale was ended, 
Looking round upon his listeners, 320 

Solemnly Iagoo added: 
' There are great men, I have known 

such, 
Whom their people tinderstand not, 
Whom they even make a jest of, 
Scoff and jeer at in derision. 
From the story of Osseo 
Let us learn the fate of jesters ! ' 

All the wedding guests delighted 
Listened to the marvellous story, 
Listened laughing and applauding, 330 

And they whispered to each other: 
' Does he mean himself, I wonder ? 
And are we the aunts and uncles ? ' 

Then again sang Chibiabos, 
Sang a song of love and longing, 
In those accents sweet and tender, 
In those tones of pensive sadness, 
Sang a maiden's lamentation 
For her lover, her Algonquin. 

' When I think of my beloved, 340 

Ah me ! think of my beloved, 
When my heart is thinking of him, 
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin ! 

' Ah me ! when I parted from him, 
Round my neck he hung the wampum, 
As a pledge, the snow-white wampum, 
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin ! 

• I will go with you, he whispered, 
Ah me ! to your native country; 



Let me go with you, he whispered, 350 

O my sweetheart, my Algonquin ! 

' Far away, away, I answered, 
Very far away, I answered, 
Ah me ! is my native country, 
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin ! 

' When I looked back to behold him, 
Where we parted, to behold him, 
After me he still was gazing, 
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin ! 

' By the tree he still was standing, 360 
By the fallen tree was standmg, 
That had dropped into the water, 
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin ! 

' When I think of my beloved, 
Ah me ! think of my beloved, 
When my heart is thinking of him, 
O my sweetheart, my Algonquin ! ' * 

Such was Hiawatha's Wedding, 
Such the dance of Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Such the story of Iagoo, 370 

Such the songs of Chibiabos; 
Thus the wedding banquet ended, 
And the wedding guests departed, 
Leaving Hiawatha happy 
With the night and Minnehaha. 



XIII 

BLESSING THE CORNFIELDS 2 

Sing, O Song of Hiawatha, 

Of the happy days that followed, 

1 The original of this song may be found in Onedta, 
p. 15. (Longfellow.) 

2 The Indians hold the maize, or Indian corn, in 
great veneration. ' They esteem it so important and 
divine a grain,' says Schoolcraft, ' that their story-tel- 
lers invented various tales, in which this idea is sym- 
bolized under the form of a special gift from the Great 
Spirit. The Odjibwa-Algonquins, who call it Mon-da- 
roin, that is, this Spirit's grain or berry, have a pretty 
story of the kind, in which the stalk in full tassel is 
represented as descending from the sky, under the 
guise of a handsome youth, in answer to the prayers of 
a young man at his fast of virility, or coming to man- 
hood. 

' It is well known that corn-planting and corn-gather- 
ing, at least among all the still uncolonized tribes, are 
left entirely to the females and children, and a few 
superannuated old men. It is not generally known, 
perhaps, that this labor is not compulsory, and that it 
is assumed by the females as a just equivalent, in their 
view, for the onerous and continuous labor of the other 
sex, in providing meats, and skins for clothing, by the 
chase, and in defending their villages against their 
enemies, and keeping intruders off their territories. 
A good Indian housewife deems this a part of her pre- 
rogative, and prides herself to have a store of corn to 
exercise her hospitality, or duly honor her husband's 
hospitality in the entertainment of the lodge guests.' 
— Onedta, p. 82. (Longfellow.) 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



i<_ . 



In the land of the Ojibways, 
In the pleasant land and peaceful ! 
Sing the mysteries of Mondamin, 
Sing the Blessing of the Cornfields ! 

Buried was the bloody hatchet, 
Buried was the dreadful war-club, 
Buried were all warlike weapons, 
And the war-cry was forgotten. i 

There was peace among the nations; 
Unmolested roved the hunters, 
Built the birch canoe for sailing, 
Caught the fish in lake and river, 
Shot the deer and trapped the beaver; 
Unmolested worked the women, 
Made their sugar from the maple, 
Gathered wild rice in the meadows, 
Dressed the skins of deer and beaver. 

All around the happy village 2 

Stood the maize-fields, green and shining, 
Waved the green plumes of Mondamin, 
Waved his soft and sunny tresses, 
Filling all the land with plenty. 
'T was the women who in spring-time 
Planted the broad fields and fruitful, 
Buried in the earth Mondamin ; 
'T was the women who in Autumn 
Stripped the yellow husks of harvest, 
Stripped the garments from Mondamin, 3 
Even as Hiawatha taught them. 

Once, when all the maize was planted, 
Hiawatha, wise and thoughtful, 
Spake and said to Minnehaha, 
To his wife, the Laughing Water: 
'You shall bless to-night the cornfields 
Draw a magic circle round them, 
To protect them from destruction, 
Blast of mildew, blight of insect, 
Wagemin, the thief of cornfields, 4 

Paimosaid, who steals the maize-ear ! 

' In the night, when all is silence, 
In the night, when all is darkness, 
When the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin, 
Shuts the doors of all the wigwams, 
So that not an ear can hear you, 
So that not an eye can see you, 
Rise up from your bed in silence, 
Lay aside your garments wholly, 
Walk around the fields you planted, s 

Round the borders of the cornfields, 
Covered by your tresses only, 
Robed with darkness as a garment. 

' Thus the fields shall be more fruitful, 
And the passing of your footsteps 
Draw a magic circle round them, 
So that neither blight nor mildew, 



Neither burrowing worm nor insect, 

Shall pass o'er the magic circle ; 

Not the dragon-fly, Kwo-ne-she, 60 

Nor the spider, Subbekashe, 

Nor the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena, 

Nor the mighty caterpillar, 

Way-muk-kwana, with the bear-skin, 

King of all the caterpillars ! ' * 

On the tree-tops near the cornfields 
Sat the hungry crows and ravens, 
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens, 
With his band of black marauders. 
And they laughed at Hiawatha, 70 

Till the tree-tops shook with laughter, 
With their melancholy laughter, 
At the words of Hiawatha. 
'Hear him!' said they; 'hear the Wise 

Man, 
Hear the plots of Hiawatha ! ' 

When the noiseless night descended 
Broad and dark o'er field and forest, 
When the mournful Wawonaissa 
Sorrowing sang among the hemlocks, 
And the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin, So 

Shut the doors of all the wigwams, 
From her bed rose Laughing Water, 
Laid aside her garments wholly, 
And with darkness clothed and guarded, 
Unashamed and unaffrighted, 
Walked securely round the cornfields. 
Drew the sacred, magic circle 
Of her footprints round the cornfields. 

No one but the Midnight only 
Saw her beauty in the darkness, 90 

No one but the Wawonaissa 
Heard the panting of her bosom; 
Guskewau, the darkness, wrapped her 
Closely in his sacred mantle, 
So that none might see her beauty, 
So that none might boast, ' I saw her \2- 

On the morrow, as the day dawned, 
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens, 
Gathered all his black marauders, 

1 ' A singular proof of this belief, in both sexes, of 
the mysterious influence of the steps of a woman on the 
vegetable and insect creation, is found in an ancient 
custom, which was related to me, respecting corn- 
planting. It was the practice of the hunter's wife, when 
the field of corn had been planted, to choose the first 
dark or overclouded evening to perform a secret cir- 
cuit, sans habillement, around the field. For this pur- 
pose she slipped out of the lodge in the evening, unob- 
served, to some obscure nook, where she completely 
disrobed. Then, taking her matchecota, or principal 
garment, in one hand, she dragged it around the field. 
This was thought to insure a prolific crop, and to pre- 
vent the assaults of insects and worms upon the grain. 
It was supposed they could not creep over the charmed 
line.' — Onedta, p. 83. (Longfellow.) 



190 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Crows and blackbirds, jays and ravens, 100 

Clamorous on the dusky tree-tops, 

And descended, fast and fearless, 

On the fields of Hiawatha, 

On the grave of the Mondamin. 

' We will drag Mondamin,' said they, 
' From the grave where he is buried, 
Spite of all the magic circles 
Laughing Water draws around it, 
Spite of all the sacred footprints 
Minnehaha stamps upon it ! ' no 

But the wary Hiawatha, 
Ever thoughtful, careful, watchful, 
Had o'erheard the scornful laughter 
When they mocked him from the tree-tops. 
' Kaw ! ' he said, ' my friends the ravens ! 
Kahgahgee, my King of Ravens ! 
I will teach you all a lesson 
That shall not be soon forgotten ! ' 

He had risen before the daybreak, 
He had spread o'er all the cornfields 120 
Snares to catch the black marauders, 
And was lying now in ambush 
In the neighboring grove of pine-trees, 
Waiting for the crows and blackbirds, 
Waiting for the jays and ravens. 

Soon they came with caw and clamor, 
Rush of wings and cry of voices, 
To their work of devastation, 
Settling down upon the cornfields, 
Delving deep with beak and talon, 130 

For the body of Mondamin. 
And with all their craft and cunning, 
All their skill in wiles of warfare, 
They perceived no danger near them, 
Till their claws became entangled, 
Till they found themselves imprisoned 
In the snares of Hiawatha. 

From his place of ambush came he, 
Striding terrible among them, 
And so awful was his aspect 140 

That the bravest quailed with terror. 
Without mercy he destroyed them 
Right and left, by tens and twenties, 
And their wretched, lifeless bodies 
Hung aloft on poles for scarecrows 
Round the consecrated cornfields, 
As a signal of his vengeance, 
As a warning to marauders. 

Only Kahgahgee, the leader, 
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens, 150 

He alone was spared among them 
As a hostage for his people. 
With his prisoner-string he bound him, 
Led him captive to his wigwam, 



Tied him fast with cords of elm-bark 
To the ridge-pole of his wigwam. 

' Kahgahgee, my raven ! ' said he, 
' You the leader of the robbers, 
You the plotter of this mischief, 
The contriver of this outrage, 160 

I will keep you, I will hold you, 
As a hostage for your people, 
As a pledge of good behavior ! ' 

And he left him, grim and sulky, 
Sitting in the morning sunshine 
On the summit of the wigwam, 
Croaking fiercely his displeasure, 
Flapping his great sable pinions, 
Vainly struggling for his freedom, 
Vainly calling on his people ! 170 

Summer passed, and Shawondasee 
Breathed his sighs o'er all the landscape, 
From the South-land sent his ardors, 
Wafted kisses warm and tender; 
And the maize-field grew and ripened, 
Till it stood in all the splendor 
Of its garments green and yellow, 
Of its tassels and its plumage, 
And the maize-ears full and shining 
Gleamed from bursting sheaths of verdure. 

Then Nokomis, the old woman, 181 

Spake, and said to Minnehaha: 
' 'Tis the Moon when leaves are falling; 
All the wild rice has been gathered, 
And the maize is ripe and ready; 
Let us gather in the harvest, 
Let us wrestle with Mondamin, 
Strip him of his plumes and tassels, 
Of his garments green and yellow! ' 

And the merry Laughing Water 190 

Went rejoicing from the wigwam, 
With Nokomis, old and wrinkled, 
And they called the women round them, 
Called the young men and the maidens, 
To the harvest of the cornfields, 
To the husking of the maize-ear. 

On the border of the forest, 
iUnderneath the fragrant pine-trees, 
Sat the old men and the warriors 
^Smoking in the pleasant shadow. 200 

jln uninterrupted silence 
Looked they at the gamesome labor 
Of the young men and the women; 
Listened to their noisy talking, 
To their laughter and their singing, 
Heard them chattering like the magpies, 
Heard them laughing like the blue-jays, 
Heard them singing like the robins. 

And whene'er some lucky maiden 






HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



191 



Found a red ear in the husking, 210 

Found a maize-ear red as blood is, 
'Nushka! ' cried they all together, 
'Nushka! you shall have a sweetheart, 
You shall have a handsome husband! ' 
' Ugh! ' the old men all responded 
From their seats beneath the pine-trees. 

And whene'er a youth or maiden 
Found a crooked ear in husking, 
Found a maize-ear in the husking 
Blighted, mildewed, or misshapen, 220 

Then they laughed and sang together, 
Crept and limped about the cornfields, 
Mimicked in their gait and gestures 
Some old man, bent almost double, 
Singing singly or together: 
' Wagemin, the thief of cornfields ! 
Paimosaid, who steals the maize-ear ! ' 1 

Till the cornfields rang with laughter, 
Till from Hiawatha's wigwam 
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens, 230 

Screamed and quivered in his anger, 
And from all the neighboring tree-tops 
Cawed and croaked the black marauders. 
' Ugh ! ' the old men all responded, 
From their seats beneath the pine-trees ! 

XIV I 

PICTURE- WRITING 

In those days said Hiawatha, 

' Lo ! how all things fade and perish ! 

From the memory of the old men 

1 ' If one of the young female buskers finds a red ear 
of corn, it is typical of a brave admirer, and is regarded 
as a fitting present to some young warrior. But if the 
ear be crooked, and tapering to a point, no matter what 
color, the whole circle is set in a roar, and wa-ge-min is 
the word shouted aloud. It is the symbol of a thief in 
the cornfield. It is considered as the image of an old 
man stooping as he enters the lot. Had the chisel of 
Praxiteles been employed to produce this image, it 
could not more vividly bring to the minds of the merry 
group the idea of a pilferer of their favorite monda- 
min. . . . 

' The literal meaning of the term is, a mass, or 
crooked ear of grain ; but the ear of corn so called is a 
conventional type of a little old man pilfering ears of 
corn in a cornfield. It is in this manner that a single 
word or term, in these curious languages, becomes the 
fruitful parent of many ideas. And we can thus per- 
ceive why it is that the word wagemin is alone compe- 
tent to excite merriment in the husking circle. 

' This term is taken as a basis of the cereal chorus, 
or corn song, as sung by the Northern Algonquin 
tribes. It is coupled with the phrase Paimosaid, — a 
permutative form of the Indian substantive, made from 
the verb pim-o-sa, to walk. Its literal meaning is, he 
who walks, or (he walker; but the ideas conveyed by it 
are, he who walks by night to pilfer corn. It offers, 
therefore, a kind of parallelism in expression to the 
preceding term.' — One6ta, p. 254. (Longfellow.) 



Pass away the great traditions, 

The achievements of the warriors, 

The adventures of the hunters, 

All the wisdom of the Medas, 

All the craft of the Wabenos, 

All the marvellous dreams and visions 

Of the Jossakeeds, the Prophets ! 10 

' Great men die and are forgotten, 
Wise men speak; their words of wisdom 
Perish in the ears that hear them, 
Do not reach the generations 
That, as yet unborn, are waiting 
In the great, mysterious darkness 
Of the speechless days that shall be ! 

' On the grave-posts of our fathers 
Are no signs, no figures painted; 
Who are in those graves we know not, 20 
Only know they are our fathers. 
Of what kith they are and kindred, 
From what old, ancestral Totem, 
Be it Eagle, Bear, or Beaver, 
They descended, this we know not, 
Only know they are our fathers. 

' Face to face we speak together, 
But we cannot speak when absent, 
Cannot send our voices from us 
To the friends that dwell afar off; 3 o 

Cannot send a secret message, 
But the bearer learns our secret, 
May pervert it, may betray it, 
May reveal it unto others.' 

Thus said Hiawatha, walking 
In the solitary forest, 
Ponder ing, musing in the forest, 
On the welfare of his people. 

From his pouch he_took his colors, 
Took his paints of different colors, 40 

On the smooth bark of a birch-tree 
Painted many shapes and figures, 
Wonderful and mystic figures, 
And each figure had a meaning, 
Each some word or thought suggested. 

Gitche Manito the Mighty, 
He, the Master of Life, was painted 
As an egg, with points projecting 
To the four winds of the heavens. 
Everywhere is the Great Spirit, 50 

Was the meaning of this symbol. 

Mitche Manito the Mighty, 
He the dreadful Spirit of Evil, 
As a serpent was depicted, 
As Kenabeek, the great serpent. 
Yery crafty, very cunning, 
Is the creeping Spirit of Evil, 
Was the meaning of this symbol. 



i 9 : 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



S3 












Life and Death he drew as circles, 
Life was white, but Death was dark- 
ened ; eo 
Sun and moon and stars he painted, 
Man and beast, and hsh and reptile, 
Forests, mountains, lakes, and rivers. 

For the earth he drew a straight line, 
For the sky a bow above it; 
White the space between for daytime, 
Filled -with little stars for night-time ; 
On the left a point for sunrise. 
On the right a point for sunset. 
On the top a point for noontide, 7 o 

And for ram and cloudy weather 
Waving lines descending from it. 

Footprints pointing towards a wigwam 
Were a sign of invitation. 
Were a sign of guests assembling; 
Bloody hands with palms uplifted 
Were a symbol of destruction. 
Were a hostile sign and symbol. 

All these things did Hiawatha 
Show unto his wondering people, So 

And interpreted their meaning. 
And he said: 'Behold, your grave-posts 
Have no mark, no sign, nor symbol, 
Go and paint them all with figures ; 
Each one with its hotisehold symbol, 
With its own ancestral Totem; 
So that those who follow after 
May distinguish them and know them. 

And they painted on the grave-posts 
On the graves yet unforgotten, go 

Each his own ancestral Totem, 
Each the symbol of his household; 
Figures of the Bear and Reindeer, 
Of the Turtle, Crane, and Beaver, 
Each inverted as a token 
That the owner was departed, 
That the chief who bore the symbol 
Lay beneath in dust and ashes. 

And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets, 
*\Y The Wabenos, the Magicians, IO o 

And the Medicine-men, the Medas, 
Painted upon bark and deer-skin 
Figm'es for the sougs they chanted, 
For each song a separate symbol, 
Fig-ures mystical and awful, 
Figures strange and brightly colored; 
And each figure had its meaning, 
Each some magic song suggested. 

The Great Spirit, the Creator, 
Flashing light through all the heaven; no 
' : \A The Great Serpent, the Kenabeek, 
With his bloody crest erected, 



1 



Creeping, looking into heaven; 
In the sky the sun, that listens. 
And the moon eclipsed and dying; 
Owl and eagle, crane and hen-hawk, 
And the cormorant, bird of magic; 
Headless men, that walk the heavens, 
Bodies lying pierced with arrows, 
Bloody hands of death uplifted, 
Flags on graves, and great war-captains 
Grasping both the earth and heaven ! 

Such as these the shapes they painted 
On the birch-hark and the deer-skin; 
Songs of war and songs of hunting, 
Songs of medicine and of magic. 
All were written in these figures, 
For each figure had its meaning, 
Each its separate song recorded. 

Nor forgotten was the Love-Song, 
The most subtle of all medicines, 
The most potent spell of magic. 
Dangerous more than war or limiting ! 
Thus the Love-Sojig_wasreeorded, 
Symbol and niteiptvtation. 

First a human figure standing, 
Painted in the brightest sc arlet; 
'T is the lover, the musician, 
And the meaning is. • My painting 
Makes me powerful over others.' i 

Then the figure seated, singing, 
Playing on a drum of magic. 
And the interpretation, ' Listen ! 
'T is my voice you hear, my singing ! ' 

Then the same red fig ure se ated 
In the shelter of a wigwam, 
And the meaning of the symbol, 
' I will come and sit beside you 
In the mystery of my passion ! ' 

Then two figures, man and woman, i 
Standing hand in hand together 
With their hands so clasped together 
That they seemed in one united. 
And the words thus represented 
Are, ' I see your heart within you, 
And your cheeks are red with blushes i ' 

Next the maiden on an island, 
Li the centre of an island; 
And the song this shape suggested 
Was, • Though you were at a distance, i 
Were upon some far-off island, 
Such the spell I cast upon you. 
Such the magic power of passion, 
I could straightway draw you to me ! ' 

Then the figure of the maiden 
Sleeping, and the lover near her, 
Whispering to her in her slumbers, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



193 



Saying, ' Though you were far from me 

In the land of Sleep and Silence, 

Still the voice of love would reach you ! ' 170 

And the last of all the figures 
Was a heart within a circle, 
Drawn within a magic circle; 
And the image had this meaning: 
' Naked lies your heart hefore me, 
To your naked heart I whisper ! ' 

Thus it was that Hiawatha, 
In his wisdom, taught the people 
All the mysteries of painting, 
All the art of Picture- Writing, 180 

On the smooth bark of the birch-tree, 
On the white skin of the reindeer, 
On the grave-posts of the village. 

XV 

HIAWATHA'S LAMENTATION 

In those days the Evil Spirits, 
All the Manitos of mischief, 
Fearing Hiawatha's wisdom, 
And his love for Chibiabos, 
Jealous of their faithful friendship, 
And their noble words and actions, 
Made at length a league against them, 
To molest them and destroy them. 

Hiawatha, wise and wary, 
Often said to Chibiabos, 10 

■ O my brother ! do not leave me, 
Lest the Evil Spirits harm you ! ' 
Chibiabos, young and heedless, 
Laughing shook his coal-black tresses, 
Answered ever sweet and childlike, 
' Do not fear for me, O brother ! 
Harm and evil come not near me ! ' 

Once when Peboan, the Winter, 
Roofed with ice the Big-Sea- Water, 
When the snow-flakes,whirling downward, 
Hissed among the withered oak-leaves, 21 
Changed the pine-trees into wigwams, 
Covered all the earth with silence, — 
Armed with arrows, shod with snow-shoes, 
Heeding not his brother's warning, 
Fearing not the Evil Spirits, 
Forth to hunt the deer with antlers 
All alone went Chibiabos. 

Right across the Big-Sea- Water 
Sprang with speed the deer before him. 30 
With the wind and snow he followed, 
O'er the treacherous ice he followed, 
Wild with all the fierce commotion 
And the rapture of the hunting. 



But beneath, the Evil Spirits 
Lay in ambush, waiting for him, 
Broke the treacherous ice beneath him, 
Dragged him downward to the bottom, 
Buried in the sand his body. 
Unktahee, the god of water, 40 

He the god of the Dacotahs, 
Drowned him in the deep abysses 
Of the lake of Gitche Gumee. 

From the headlands Hiawatha 
Sent forth such a wail of anguish, 
Such a fearful lamentation, 
That the bison paused to listen, 
And the wolves howled from the prairies, 
And the thunder in the distance 
Starting answered, ' Baim-wawa ! ' 50 

Then his face with black he painted, 
With his robe bis head he covered, 
In his wigwam sat lamenting, 
Seven long weeks he sat lamenting, 
Uttering still this moan of sorrow : — 

' He is dead, the sweet musician ! 
He the sweetest of all singers ! 
He has gone from us forever, 
He has moved a little nearer 
To the Master of all music, 
To the Master of all singing ! 

my brother, Chibiabos ! ' 
And the melancholy fir-trees 

Waved their dark green fans above him, 
Waved their purple cones above him, 
Sighing with him to console him, 
Mingling with his lamentation 
Their complaining, their lamenting. 

Came the Spring, and all the forest 
Looked in vain for Chibiabos; 70 

Sighed the rivulet, Sebowisha, 
Sighed the rushes in the meadow. 

From the tree-tops sang the bluebird, 
Sang the bluebird, the Owaissa, 
( Chibiabos ! Chibiabos ! 
He is dead, the sweet musician ! ' 

From the wigwam sang the robin, 
Sang the robin, the Opechee, 
' Chibiabos ! Chibiabos ! 
He is dead, the sweetest singer ! ' 80 

And at night through all the forest 
Went the whippoorwill complaining, 
Wailing went the Wawonaissa, 

1 Chibiabos ! Chibiabos ! 

He is dead, the sweet musician ! 
He the sweetest of all singers ! ' 

Then the Medicine-men, the Medas, 
The magicians, the Wabenos, 
And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets, 



i94 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Came to visit Hiawatha; 90 

Built a Sacred Lodge beside him, 
To appease him, to console him, 
Walked in silent, grave procession, 
Bearing each a pouch of healing, 
Skin of beaver, lynx, or otter, 
Filled with magic roots and simples, 
Filled with very potent medicines. 

When he heard their steps approaching, 
Hiawatha ceased lamenting, 
Called no more on Chibiabos; 100 

Naught he questioned, naught he answered, 
But his mournful head uncovered, 
From his face the mourning colors 
Washed he slowly and in silence, 
Slowly and in silence followed 
Onward to the Sacred Wigwam. 

There a magic drink they gave him, 
Made of Nahma-wusk, the spearmint, 
And Wabeuo-wusk, the yarrow, 
Boots of power, and herbs of healing; no 
Beat their drums, and shook their rattles; 
Chanted singly and in chorus, 
Mystic songs like these, they chanted. 

' I myself, myself ! behold me ! 
'T is the great Gray Eagle talking ; 
Come, ye white crows, come and hear him! 
The loud-speaking thunder helps me; 
All the unseen spirits help me ; 
I can hear their voices calling, 
All around the sky I hear them ! 120 

I can blow you strong, my brother, 
I can heal you, Hiawatha ! ' 

' Hi-au-ha ! ' replied the chorus, 
' Way-ha-way ! ' the mystic chorus. 

' Friends of mine are all the serpents ! 
Hear me shake my skin of hen-hawk ! 
Mahng, the white loon, I can kill him; 
I can shoot your heart and kill it ! 
I can blow you strong, my brother, 
I can heal you, Hiawatha ! ' 130 

• Hi-au-ha ! ' replied the chorus. 
' Way-ha-way ! ' tbe mystic chorus. 

' I myself, myself ! the prophet ! 
When I speak the wigwam trembles, 
Shakes the Sacred Lodge with terror, 
Hands unseen begin to shake it ! 
When I walk, the sky I tread on 
Bends and makes a noise beneath me ! 
I can blow you strong, my brother! 
Rise and speak, O Hiawatha ! ' 140 

' Hi-au-ha! ' replied the chorus, 
' Way-ha-way! ' the mystic chorus. 

Then they shook their medicine-pouches 
O'er the head of Hiawatha, 



Danced their medicine-dance around him : 
And upstarting wild and haggard, 
Like a man from dreams awakened, 
He was healed of all his madness. 
As the clouds are swept from heaven, 
Straightway from his brain departed 150 
All his moody melancholy; 
As the ice is swept from rivers, 
Straightway from his heart departed 
All his sorrow and affliction. 

Then they summoned Chibiabos 
From his grave beneath the waters, 
From the sands of Gitche Gumee 
Summoned Hiawatha's brother. 
And so mighty was the magic 
Of that cry and invocation, 160 

That he heard it as he lay there 
Lnderneath the Big-Sea- Water; 
From the sand he rose and listened, 
Heard the music and the singing, 
Came, obedient to the summons, 
To the doorway of the wigwam, 
But to enter they forbade him. 

Through a chink a coal they gave him, 
Through the door a burning fire-brand; 
Rider in the Land of Spirits, i 7 o 

Ruler o'er the dead, they made him, 
Telling him a fire to kindle 
For all those that died thereafter, 
Camp-fires for their night encampments 
On their solitary journey 
To the kingdom of Ponemah, 
To the land of the Hereafter. 

From the village of his childhood, 
From the homes of those who knew him, 
Passing silent through the forest, 180 

Like a smoke-wreath wafted sideways, 
Slowly vanished Chibiabos ! 
Where he passed, the branches moved not, 
Where he trod, the grasses bent not, 
And the fallen leaves of last year 
Made no soiuid beneath Ins footsteps, r 

Four whole days he journeyed onward 
Down the pathway of the dead men; 
On the dead-man's strawberry feasted, 
Crossed the melancholy river, i 9 c 

On the swinging log he crossed it, 
Came unto the Lake of Silver, 
In the Stone Canoe was carried 
To the Islands of the Blessed, 
To the land of ghosts and shadows. 

On that journey, moving slowly, 
Many weary spirits saw he, 
Panting under heavy burdens, 
Laden with war-clubs, bows and arrows, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



195 



Robes of fur, and pots and kettles, 20 

And with food that friends had given 
For that solitary journey. 

' Ay ! why do the living,' said they, 
' Lay such heavy burdens on us ! 
Better were it to go naked, 
Better were it to go fasting, 
Than to bear such heavy burdens 
On our long and weary journey ! ' 

Forth then issued Hiawatha, 
Wandered eastward, wandered westward, 
Teaching men the use of simples 21 

And the antidotes for poisons, 
And the cure of all diseases. 
Thus was first made known to mortals 
All the mystery of Medamin, 
All the sacred art of healing. 



XVI 

PAU-PUK-KEEWIS 

You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
He, the handsome Yenadizze, 
Whom the people called the Storm-Fool, 
Vexed the village with disturbance; 
You shall hear of all his mischief, 
And his flight from Hiawatha, 
And his wondrous transmigrations, 
And the end of his adventures. 

On the shores of Gitche Gumee, 
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo, 10 

By the shining Big-Sea- Water 
Stood the lodge of Pau-Puk-Keewis. 
It was he who in his frenzy 
Whirled these drifting sands together, 
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo, 
When, among the guests assembled, 
He so merrily and madly 
Danced at Hiawatha's wedding, 
Danced the Beggar's Dance to please them. 

Now, in search of new adventures, 20 
From his lodge went Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Came with speed into the village, 
Found the young men all assembled 
In the lodge of old Iagoo, 
Listening to his monstrous stories, 
To his wonderful adventures. 

He w r as telling them the story 
Of Ojeeg, the Summer-Maker, 
How lie made a hole in heaven, 
How he climbed up into heaven, 30 

And let out the summer-weather, 
The perpetual, pleasant Summer; 



How the Otter first essayed it; 
How the Beaver, Lynx, and Badger 
Tried in turn the great achievement, 
From the summit of the mountain 
Smote their fists against the heavens, 
Smote against the sky their foreheads, 
Cracked the sky, but could not break it; 
How the Wolverine, uprising, 40 

Made him ready for the encounter, 
Bent his knees down, like a squirrel, 
Drew his arms back, like a cricket. 

' Once he leaped,' said old Iagoo, 
' Once he leaped, and lo ! above him 
Bent the sky, as ice in rivers 
When the waters rise beneath it; 
Twice he leaped, and lo ! above him 
Cracked the sky, as ice in rivers 
When the freshet is at highest ! 50 

Thrice he leaped, and lo ! above him 
Broke the shattered sky asunder, 
And he disappeared within it, 
And Ojeeg, the Fisher Weasel, 
With a bound went in behind him ! ' 

' Hark you ! ' shouted Pau-Puk-Keewis 
As he entered at the doorway; 
' I am tired of all this talking, 
Tired of old Iagoo's stories, 
Tired of Hiawatha's wisdom. 60 

Here is something to amuse you, 
Better than this endless talking.' 

Then from out his pouch of wolf-skin 
Forth he drew, with solemn manner, 
All the game of Bowl and Counters, 1 
Pugasaing, with thirteen pieces. 
White on one side were they painted, 
And vermilion on the other; 
Two Kenabeeks or great serpents, 
Two Ininewug or wedge-men, 70 

One great war-club, Pugamaugun, 
And one slender fish, the Keego, 
Four round pieces, Ozawabeeks, 
And three Sheshebwug or ducklings. 
All were made of bone and painted, 
All except the Ozawabeeks; 
These were brass, on one side burnished, 
And were black upon the other. 

In a wooden bowl he placed them, 
Shook and jostled them together, 80 

Threw them on the ground before him, 
Thus exclaiming and explaining: 

1 This G-ame of the Bowl is the principal game of 
hazard among the Northern tribes of Indians. Mr. 
Schoolcraft gives a particular account of it in OneSta, 
p. 85. . . . See also his History, Conditions, and Pro- 
spects of the Indian Tribes, part ii, p. 72. (Longfel- 
low.) 



196 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



' Red side up are all the pieces, 
And one great Kenabeek standing 
On the bright side of a brass piece, 
On a burnished Ozawabeek; 
Thirteen tens and eight are counted.' 

Then again he shook the pieces, 
Shook aud jostled them together, 
Threw them on the ground before him, 90 
Still exclaiming and explaining: 
' White are both the great Kenabeeks, 
White the Ininewug, the wedge-men, 
Red are all the other pieces; 
Five tens and an eight are counted.' 

Thus he taught the game of hazard, 
Thus displayed it and explained it, 
Running through its various chances, 
Various changes, various meanings: 
Twenty ciu'ious eyes stared at him, 100 

Fidl of eagerness stared at him. 

' Many games,' said old Iagoo, 
' Many games of skill and hazard 
Have I seen in different nations, 
Have I played in different countries. 
He who plays with old Iagoo 
Must have very nimble fingers; 
Though you think yourself so skilful, 
I can beat you, Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
I can even give you lessons no 

In your game of Bowl and Coixnters ! ' 

So they sat and played together, 
All the old men and the young men, 
Played for dresses, weapons, wampum, 
Played till midnight, played till morn- 
ing, 
Played until the Yenadizze, 
Till the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Of their treasures had despoiled them, 
Of the best of all their dresses, 
Shirts of deer-skin, robes of ermine, 120 

Belts of wampum, crests of feathers, 
Warlike weapons, pipes and pouches. 
Twenty eyes glared wildly at him, 
Like the eyes of wolves glared at him. 

Said the lucky Pau-Puk-Keewis: 
' In my wigwam I am lonely, 
In my wanderings and adventures 
I have need of a companion, 
Fain woidd have a Meshinauwa, 
An attendant and pipe-bearer. 130 

I will ventxire all these winnings, 
All these garments heaped about me, 
All this wampum, all these feathers, 
On a single throw will venture 
All against the young man yonder ! ' 
'T was a youth of sixteen summers, 



'T was a nephew of Iagoo ; 
Face-in-a-Mist, the people called him. 

As the fire burns in a pipe-head 
Dusky red beneath the ashes, 140 

So beneath his shaggy eyebrows 
Glowed the eyes of old Iagoo. 
' Ugh ! ' he answered very fiercely; 
' Ugh ! ' they answered all and each one. 

Seized the wooden bowl the old man, 
Closely in his bony fingers 
Clutched the fatal bowl, Onagon, 
Shook it fiercely and with fury, 
Made the pieces ring together 
As he threw them down before him. 150 

Red were both the great Kenabeeks, 
Red the Ininewug, the wedge-men, 
Red the Sheshebwug, the ducklings, 
Black the four brass Ozawabeeks, 
White alone the fish, the Keego; 
Only five the pieces counted ! 

Then the smiling Pau-Puk-Keewis 
Shook the bowl and threw the pieces; 
Lightly in the air he tossed them, 
And they fell about him scattered; 160 

Dark and bright the Ozawabeeks, 
Red and white the other pieces, 
And upright among the others 
One Ininewug was standing, 
Even as crafty Pau-Puk-Keewis 
Stood alone among the players, 
Saying, • Five tens ! mine the game is ! ' 

Twenty eyes glared at him fiercely, 
Like the eyes of wolves glared at him, 
As he turned and left the wigwam, 170 

Followed by his Meshinauwa, 
By the nephew of Iagoo, 
By the tall and graceful stripling, 
Bearing in his arms the winnings, 
Shirts of deer-skin, robes of ermine, 
Belts of wampum, pipes and weapons. 

' Carry them,' said Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Pointing with his fan of feathers, 
' To my wigwam far to eastward, 
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo ! ' 1S0 

Hot and red with smoke and gambling 
Were the eyes of Pau-Puk-Keewis 
As he came forth to the freshness 
Of the pleasant Summer morning. 
All the birds were singing gayly, 
All the streamlets flowing swiftly, 
And the heart of Pau-Puk-Keewis 
Sang with pleasure as the birds sing, 
Beat with triumph like the streamlets, 
As he wandered through the village, 190 
In the early gray of morning, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



197 



With his fan of turkey-feathers, 
With his plumes and tufts of swan's down, 
Till he reached the farthest wigwam, 
Reached the lodge of Hiawatha. 

Silent was it and deserted; 
No one met him at the doorway, 
No one came to bid him welcome; 
But the birds were singing round it, 
In and out and round the doorway, 200 

Hopping, singing, fluttering, feeding, 
And aloft upon the ridge-pole 
Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens, 
Sat with fiery eyes, and, screaming, 
Flapped his wings at Pau-Puk-Keewis. 

' All are gone ! the lodge is empty ! ' 
Thus it was spake Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
In his heart resolving mischief; — 
' Gone is wary Hiawatha, 
Gone the silly Laughing Water, 210 

Gone Nokomis, the old woman, 
And the lodge is left unguarded ! ' 

By the neck he seized the raven, 
Whirled it round him like a rattle, 
Like a medicine-pouch he shook it, 
Strangled Kahgahgee, the raven, 
From the ridge-pole of the wigwam 
Left its lifeless body hanging, 
As an insult to its master, 
As a taunt to Hiawatha. 220 

With a stealthy step he entered, 
Round the lodge in wild disorder 
Threw the household things about him, 
Piled together in confusion 
Bowls of wood and earthen kettles, 
Robes of buffalo and beaver, 
Skins of otter, lynx, and ermine, 
As an insult to Nokomis, 
As a taunt to Minnehaha. 

Then departed Pau-Puk-Keewis, 230 

Whistling, singing through the forest, 
Whistling gayly to the squirrels, 
Who from hollow boughs above him 
Dropped their acorn-shells upon him, 
Singing gayly to the wood birds, 
Who from out the leafy darkness 
Answered with a song as merry. 

Then he climbed the rocky headlands, 
Looking o'er the Gitche Gumee, 
Perched himself upon their summit, 240 
Waiting full of mirth and mischief 
The return of Hiawatha. 

Stretched upon his back he lay there ; 
Far below him plashed the waters, 
Plashed and washed the dreamy waters; 
Far above him swam the heavens, 



Swam the dizzy, dreamy heavens; 
Round him hovered, fluttered, rustled 
Hiawatha's mountain chickens, 
Flock-wise swept and wheeled about him, 
Almost brushed him with their pinions. 251 

And he killed them as he lay there, 
Slaughtered them by tens and twenties, 
Threw their bodies down the headland, 
Threw them on the beach below him, 
Till at length Kayoshk, the sea-gull, 
Perched upon a crag above them, 
Shouted: 'It is Pau-Puk-Keewis ! 
He is slaying us by hundreds ! 
Send a message to our brother, 260 

Tidings send to Hiawatha ! ' 



XVII 

THE HUNTING OF PAU-PUK-KEEWIS 

Full of wrath was Hiawatha 
When he came into the village, 
Found the people in confusion, 
Heard of all the misdemeanors, 
All the malice and the mischief, 
Of the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis. 

Hard his breath came through his nos- 
trils, 
Through his teeth he buzzed and muttered 
Words of anger and resentment, 
Hot and humming, like a hornet. 10 

' I will slay this Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Slay this mischief-maker ! ' said he. 
' Not so long and wide the world is, 
Not so rude and rough the way is, 
That my wrath shall not attain him, 
That my vengeance shall not reach him ! ' 

Then in swift pursuit departed 
Hiawatha and the hunters 
On the trail of Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Through the forest, where he passed it, 20 
To the headlands where he rested; 
But they found not Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Only in the trampled grasses, 
In the whortleberry-bushes, 
Found the couch where he had rested, 
Found the impress of his body. 

From the lowlands far beneath them, 
From the Muskoday, the meadow, 
Pau-Puk-Keewis, turning backward, 
Made a gesture of defiance, 30 

Made a gesture of derision; 
And aloud cried Hiawatha, 
From the summit of the mountains: 



igS 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



' Not so long and wide the world is, 
Not so rude and rough the way is, 
But my wrath shall overtake you, 
And my vengeance shall attain you ! ' 

Over rock and over river, 
Thorough bush, and brake, and forest, 
Ran the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis; 40 

Like an antelope he bounded, 
Till he came unto a streamlet 
In the middle of the forest, 
To a streamlet still and tranquil, 
That had overflowed its margin, 
To a dam made by the beavers, 
To a pond of quiet water, 
Where knee-deep the trees were standing, 
Where the water-lilies floated, 
Where the rushes waved and whispered. 50 

On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
On the dam of trunks and branches, 
Through whose chinks the water spouted, 
O'er whose summit flowed the streamlet. 
From the bottom rose the beaver, 
Looked with two great eyes of wonder, 
Eyes that seemed to ask a question, 
At the stranger, Pau-Puk-Keewis. 

On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
O'er his ankles flowed the streamlet, 60 
Flowed the bright and silvery water, 
And he spake unto the beaver, 
With a smile he spake in this wise: 

' O my friend Ahmeek, the beaver, 
Cool and pleasant is the water; 
Let me dive into the water, 
Let me rest there hi your lodges; 
Change me, too, into a beaver ! ' 

Cautiously replied the beaver, 
With reserve he thus made answer: 70 

' Let me first consult the others, 
Let me ask the other beavers.' 
Down he sank into the water, 
Heavily sank he, as a stone sinks, 
Down among the leaves and branches, 
Brown and matted at the bottom. 

On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
O'er his ankles flowed the streamlet, 
Spouted through the chinks below him, 
Dashed upon the stones beneath him, So 
Spread serene and calm before him, 
And the sunshine and the shadows 
Fell in flecks and gleams upon him, 
Fell in little shining patches, 
Through the waving, rustling branches. 

From the bottom rose the beavers, 
Silently above the surface 
Rose one head and then another, 



00 



Till the pond seemed full of beavers, 
Fidl of black and sinning faces. 

To the beavers Pau-Puk-Keewis 
Spake entreating, said in this wise: 
' Very pleasant is your dwelling, 
O my friends ! and safe from danger; 
Can you not, with all your cunning, 
All your wisdom and contrivance, 
Change me, too, into a beaver ? ' 

' Yes ! ' replied Ahmeek, the beaver, 
He the King of all the beavers, 
' Let yourself slide down among us, 100 
Down into the tranquil water.' 

Down into the pond among them 
Silently sank Pau-Puk-Keewis; 
Black became his shut of deer-skin, 
Black his moccasins and leggings, 
In a broad black tail behind him 
Spread his fox-tails and his fringes; 
He was changed into a beaver. 

'Make me large,' said Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
'Make me large and make me larger, no 
Larger than the other beavers.' 
' Yes,' the beaver chief responded, 
' When our lodge below you enter, 
In our wigwam we will make you 
Ten times larger than the others.' 

Thus mto the clear, brown water 
Silently sank Pau-Puk-Keewis: 
Found the bottom covered over 
With the trunks of trees and branches, 
Hoards of food against the whiter, 120 

Piles and heaps against the famine; 
Found the lodge with arching doorway, 
Leading into spacious chambers. 

Here they made him huge ana larger, 
Made him largest of the beavers, 
Ten times larger than the others. 
' You shall be our ruler,' said they; 
' Chief and King of all the beavers.' 

But not long had Pau-Puk-Keewis 
Sat in state among the beavers, 130 

When there came a voice of warning 
From the watchman at his station 
In the water-flags and lilies, 
Saying, ' Here is Hiawatha ! 
Hiawatha with his hunters ! ' 

Then they heard a cry above them, 
Heard a shouting and a tramping, 
Heard a crashing and a rushing, 
And the water round and o'er them 
Sank and sucked away in eddies, 140 

And they knew their dam was broken. 

On the lodge's roof the hunters 
Leaped, and broke it all asunder; 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



199 



Streamed the sunshine through the crevice, 
Sprang the beavers through the doorway, 
Hid themselves in deeper water, 
In the channel of the streamlet; 
But the mighty Pau-Puk-Keewis 
Could not pass beneath the doorway; 
He was puffed with pride and feeding, 150 
He was swollen like a bladder. 

Through the roof looked Hiawatha, 
Cried aloud, ' O Pau-Puk-Keewis ! 
Vain are all your craft and cunning, 
Vain your manifold disguises ! 
Well I know you, Pau-Puk-Keewis ! ' 
With their clubs they beat and bruised 

him, 
Beat to death poor Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Pounded him as maize is pounded, 
Till his skull was crushed to pieces. 160 

Six tall hunters, lithe and limber, 
Bore him home on poles and branches, 
Bore the body of the beaver; 
But the ghost, the Jeebi in him, 
Thought and felt as Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Still lived on as Pau-Puk-Keewis. 

And it fluttered, strove, and struggled, 
Waving hither, waving thither, 
As the curtains of a wigwam 
Struggle with their thongs of deer-skin, 170 
When the wintry wind is blowing; 
Till it drew itself together, 
Till it rose up from the body, 
Till it took the form and features 
Of the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis 
Vanishing into the forest. 

But the wary Hiawatha 
Saw the figure ere it vanished, 
Saw the form of Pau-Puk-Keewis 
Glide into the soft blue shadow 180 

Of the pine-trees of the forest; 
Toward the squares of white beyond it, 
Toward an opening in the forest, 
Like a wind it rushed and panted, 
Bending all the boughs before it, 
And behind it, as the rain comes, 
Came the steps of Hiawatha. 

To a lake with many islands 
Came the breathless Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Where among the water-lilies i 9 o 

Pishnekuh, the brant, were sailing; 
Through the tufts of rushes floating, 
Steering through the reedy islands. 
Now their broad black beaks they lifted, 
Now they plunged beneath the water, 
Now they darkened in the shadow, 
Now they brightened in the sunshine. 



' Pishnekuh ! ' cried Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
' Pishnekuh ! my brothers ! ' said he, 
' Change me to a brant with plumage, 200 
With a shining neck and feathers, 
Make me large, and make me larger, 
Ten times larger than the others.' 

Straightway to a brant they changed him, 
With two huge and dusky pinions, 
With a bosom smooth and rounded, 
With a bill like two great paddles, 
Made him larger than the others, 
Ten times larger than the largest, 
Just as, shouting from the forest, 210 

On the shore stood Hiawatha. 

Up they rose with cry and clamor, 
With a whir and beat of pinions, 
Rose up from the reedy islands, 
From the water-flags and lilies. 
And they said to Pau-Puk-Keewis: 
' In your flying, look not downward, 
Take good heed and look not downward, 
Lest some strange mischance should hap- 
pen, 
Lest some great mishap befall you ! ' 220 

Fast and far they fled to northward, 
Fast and far through mist and sunshine, 
Fed among the moors and fen-lands, 
Slept among the reeds and rushes. 

On the morrow as they journeyed, 
Buoyed and lifted by the South-wind, 
Wafted onward by the South-wind, 
Blowing fresh and strong behind them, 
Rose a sound of human voices, 
Rose a clamor from beneath them, 230 

From the lodges of a village, 
From the people miles beneath them. 

For the people of the village 
Saw the flock of brant with wonder, 
Saw the wings of Pau-Puk-Keewis 
Flapping far up in the ether, 
Broader than two doorway curtains. 

Pau-Puk-Keewis heard the shouting, 
Knew the voice of Hiawatha, 
Knew the outcry of Iagoo, 240 

And, forgetful of the warning, 
Drew his neck in, and looked downward, 
And the wind that blew behind him 
Caught his mighty fan of feathers, 
Sent him wheeling, whirling downward ! 

All in vain did Pau-Puk-Keewis 
Struggle to regain his balance ! 
Whirling round and round and downward, 
He beheld in turn the village 
And in turn the flock above him, 250 

Saw the village coming nearer, 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And the flock receding farther, 

Heard the voices growing louder, 

Heard the shouting and the laughter; 

Saw no more the flocks above him, 

Only saw the earth beneath him; 

Dead out of the empty heaven, 

Dead among the shouting people, 

With a heavy sound and sullen, 

Fell the brant with broken pinions. 260 

But his soul, his ghost, his shadow, 
Still survived as Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Took again the form and features 
Of the handsome Yenadizze, 
And again went rushing onward, 
Followed fast by Hiawatha, 
Crying: ' Not so wide the world is, 
Not so long and rough the way is, 
But my wrath shall overtake you, 
But my vengeance shall attain you ! ' 270 

And so near he came, so near him, 
That his hand was stretched to seize him, 
His right hand to seize and hold him, 
When the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis 
Whirled and spun about in circles, 
Fanned the air into a whirlwind, 
Danced the dust and leaves about him, 
And amid the whirling eddies 
Sprang into a hollow oak-tree, 
Changed himself into a serpent, 280 

Gliding out through root and rubbish. 

With his right hand Hiawatha 
Smote amain the hollow oak-tree, 
Rent it into shreds and splinters, 
Left it lying there in fragments. 
But in vain; for Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Once again in human figure, 
Full in sight ran on before him, 
Sped away in gust and whirlwind, 
On the shores of Gitche Gumee, 290 

Westward by the Big-Sea- Water, 
Came unto the rocky headlands, 
To the Pictured Rocks of sandstone, 
Looking over lake and landscape. 

And the Old Man of the Mountain, 
He the Manito of Mountains, 
Opened wide his rocky doorways, 
Opened wide his deep abysses, 
Giving Pau-Puk-Keewis shelter 
In his caverns dark and dreary, 300 

Bidding Pau-Puk-Keewis welcome 
To his gloomy lodge of sandstone. 

There without stood Hiawatha, 
Foimd the doorways closed against him, 
With his mittens, Minjekahwun, 
Smote great caverns in the sandstone, 



Cried aloud in tones of thunder, 

' Open ! I am Hiawatha ! ' 

But the Old Man of the Mountain 

Opened not, and made no answer 310 

From the silent crags of sandstone, 

From the gloomy rock abysses. 

Then he raised his hands to heaven, 
Called imploring on the tempest, 
Called Waywassimo, the lightning, 
And the thunder, Annemeekee; 
And they came with night and darkness, 
Sweeping down the Big-Sea- Water 
From the distant Thunder Mountains; 
And the trembling Pau-Puk-Keewis 320 
Heard the footsteps of the thunder, 
Saw the red eyes of the lightning, 
Was afraid, and crouched and trembled. 

Then Waywassimo, the lightning, 
Smote the doorways of the caverns, 
With his war-club smote the doorways, 
Smote the jutting crags of sandstone, 
And the thunder, Annemeekee, 
Shouted down into the caverns, 
Saying, ' Where is Pau-Puk-Keewis ! ' 330 
And the crags fell, and beneath them 
Dead among the rocky ruins 
Lay the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Lay the handsome Yenadizze, 
Slain in his own human figure. 

Ended were his wild adventures, 
Ended were his tricks and gambols, 
Ended all his craft and cunning, 
Ended all his mischief-making, 
All his gambling and his dancing, 340 

All his wooing of the maidens. 

Then the noble Hiawatha 
Took his soid, his ghost, his shadow, 
Spake and said: 'O Pau-Puk-Keewis, 
Never more in human figure 
Shall you search for new adventures; 
Never more with jest and laughter 
Dance the dust and leaves in whirlwinds; 
But above there hi the heavens 
You shall soar and sail in circles; 350 

I will change you to an eagle, 
To Keneu, the great war-eagle, 
Chief of all the fowls with feathers, 
Chief of Hiawatha's chickens.' 

And the name of Pau-Puk-Keewis 
Lingers still among the people, 
Lingers still among the singers, 
And among the story-tellers; 
And in Winter, when the snow-flakes 
Whirl in eddies round the lodges, 360 

When the wind in gusty tumult 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



O'er the smoke-flue pipes and whistles, 
' There,' they cry, ' comes Pau-Puk-Kee- 

wis; 
He is dancing through the village, 
He is gathering in his harvest ! ' 



XVIII 

THE DEATH OF KWASIND 

Far and wide among the nations 
Spread the name and fame of Kwasind; 
No man dared to strive with Kwasind, 
No man could compete with Kwasind. 
But the mischievous Puk- Wudjies, 
They the envious Little People, 
They the fairies and the pygmies, 
Plotted and conspired against him. 

' If this hateful Kwasind,' said they, 
' If this great, outrageous fellow 10 

Goes on thus a little longer, 
Tearing everything he touches, 
Rending everything to pieces, 
Filling all the world with wonder, 
What becomes of the Puk- Wudjies ? 
Who will care for the Puk- Wudjies ? 
He will tread us down like mushrooms, 
Drive us all into the water, 
Give our bodies to be eaten 
By the wicked Nee-ba-naw-baigs, 20 

By the Spirits of the water ! ' 

So the angry Little People 
All conspired against the Strong Man, 
All conspired to murder Kwasind, 
Yes, to rid the world of Kwasind, 
The audacious, overbearing, 
Heartless, haughty, dangerous Kwasind ! 

Now this wondrous strength of Kwasind 
In his crown alone was seated; 
In his crown too was his weakness; 30 

There alone could he be wounded, 
Nowhere else could weapon pierce him, 
Nowhere else could weapon harm him. 

Even there the only weapon 
That could wound him, that could slay him, 
Was the seed-cone of the pine-tree, 
Was the blue cone of the fir-tree. 
This was Kwasind's fatal secret, 
Known to no man among mortals; 
But the cunning Little People, 40 

The Puk- Wudjies, knew the secret, 
Knew the only way to kill him. 

So they gathered cones together, 
Gathered seed-cones of the pine-tree, 



Gathered blue cones of the fir-tree, 
In the woods by Taquamenaw, 
Brought them to the river's margin, 
Heaped them in great piles together, 
Where the red rocks from the margin 
Jutting overhang the river. 50 

There they lay in wait for Kwasind, 
The malicious Little People. 

'T was an afternoon in Summer; 
Very hot and still the air was, 
Very smooth the gliding river, 
Motionless the sleeping shadows: 
Insects glistened in the sunshine, 
Insects skated on the water, 
Filled the drowsy air with buzzing, 
With a far resounding war-cry. 60 

Down the river came the Strong Man, 
In his birch canoe came Kwasind, 
Floating slowly down the current 
Of the sluggish Taquamenaw, 
Very languid with the weather, 
Very sleepy with the silence. 

From the overhanging branches, 
From the tassels of the birch-trees, 
Soft the Spirit of Sleep descended; 
By his airy hosts surrounded, 70 

His invisible attendants, 
Came the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin; 
Like a burnished Dush-kwo-ne-she, 
Like a dragon-fly, he hovered 
O'er the drowsy bead of Kwasind. 

To his ear there came a murmur 
As of waves upon a sea-shore, 
As of far-off tumbling waters, 
As of winds among the pine-trees; 
And he felt upon his forehead 80 

Blows of little airy war-clubs, 
Wielded by the slumbrous legions 
Of the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin, 
As of some one breathing on him. 

At the first blow of their war-clubs, 
Fell a drowsiness on Kwasind; 
At the second blow they smote him, 
Motionless his paddle rested; 
At the third, before his vision 
Reeled the landscape into darkness, 90 

Very sound asleep was Kwasind. 

So he floated down the river, 
Like a blind man seated upright, 
Floated down the Taquamenaw, 
Underneath the trembling birch-trees, 
Underneath the wooded headlands, 
Underneath the war encampment 
Of the pygmies, the Puk-Wudjies. 

There they stood, all armed and waiting, 



202 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Hurled the pine-cones down upon him, ioo 
Struck him on his brawny shoulders, 
On his crown defenceless struck him. 
' Death to Kwasind ! ' was the sudden 
War-cry of the Little People. 

And he sideways swayed and tumbled, 
Sideways fell into the river, 
Plunged beneath the sluggish water 
Headlong, as an otter plunges; 
And the birch canoe, abandoned, 
Drifted empty down the river, no 

Bottom upward swerved and drifted: 
Nothing more was seen of Kwasind. 

But the memory of the Strong Man 
Lingered long among the people, 
And whenever through the forest 
Raged and roared the wintry tempest, 
And t\\e branches, tossed and troubled, 
Creaked and groaned and split asunder, 
' Kwasind ! ' cried they; ' that is Kwasind ! 
He is gathering in his fire-wood ! ' 120 



XIX 
THE GHOSTS 

Never stoops the soaring vulture 

On his quarry in the desert, 

On the sick or wounded bison, 

But another vulture, watching 

From his high aerial look-out, 

Sees the downward plunge, and follows; 

And a third pursues the second, 

Coming from the invisible ether, 

First a speck, and then a' vulture, 

Till the air is dark with pinions. 10 

So disasters come not singly; 
But as if they watched and waited, 
Scanning one another's motions, 
When the first descends, the others 
Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise 
Round their victim, sick and wounded, 
First a shadow, then a sorrow, 
Till the air is dark with anguish. 

Now, o'er all the dreary North-land, 
Mighty Peboan, the Whiter, 20 

Breathing on the lakes and rivers, 
Into stone had changed their waters. 
From his hair he shook the snow-flakes, 
Till the plains were strewn with whiteness, 
One uninterrupted level, 
As if, stooping, the Creator 
With his hand had smoothed them over. 

Through the forest, wide and wailing, 



Roamed the hunter on his snow-shoes; 

In the village worked the women, 30 

Pounded maize, or dressed the deer-skin; 

And the young men played together 

On the ice the noisy ball-play, 

On the plain the dance of snow-shoes. 

One dark evening, after sundown, 
In her wigwam Laughing Water 
Sat with old Nokomis, waiting 
For the steps of Hiawatha 
Homeward from the hunt returning. 

On their faces gleamed the firelight, 40 
Painting them with streaks of crimson, 
In the eyes of old Nokomis 
Glimmered like the watery moonlight, 
In the eyes of Laughing Water 
Glistened like the sun in water; 
And behind them crouched their shadows 
In the corners of the wigwam, 
And the smoke in wreaths above them 
Climbed and crowded through the smoke- 
flue. 

Then the curtain of the doorway 50 

From without was slowly lifted; 
Brighter glowed the fire a moment, 
And a moment swerved the smoke-wreath 
As two women entered softly, 
Passed the doorway uninvited, 
Without word of salutation, 
Without sign of recognition, 
Sat down in the farthest corner, 
Crouching low among the shadows. 

From their aspect and their garments, 60 
Strangers seemed they in the village ; 
Very pale and haggard were they, 
As they sat there sad and silent, 
Trembling, cowering with the shadows. 

Was it the wind above the smoke-flue, 
Muttering down into the wigwam ? 
Was it the owl, the Koko-koho, 
Hooting from the dismal forest ? 
Sure a voice said in the silence: 
' These are corpses clad in garments, 70 
These are ghosts that come to haunt you, 
From the kingdom of Ponemah, 
From the land of the Hereafter ! ' 

Homeward now came Hiawatha 
From his hunting in the forest, 
With the snow upon his tresses, 
And the red deer on his shoulders. 
At the feet of Laughing Water 
Down he threw his lifeless burden; 
Nobler, handsomer she thought him, So 
Than when first he came to woo her, 
First threw down the deer before her, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



203 



As a token of his wishes, 
As a promise of the future. 

Then he turned and saw the strangers, 
Cowering, crouching with the shadows; 
Said within himself, ' Who are they ? 
What strange guests has Minnehaha ? ' 
But he questioned not the strangers, 
Only spake to bid them welcome go 

To his lodge, his food, his fireside. 

When the evening meal was ready, 
And the deer had been divided, 
Both the pallid guests, the strangers, 
Springing from among the shadows, 
Seized upon the choicest portions, 
Seized the white fat of the roebuck, 
Set apart for Laughing Water, 
For the wife of Hiawatha; 
Without asking, without thanking, 100 

Eagerly devoured the morsels, 
Flitted back among the shadows 
In the corner of the wigwam. 

Not a word spake Hiawatha, 
Not a motion made Nokomis, 
Not a gesture Laughing Water; 
Not a change came o'er their features; 
Only Minnehaha softly 
Whispered, saying, 'They are famished; 
Let them do what best delights them; no 
Let them eat, for they are famished.' 

Many a daylight dawned and darkened, 
Many a night shook off the daylight 
As the pine shakes off the snow-flakes 
From the midnight of its branches; 
Day by day the guests unmoving 
Sat there silent in the wigwam ; 
But by night, in storm or starlight, 
Forth they went into the forest, 
Bringing fire-wood to the wigwam, 120 

Bringing phie-cones for the burning, 
Always sad and always silent. 

And whenever Hiawatha 
Came from fishing or from hunting, 
When the evening meal was ready, 
And the food had been divided, 
Gliding from their darksome corner, 
Came the pallid guests, the strangers, 
Seized upon the choicest portions 
Set aside for Laughing Water, 130 

And without rebuke or question 
Flitted back among the shadows. 

Never once had Hiawatha 
By a word or look reproved them; 
Never once had old Nokomis 
Made a gesture of impatience; 
Never once had Laughing Water 



Shown resentment at the outrage. 

All had they endured in silence, 

That the rights of guest and stranger, 140 

That the virtue of free-giving, 

By a look might not be lessened, 

By a word might not be broken. 

Once at midnight Hiawatha, 
Ever wakeful, ever watchful, 
In the wigwam, dimly lighted 
By the brands that still were burning, 
By the glimmering, flickering firelight, 
Heard a sighing, oft repeated, 
Heard a sobbing, as of sorrow. 150 

From his couch rose Hiawatha, 
From his shaggy hides of bison, 
Pushed aside the deer-skin curtain, 
Saw the pallid guests, the shadows, 
Sitting upright on their couches, 
Weeping in the silent midnight. 

And he said : ' O guests ! why is it 
That your hearts are so afflicted, 
That you sob so in the midnight ? 
Has perchance the old Nokomis, 160 

Has my wife, my Minnehaha, 
Wronged or grieved you by unkindness, 
Failed in hospitable duties ? ' 

Then the shadows ceased from weeping, 
Ceased from sobbing and lamenting, 
And they said, with gentle voices: 
' We are ghosts of the departed, 
Souls of those who once were with you. 
From the realms of Chibiabos 
Hither have we come to try you, 170 

Hither have we come to warn you. 

' Cries of grief and lamentation 
Reach us in the Blessed Islands ; 
Cries of anguish from the living, 
Calling back their friends departed, 
Sadden us with useless sorrow. 
Therefore have we come to try you; 
No one knows us, no one heeds us. 
We are but a burden to you, 
And we see that the departed 180 

Have no place among the living. 

' Think of this, O Hiawatha ! 
Speak of it to all the people, 
That henceforward and forever 
They no more with lamentations 
Sadden the souls of the departed 
In the Islands of the Blessed. 

' Do not lay such heavy burdens 
In the graves of those you bury, 
Not such weight of furs and wampum, 190 
Not such weight of pots and kettles, 
For the spirits faint beneath them. 



204 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Only give them food to carry, 
Only give them tire to light them. 

• Four days is the spirit's journey 
To the land of ghosts and shadows, 
Four its lonely night encampments; 
Four times must their tires be lighted. 
Therefore, when the dead are buried. 
Let a tire, as night approaches, 200 

Four times on the grave be kindled, 
That the soul upon its journey 
May not lack the cheerful firelight, 
May not grope about in darkness. 

' Farewell, noble Hiawatha ! 
We have put you to the trial. 
To the proof have put your patience, 
By the insult of our presence, 
By the outrage of our actions. 
"We have found you great and noble. 210 
Fail not in the greater trial, 
Faint not in the harder struggle.' 

When they ceased, a sudden dark- 
ness 
Fell and filled the silent wigwam. 
Hiawatha heard a rustle 
As of garments trailing by him, 
Heard the curtain of the doorway 
Lifted by a hand he saw not. 
Felt the cold breath of the night air, 
For a moment saw the starlight; 220 

But he saw the ghosts no longer. 
Saw no more the wandering spirits 
From the kingdom of Ponemah, 
From the land of the Hereafter. 



XX 

THE FAMINE 

Oh, the long and dreary Winter ! 
Oh, the cold and cruel Winter ! 
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker 
Froze the ice ou lake and river, 
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper 
Fell the snow o'er all the landscape, 
Fell the covering snow, and drifted 
Through the forest, round the village. 

Hardly from his buried wigwam 
Could the hunter force a passage; 
With his mittens and his snow-shoes 
Vainly walked he through the forest, 
Sought for bird or beast and found-none, 
Saw no track of deer or rabbit. 
In the snow beheld ho footprints, 
In the ghastly, gleaming forest 



Fell, and could not rise from weakness, 
Perished there from cold and hunger. 

Oh the famine and the fever ! 
Oh the wasting of the famine ! 20 

Oh the blasting of the fever ! 
Oh the wailing of the children ! 
Oh the anguish of the women ! 

All the earth was sick and famished; 
Hungry was the air around them, 
Hungry was the sky above them, 
And the hungry stars in heaven 
Like the eyes of wolves glared at them ! 

Into Hiawatha's wigwam 
Came two other guests, as silent 30 

As the ghosts were, and as gloomy, 
Waited not to be invited, 
Pid not parley at the doorway. 
Sat there without word of welcome 
In the seat of Laughing Water; 
Looked with haggard eyes and hollow 
At the face of Laughing Water. 

And the foremost said : • Behold me ! 
I am Famine, Bukadawin ! ' 
And the other said: ' Behold me ! 40 

I am Fever, Ahkosewin ! ' 

And the lovely Minnehaha 
Shuddered as they looked upon her, 
Shuddered at the words they uttered, 
Lay down on her bed hi silence. 
Hid her face, but made no answer; 
Lay there trembling, freezing, burning 
At the looks they cast upon her. 
At the fearful words they uttered. 

Forth into the empty forest 50 

Bushed the maddened Hiawatha; 
In his heart was deadly sorrow, 
In his face a stony firmness; 
On his brow the sweat of anguish 
Started, but it froze and fell not. 

Wrapped in furs and armed for hunt- 
ing, 
With his mighty bow of ash-tree, 
With his quiver full of arrows, 
With his mittens, Mmjekahwuu, 
Into the vast and vacant forest 60 

On his snow-shoes strode he forward. 

' Gitche Manito, the Mighty ! ' 
Cried he with his face uplifted 
In that bitter hour of angiush, 
' Give your children food, O father ! 
Give us food, or we must perish ! 
Give me food for Minnehaha, 
For my dying Minnehaha ! ' 

Through the far-resounding forest, 
Through the forest vast and vacant 7 o 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



205 



Rang that cry of desolation, 
But there came no other answer 
Than the echo of his crying, 
Than the echo of the woodlands, 
' Minnehaha ! Minnehaha ! ' 

All day long roved Hiawatha 
In that melancholy forest, 
Through the shadow of whose thickets, 
In the. pleasant days of Summer, 
Of that ne'er forgotten Summer, 80 

He had brought his young wife home- 
ward 
From the land of the Dacotahs; 
When the birds sang in the thickets, 
And the streamlets laughed and glistened, 
And the air was full of fragrance, 
And the lovely Laughing Water 
Said with voice that did not tremble, 
' I will follow you, my husband ! ' 

In the wigwam with Nokomis, 
With those gloomy guests that watched 
her, 90 

With the Famine and the Fever, 
She was lying, the Beloved, 
She, the dying Minnehaha. 

' Hark ! ' she said ; ' I hear a rushing, 
Hear a roaring and a rushing, 
Hear the Falls of Minnehaha 
Calling to me from a distance ! ' 
' No, my child ! ' said old Nokomis, 
' 'T is the night-wind in the pine-trees ! ' 

' Look ! ' she said ; ' I see my father 100 
Standing lonely at his doorway, 
Beckoning to me from his wigwam 
In the land of the Dacotahs ! ' 
' No, my child ! ' said old Nokomis, 
' 'T is the smoke, that waves and beckons !' 

' Ah ! ' said she, ' the eyes of Pauguk 
Glare upon me in the darkness, 
I can feel his icy fingers 
Clasping mine amid the darkness ! 
Hiawatha ! Hiawatha ! ' no 

And the desolate Hiawatha, 
Far away amid the forest, 
Miles away among the mountains, 
Heard that sudden cry of anguish, 
Heard the voice of Minnehaha 
Calling to him in the darkness, 
' Hiawatha ! Hiawatha ! ' 

Over snow-fields waste and pathless, 
Under snow-encumbered branches, 
Homeward hurried Hiawatha, "° 

Empty-handed, heavy-hearted, 
Heard Nokomis moaning, wailing: 
* Wahonowin ! Wahonowin J 



Would that I had perished for you, 
Would that I were dead as you are ! 
Wahonowin ! Wahonowin ! ' 

And he rushed into the wigwam, 
Saw the old Nokomis slowly 
Rocking to and fro and moaning, 
Saw his lovely Minnehaha 130 

Lying dead and cold before him, 
And his bursting heart within him 
Uttered such a cry of anguish, 
That the forest moaned and shuddered, 
That the very stars in heaven 
Shook and trembled with his anguish. 

Then he sat down, still and speech- 
less, 
On the bed of Minnehaha, 
At the feet of Laughing Water, 
At those willing feet, that never 140 

More would lightly run to meet him, 
Never more would lightly follow. 

With both hands his face he covered, 
Seven long days and nights he sat there, 
As if in a swoon he sat there, 
Speechless, motionless, unconscious 
Of the daylight or the darkness. 

Then they buried Minnehaha; 
In the snow a grave they made her, 
In the forest deep and darksome, 150 

Underneath the moaning hemlocks; 
Clothed her in her richest garments, 
Wrapped her in her robes of ermine, 
Covered her with snow, like ermine; 
Thus they buried Minnehaha. 

And at night a fire was lighted, 
On her grave four times was kindled, 
For her soul upon its journey 
To the Islands of the Blessed. 
From his doorway Hiawatha 160 

Saw it burning in the forest, 
Lighting up the gloomy hemlocks; 
From his sleepless bed uprising, 
From the bed of Minnehaha, 
Stood and watched it at the doorway, 
That it might not be extinguished, 
Might not leave her in the darkness. 
' Farewell ! ' said he, ' Minnehaha ! 
Farewell, O my Laughing Water ! 
All my heart is buried with you, i 70 

All my thoughts go onward with you ! 
Come not back again to labor, 
Come not back again to suffer, 
Where the Famine and the Fever 
Wear the heart and waste the body. 
Soon my task will be completed, 
Soon your footsteps I shall follow 



206 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



To the Islands of the Blessed, 
To the Klii^xlom of Ponemah, 
To the Laud of the Hereafter ! » 



180 



XXI 

THE WHITE MAN'S FOOT 

In his lodge beside a river, 

Close beside a frozen river, 

Sat an old man, sad and lonely. 

White his hair was as a snow-drift; 

Dull and low his tire was burning, 

And the old man shook and trembled, 

Folded in his Waubewyon, 

In his tattered white-skin-wrapper, 

Hearing' nothing but the tempest 

As it roared along the forest, 10 

Seemg nothing but the snow-storm, 

As it whirled and hissed and drifted. 

All the coals were white with ashes, 
And the fire was slowly dying. 
As a young man, walking lightly, 
At the open doorway entered. 
Red with blood of youth his cheeks were, 
Soft his eyes, as stars in Spring-time, 
Bound his forehead was with grasses; 
Bound and plumed with scented grasses, 20 
On his lips a smile of beauty, 
Filling all the lodge with sunshine, 
In his hand a bunch of blossoms 
Filling all the lodge with sweetness. 

' Ah, my son ! ' exclaimed the old man, 
' Happy are my eyes to see you. 
Sit here on the mat beside me, 
Sit here by the dying embers, 
Let us pass the night together, 
Tell me of your strange adventures, 30 

Of the lands where you have travelled; 
I will tell you of my prowess, 
Of my many deeds of wonder.' 

From his pouch lie drew his peace-pipe, 
Very old and strangely fashioned; 
Made of red stone was the pipe-head, 
And the stem a reed with feathers; 
Filled the pipe with bark of willow, 
Placed a burning coal upon it, 
Gave it to his guest, the stranger, 40 

And began to speak in this wise: 
' When I blow my breath about me, 
When I breathe upon the landscape, 
Motionless are all the rivers, 
Hard as stone becomes the water! ' 

And the young man answered, smiling: 



' When 1 blow my breath about me, 
When I breathe upon the landscape, 
Flowers spring up o'er all the meadows, 
Singing, onward rush the rivers ! ' 50 

• When I shake my hoary tresses.' 
Said the old man darkly frowning, 
'All the laud with snow is covered; 
All the leaves from all the branches 
Fall and fade and die and wither, 
For I breathe, and lo ! they are not. 
From the waters and the marshes 
Rise the wild goose and the heron, 
Fly away to distant regions. 
For I speak, and lo ! they are not. 60 

And where'er my footsteps wander, 
All the wild beasts of the forest 
Hide themselves hi holes and caverns, 
And the earth becomes as rlintstone ! ' 

1 When I shake my flowing ringlets,' 
Said the young man, softly laughing, 
' Showers of rain fall warm and welcome, 
Plants lift up their heads rejoicing, 
Back into their lakes and marshes 
Come the wild goose and the heron, 70 

Homeward shoots the arrowy swallow, 
Sing the bluebird and the robin. 
And where'er my footsteps wander, 
All the meadows wave with blossoms, 
All the woodlauds ring with music. 
All the trees are dark with foliage ! ' 

While they spake, the night departed: 
From the distant realms of Wabun, 
From his shining lodge of silver, 
Like a warrior robed and painted, So 

Came the sun, and said, ' Behold me 
Gheezis, the great sun, behold me ! ' 

Then the old man's tongue was speechless 
And the air grew warm and pleasant, 
And upon the wigwam sweetly 
Sang the bluebird and the robin, 
And the stream began to murmur, 
And a scent of growing grasses 
Through the lodge was gently wafted. 

And Segwun, the youthful stranger, 90 
More distinctly in the daylight 
Saw the icy face before him; 
It was Peboan, the Whiter ! 

From his eyes the tears were Mowing, 
As from melting lakes the streamlets, 
And his body shrunk and dwindled 
As the shouting sun ascended. 
Till into the air it faded, 
Till into the ground it vanished. 
And the young man saw before him, 100 
On the hearth-stone of the wigwam, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



207 



Where the fire had smoked and smouldered, 
Saw the earliest flower of Spring-time, 
Saw the Beauty of the Spring-time, 
Saw the Miskodeed in blossom. 

Thus it was that in the North-land 
After that unheard-of coldness, 
That intolerable Winter, 
Came the Spring with all its splendor, 
All its birds and all its blossoms, no 

All its flowers and leaves and grasses. 

Sailing on the wind to northward, 
Flying in great flocks, like arrows, 
Like huge arrows shot through heaven, 
Passed the swan, the Mahnahbezee, 
Speaking almost as a man speaks; 
And in long lines waving, bending 
Like a bow-string snapped asunder, 
Came the white goose, Waw-be-wawa; 
And in pairs, or singly flying, 120 

Mahng the loon, with clangorous pinions, 
The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, 
And the grouse, the Mushkodasa. 

In the thickets and the meadows. 
Piped the bluebird, the Owaissa, 
On the summit of the lodges 
Sang the robin, the Opechee, 
In the covert of the pine-trees 
Cooed the pigeon, the Omemee; 
And the sorrowing Hiawatha, 130 

Speechless in his infinite sorrow, 
Heard their voices calling to him, 
Went forth from his gloomy doorway, 
Stood and gazed into the heaven, 
Gazed upon the earth and waters. 

From his wanderings far to eastward, 
From the regions of the morning, 
From the shining land of Wabun, 
Homeward now returned Iagoo, 
The great traveller, the great boaster, 140 
Full of new and strange adventures, 
Marvels many and many wonders. 

And the people of the village 
Listened to him as lie told them 
Of his marvellous adventures, 
Laughing answered him in this wise: 
' Ugh ! it is indeed Iagoo ! 
No one else beholds such wonders ! ' 

He had seen, he said, a water 
Bigger than the Big-Sea-Water, I5 o 

Broader than the Gitche Gumee, 
Bitter so that none could drink it ! 
At each other looked the warriors, 
Looked the women at each other, 
Smiled, and said, ' It cannot be so ! 
Kaw ! ' they said, ' it cannot be so ! ' 



' O'er it,' said he, ' o'er this water 
Came a great canoe with pinions, 
A canoe with wings came flying, 
Bigger than a grove of pine-trees, 160 

Taller than the tallest tree-tops ! ' 
And the old men and the women 
Looked and tittered at each other; 
' Kaw ! ' they said, ' we don't believe it ! ' 

From its mouth, lie said, to greet him, 
Came Waywassimo, the lightning, 
Came the thunder, Annemeekee ! 
And the warriors and the women 
Laughed aloud at poor Iagoo; 
' Kaw ! ' they said, ' what tales you tell 
us ! ' 170 

• In it,' said he, ' came a people, 
In the great canoe with pinions 
Came, he said, a hundred warriors; 
Painted white were all their faces 
And with hair their chins were covered ! ' 
And the warriors and the women 
Laughed and shouted in derision, 
Like the ravens on the tree-tops, 
Like the crows upon the hemlocks. 
' Kaw ! ' they said, ' what lies you tell 
us ! 180 

Do not think that we believe them ! ' 

Only Hiawatha laughed not, 
But he gravely spake and answered 
To their jeering and their jesting: 
1 True is all Iagoo tells us ; 
I have seen it in a vision, 
Seen the great canoe with pinions, 
Seen the people with white faces, 
Seen the coming of this bearded 
People of the wooden vessel 190 

From the regions of the morning, 
From the shining lands of Wabun. 

' Gitche Manito, the Mighty, 
The Great Spirit, the Creator, 
Sends them hither on his errand, 
Sends them to us with his message. 
Wheresoe'er they move, before them 
Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo, 
Swarms the bee, the honey-maker; 
Wheresoe'er they tread, beneath them 200 
Springs a flower unknown among us, 
Springs the White-man's Foot in blossom. 

' Let us welcome, then, the strangers, 
Hail them as our friends and brothers, 
And the heart's right hand of friendship 
Give them when they come to see us. 
Gitche Manito, the Mighty, 
Said this to me in my vision. 

' I beheld, too, in that vision 



208 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



All the secrets of the future, 2 

Of the distant days that shall be. 
I beheld the westward marches 
Of the unknown, crowded nations. 
All the land was full of people, 

] Restless, struggling, toiling, striving, 
' J Speaking many tongues, yet feeling j 

j But one heart-beat in their bosoms. I 
In the woodlands rang their axes, 

) Smoked their towns in all the valleys, 
Over all the lakes and rivers 2 

Rushed their great canoes of thunder. 

' Then a darker, drearier vision 
Passed before me, vague and cloud-like ; 
I beheld our nation scattered, 
All forgetful of my counsels, 
Weakened, warring with each other: 
Saw the remnants of our people 
Sweeping westward, wild and woful, 
Like the cloud-rack of a tempest, 
Like the withered leaves of Autumn ! ' 2 



XXII 

hiawatha's departure 

By th'e shore of Gitche Gumee, 
By the shining Big-Sea- Water, 
At the doorway of his wigwam, 
In the pleasant summer morning, 
Hiawatha stood and waited. 
All the air was full of freshness, 
All the earth was bright and joyous, 
And before him, through the sunshine, 
Westward toward the neighboring forest 
Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo, 
Passed the bees, the honey-makers, 
Burning, singing in the sunshine. 

Bright above him shone the heavens, 
Level spread the lake before him; 
From its bosom leaped the sturgeon, 
Sparkling, flashing in the sunshine; 
On its margin the great forest 
Stood reflected in the water, 
Every tree-top had its shadow, 
Motionless beneath the water. 

From the brow of Hiawatha 
Gone was every trace of sorrow, 
As the fog from off the water, 
As the mist from off the meadow. 
With a smile of joy and triumph, 
With a look of exultation, 
As of one who in a vision 
Sees what is to be, but is not, 
Stood and waited Hiawatha. 



Toward the sun his hands were lifted, 1 30 
Both the palms spread out against it, 
And between the parted fingers 
Fell the sunshine on his features, 
Flecked with light his naked shoulders, 
As it falls and flecks an oak-tree . 
Through the rifted leaves and branches. 

O'er the water floating, flying, 
Something in the hazy distance, 
Something in the mists of morning, 
Loomed and lifted from the water, 40 

Now seemed floating, now seemed flying, 
Coming nearer, nearer, nearer. 

Was it Shingebis the diver ? 
Or the pelican, the Shada ? 
Or the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah ? 
Or the white goose, Waw-be-wawa, 
With the water dripping, flashing. 
From its glossy neck and feathers ? 

It was neither goose nor diver, 
Neither pelican nor heron, so 

O'er the water floating, flying, 
Through the shining mist of morning, 
But a birch canoe with paddles, 
Rising, sinking on the water, 
Dripping, flashing in the sunshine ; 
And within it came a people 
From the distant land of Wabun, 
From the farthest realms of morning 
Came the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet, 
He the Priest of Prayer, the Pale-face, 60 
With his guides and his companions. 

And the noble Hiawatha, 
With his hands aloft extended, 
Held aloft in sign of welcome, 
Waited, full of exultation, 
Till the birch canoe with paddles 
Grated on the shining pebbles, 
Stranded on the sandy margin, 
Till the Black-Robe chief, the Pale-face, 
With the cross upon his bosom, 7 o 

Landed on the sandy margin. 

Then the joyous Hiawatha 
Cried aloud and spake in this wise: 
' Beautiful is the sun, O strangers, 
When you come so far to see us ! 
All our town in peace awaits you, 
All our doors stand open for you; 
You shall enter all our wigwams, 
For the heart's right hand we give you. 

' Never bloomed the earth so gayly, 80. 
Never shone the sun so brightly, 

1 In this manner, and with such salutations, was Fa- 
ther Marquette received by the Illinois. See his Voy- 
ages et Decouvertes, section v. (Longfellow.) 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



209 



As to-day they shine and blossom 
When you come so far to see us ! 
Never was our lake so tranquil, 
Nor so free from rocks and sand-bars; 
For your birch canoe in passing 
' Has removed both rock and sand-bar. 

' Never before had our tobacco 
Such a sweet and pleasant flavor, 
Never the broad leaves of our cornfields 90 
Were so beautifid to look on, 
As they seem to us this morning, 
When you come so far to see us ! ' 

And the Black-Robe chief made an- 
swer, 
Stammered in his speech a little, 
Speaking words yet unfamiliar: 
' Peace be with you, Hiawatha, 
Peace be with you and your people, 
Peace of prayer, and peace of pardon, 
Peace of Christ, and joy of Mary ! ' 100 

Then the generous Hiawatha 
Led the strangers to his wigwam, 
Seated them on skins of bison, 
Seated them on skins of ermine, 
And the careful old Nokomis 
Brought them food in bowls of basswood, 
Water brought in birchen dippers, 
And the calumet, the peace-pipe, 
Filled and lighted for their smoking. 

All the old men of the village, no 

All the warriors of the nation, 
All the Jossakeeds, the Prophets, 
The magicians, the Wabenos, 
And the Medicine-men, the Medas, 
Came to bid the strangers welcome; 
' It is well,' they said, ' O brothers, 
That you come so far to see us ! ' 

In a circle round the doorway, 
With their pipes they sat in silence, 
Waiting to behold the strangers, 120 

Waiting to receive their message; 
Till the Black-Robe chief, the Pale-face, 
From the wigwam came to greet them, 
Stammering in his speech a little, 
Speaking words yet unfamiliar; 
' It is well,' they said, ' O brother, 
That you come so far to see us ! ' 

Then the Black-Robe chief, the Prophet, 
Told his message to the people, 
Told the purport of his mission, 130 

Told them of the Virgin Mary, 
And her blessed Son, the Saviour, 
How in distant lands and ages 
He had lived on earth as we do; 
How he fasted, prayed, and labored; 



How the Jews, the tribe accursed, 
Mocked him, scourged him, crucified him; 
How he rose from where they laid him, 
Walked again with his disciples, 
Aud ascended into heaven. 140 

And the chiefs made answer, saying: 
' We have listened to your message, 
We have heard your words of wisdom, 
.We will think on what you tell us. 
It is well for us, O brothers, 
I That you come so far to see us ! ' 
Then they rose up and departed 
Each one homeward to his wigwam, 
To the young men and the women 
Told the story of the strangers 150 

Whom the Master of Life had sent 

them 
From the shining land of Wabun. 

Heavy with the heat and silence 
Grew the afternoon of summer; 
With a drowsy soimd the forest 
Whispered round the sultry wigwam, 
With a sound of sleep the water 
Rippled on the beach below it; 
'From the cornfields shrill and ceaseless 
Sang the grasshopper, Pah-puk-keena; 160 
And the guests of Hiawatha, 
Weary with the heat of Summer, 
Slumbered in the sultry wigwam. 

Slowly o'er the simmering landscape 
Fell the evening's dusk and coolness, 
And the long and level sunbeams 
'Shot their spears into the forest, 
/Breaking through its shields of shadow, 
Rushed into each secret ambush, 
Searched each thicket, dingle, hollow; 170 
Still the guests of Hiawatha 
Slumbered in the silent wigwam. 

From his place rose Hiawatha, 
Bade farewell to old Nokomis, 
Spake in whispers, spake in this wise, 
Did not wake the guests, that slum- 
bered : 

' I am going, O Nokomis, 
On a long and distant journey, 
To the portals of the Sunset, 
To the regions of the home-wind, 180 

Of the Northwest-Wind, Keewaydin. 
But these guests I leave behind me, 
In your watch and ward I leave them; 
See that never harm comes near them, 
See that never fear molests them, 
Never danger nor suspicion, 
Never want of food or shelter, 
In the lodge of Hiawatha ! ' 



ua^ _ u**~~ -a*y^- ~ ^H^\kX- 



2IO 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 






si 

J 
J 



190 



Forth into the village went he, 
Bade farewell to all the warriors, 
Bade farewell to all the young men, 
Spake persuading, spake in this wise: 

' I am going, O my people, 
On a long and distant journey; 
Many moons and many winters 
Will have come, and will have vanished, 
Ere I come again to see you. 
But my guests I leave behind me; 
Listen to their words of wisdom, , 
Listen to the truth they tell you, 20. 

For the Master of Life has sent them 
From the land of light and morning ! ' 

On the shore stood Hiawatha, 
Turned and waved his hand at parting; 
On the clear and luminous water 
Launched his birch canoe for sailing, 
From the pebbles of the margin 
Shoved it forth into the water; 
Whispered to it, ' Westward ! westward ! ' 
And with speed it darted forward. 2* 

And the evening sun descending 
Set the clouds on fire with redness, 
Burned the broad sky, like a prairie, 
Left upon the level water 
One long track and trail of splendor, 
Down whose stream, as down a river, 
Westward, westward, Hiawatha 
Sailed into the fiery sunset, 




Sailed into the purple vapors, 

Sailed into the dusk of evening. 220 

And the people from the margin 
Watched him floating, rising, sinking, 
Till the birch canoe seemed lifted 
High into that sea of splendor, 
Till it sank into the vapors 
Like the new moon slowly, slowly 
Sinking in the purple distance. 

And they said, ' Farewell forever ! ' 
Said, < Farewell, O Hiawatha ! ' 
And the forests, dark and lonely, 230 

Moved through all their depths of darkness, 
Sighed, ' Farewell, O Hiawatha ! ' 
And the waves upon the margin 
Rising, rippling on the pebbles, 
Sobbed, ' Farewell, O Hiawatha ! ' 
And the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, 
From her haunts among the fen-lands, 
Screamed, ' Farewell, O Hiawatha ! ' 

Thus departed Hiawatha, 
Hiawatha the Beloved, 240 

In the glory of the sunset, 
In the purple mists of evening, 
To the regions of the home-wind, 
Of the Northwest- Wind, Keewaydin, 
To the Islands of the Blessed, 
ToJterRingdoni of Ponemah, 
.0 the Land of the Hereafter ! 



June 25, 1854-Mar. 21, 1855. 



Nov. 1855. 



MY LOST YOUTH 



Often I think of the beautiful town 1 

That is seated by the sea; 
Often in thought go up and down 
The pleasant streets of that dear old town, 
And my youth comes back to me. 
And a verse of a Lapland song 
Is haunting my memory still: 
' A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long 
thoughts.' 

1 From Longfellow's Journal: March 29, 1855 — At 
night as I lie in bed, a poem comes into my mind, — 
a memory of Portland, — my native town, the city by 
the sea. 

Siede la terra dove nato fui 

Sulla marina. 

March 30 — Wrote the poem ; and am rather pleased 
with it, and with the bringing in of the two lines of the 
old Lapland song, 

A boy's will is the wind's will. 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. 

(Life, vol. ii.,p. 284.) 



I can see the shadowy lines of its trees, 10 

And catch, in sudden gleams, 
The sheen of the far-surrounding seas, 
And islands that were the Hesperides 
Of all my boyish dreams. 

And the burden of that old song, 
It murmurs and whispers still: 
' A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long 
thoughts.' 

I remember the black wharves and the 
slips, 1 
And the sea-tides tossing free; 20 

And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips, 
And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
• And the magic of the sea. 

And the voice of that wayward song 
Is singing and saying still: 
' A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long 
thoughts.' 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



I remember the bulwarks by the shore, 

And the fort upon the hill; 
The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar, 30 
The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er, 
And the bugle wild and shrill. 
And the music of that old song 
Throbs in my memory still: 
' A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long 
thoughts.' 

I remember the sea-fight far away, 1 

How it thundered o'er the tide ! 
And the dead captains, as they lay 
In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay 
Where they in battle died. 41 

And the sound of that mournful song 
Goes through me with a thrill: 
* A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long 
thoughts.' 

I can see the breezy dome of groves, 
The shadows of Deering's Woods ; 
And the friendships old and the early loves 
Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of 
doves 
In quiet neighborhoods. 50 

And the verse of that sweet old song, 
It flutters and murmurs still : 
1 A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long 
thoughts.' 

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart 

Across the school-boy's brain; 
The song and the silence in the heart, 
That in part are prophecies, and in part 
Are longings wild and vain. 

And the voice of that fitful song 60 
Sings on, and is never still: 
' A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long 
thoughts.' 

There are things of which I may not speak; 
There are dreams that cannot die ; 

1 This was the engagement between the Enterprise 
and Boxer off the harbor of Portland, in which both 
captains were slain. They were buried side by side in 
the cemetery on Mountjoy. (Longfellow.) 

The fight took place in 1813. The Enterprise was an 
American brig, the Boxer, an English one. The fight, 
which could be seen from the shore, lasted for three 
quarters of an hour, when the Enterprise came into the 
harbor, bringing her captive with her. {Cambridge 
Edition.) 



There are thoughts that make the strong 

heart weak, 
And bring a pallor into the cheek, 
And a mist before the eye. 

And the words of that fatal song 
Come over me like a chill: 70 

' A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long 
thoughts.' 

Strange to me now are the forms I meet 

When I visit the dear old town; 
But the native air is pure and sweet, 
And the trees that o'ershadow each well- 
known street, 
As they balance up and down, 
Are singing the beautiful song, 
Are sighing and whispering still: 
' A boy's will is the wind's will, 80 

And the thoughts of youth are long, long 
thoughts.' 

And Deering's Woods are fresh and fair, 2 

And with joy that is almost pain 
My heart goes back to wander there, 
And among the dreams of the days that were, 
I find my lost youth again. 

And the strange and beautiful song, 
The groves are repeating it still: 
' A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long 
thoughts.' 90 

1855. (1858.) 



THE FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY OF 
AGASSIZ 8 

May 28, 1857 

It was fifty years ago 

In the pleasant month of May, 
In the beautiful Pays de Yaud, 

A child in its cradle lay. 

And Nature, the old nurse, took 

The child upon her knee, 
Saying: ' Here is a story-book 

Thy Father has written for thee.' 

2 See the Life, vol. i, p. 25. 

3 A dinner was given to Agassiz on his fiftieth birth- 
day, at which Longfellow presided, and poems were 
read by Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell. 

See Longfellow's ' Noel,' and ' Three Friends of 
Mine,' Lowell's ' Agassiz,' Whittier's ' The Prayer of 
Agassiz,' Holmes's ' A Farewell to Agassiz ' and ' At the 
Saturday Club,' and T. W. Parsons's Sonnet, ' Agassiz.' 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



' Come, wander with me,' she said, 

' Into regions yet untrod; 10 

And read what is still unread 
In the manuscripts of God.' 

And he wandered away and away 
With Nature, the dear old nurse, 

Who sang to him night and day 
The rhymes of the universe. 

And whenever the way seemed long, 

Or his heart began to fail, 
She would sing a more wonderful song, 

Or tell a more marvellous tale. 20 

So she keeps him still a child, 

And will not let him go, 
Though at times his heart beats wild 

For the beautiful Pays de Vaud; 

Though at times he hears in his dreams 
The Ranz des Vaches of old, 

And the rush of mountain streams 
From glaciers clear and cold; 

And the mother at home says, ' Hark ! 

For his voice I listen and yearn; 30 
It is growing late and dark, 

And my boy does not return ! ' 
1857. (1858.) 

DAYBREAK 

A wind came up out of the sea, 

And said, ' O mists, make room for me.' 

It hailed the ships, and cried, ' Sail on, 
Ye mariners, the night is gone.' 

And hurried landward far away, 
Crying, ' Awake ! it is the day.' 

It said unto the forest, ' Shout ! 
Hang all your leafy banners out ! ' 

It touched the wood-bird's folded wing, 
And said, ' O bird, awake and sing.' 10 

And o'er the farms, ' chanticleer, 
Your clarion blow; the day is near.' 

It whispered to the fields of corn, 

' Bow down, and hail the coming morn.' 

It shouted through the belfry-tower, 
' Awake, O bell ! proclaim the hour.' 



It crossed the churchyard with a sigh, 
And said, ' Not yet ! in quiet lie.' 

1S57. (1858.) 

SANTA FILOMENA 1 

Whene'er a noble deed is wrought, 
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought, 

Our hearts, in glad surprise, 

To higher levels rise. 

The tidal wave of deeper souls 
Into our inmost being rolls, 

And lifts us unawares 

Out of all meaner cares. 

Honor to those whose words or deeds 
Thus help us in our daily needs, 10 

And by their overflow 

Raise us from what is low ! 

Thus thought I, as by night I read 

Of the great army of the dead, 
The trenches cold and damp, 
The starved and frozen camp, — 

The wounded from the battle-plain, 
In dreary hospitals of pain, 

The cheerless corridors, 

The cold and stony floors. 20 

Lo ! in that house of misery 

A lady with a lamp I see 

Pass through the glimmering gloom, 
And flit from room to room. 

And slow, as in a dream of bliss, 
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss 

Her shadow, as it falls 

Upon the darkening walls. 

As if a door in heaven should be 
Opened and then closed suddenly, 30 

The vision came and went, 
The light shone and was spent. 

On England's annals, through the long 
Hereafter of her speech and song, 

That light its rays shall cast 

From portals of the past. 

1 For the legend, see Mrs. Jameson's Legendary Art 
(ii, 298). The modern application you will not miss. 
In Italian, one may say Filomda or Filomena. (Long- 
fellow.) 

The 'modern application' is to Florence Nightin- 
gale. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



213 



A Lady with a Lamp shall stand 
In the great history of the land, 

A noble type of good, 

Heroic womanhood. 



Nor even shall be wanting here 
The palm, the lily, and the spear, 
The symbols that of yore 
Saint Filomena bore. 



1857. 



THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 1 



MILES STANDISH 

In the Old Colony days, in Plymouth the 

land of the Pilgrims, 
To and fro in a room of his simple and 

primitive dwelling, 
Clad in doublet and hose, and boots of Cor- 
dovan leather, 
Strode, with a martial air, Miles Standish 

the Puritan Captain. 
Buried in thought he seemed, with his 

hands behind him, and pausing 
Ever and anon to behold his glittering 

weapons of warfare, 
Hanging in shining array along the walls 

of the chamber, — 
Cutlass and corselet of steel, and his trusty 

sword of Damascus, 
Curved at the point and inscribed with its 

mystical Arabic sentence, 
While underneath, in a corner, were fowl- 
ing-piece, musket, and matchlock.' 10 
Short of stature he was, but strongly built 

and athletic, 
Broad in the shoulders, deep-chested, with 

muscles and sinews of iron; 
Brown as a nut was his face, but his russet 

beard was already 
Flaked with patches of snow, as hedges 

sometimes in November. 
Near him was seated John Alden, his friend 

and household companion, 
Writing with diligent speed at a table of 

pine by the window; 
Fair-haired, azure-eyed, with delicate Saxon 

complexion, 
Having the dew of his youth, and the 

beauty thereof, as the captives 

1 Priscilla's reply to John Alden was a well-known 
tradition before Longfellow took up the story. Long- 
fellow himself, and also the poet Bryant, were descend- 
ants of John and Priscilla Alden. For the details of 
colonial life, Longfellow followed especially Elliott's 
History of New England, which he read in 1857. {Life, 
vol. ii, pp. 328-329.) 



Whom Saint Gregory saw, and exclaimed, 
' Not Angles, but Angels.' 

Youngest of all was he of the men who 
came in the Mayflower. 20 

Suddenly breaking the silence, the dili- 
gent scribe interrupting, 

Spake, in the pride of his heart, Miles 
Standish the Captain of Plymouth. 

' Look at these arms,' he said, ' the war- 
like weapons that hang here 

Burnished and bright and clean, as if for 
parade or inspection ! 

This is the sword of Damascus I fought 
with in Flanders ; this breastplate, 

Well I remember the day ! once saved my 
life in a skirmish; 

Here in front you can see the very dint of 
the bullet 

Fired point-blank at my heart by a Spanish 
arcabucero. 

Had it not been of sheer steel, the forgot- 
ten bones of Miles Standish 

Would at this moment be mould, in their 
grave in the Flemish morasses.' 30 

Thereupon answered John Alden, but 
looked not up from his writing: 

' Truly the breath of the Lord hath slack- 
ened the speed of the bullet; 

He in his mercy preserved you, to be our 
shield and our weapon ! ' 

Still the Captain continued, unheeding the 
words of the stripling: 

' See, how bright they are burnished, as if 
in an arsenal hanging; 

That is because I have done it myself, and 
not left it to others. 

Serve yourself, would you be well served, 
is an excellent adage; 

So I take care of my arms, as you of your 
pens and your inkhorn. 

Then, too, there are my soldiers, my great, 
invincible army, 

Twelve men, all equipped, having each his 
rest and his matchlock, 40 



214 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Eighteen shillings a month, together with 

diet and pillage, 
And, like Csesar, I know the name of each 

of my soldiers ! ' 
This he said with a smile, that danced in 

his eyes, as the sunbeams 
Dance on the waves of the sea, and vanish 

again in a moment. 
Alden laughed as he wrote, and still the 

Captain continued: 
' Look ! you can see from this window my 

brazen howitzer planted 
High on the roof of the church, a preacher 

who speaks to the purpose, 
Steady, straightforward, and strong, with 

irresistible logic, 
Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the 

hearts of the heathen. 
Now we are ready, I think, for any assault 

of the Indians; 50 

Let them come, if they like, and the sooner 

they try it the better, — 
Let them come, if they like, be it sagamore, 

sachem, or pow-wow, 
Aspinet, Samoset, Corbitant, Squanto, or 

Tokamahamon ! ' 

Long at the window he stood, and wist- 
fully gazed on the landscape, 

Washed with a cold gray mist, the vapory 
breath of the east-wind, 

Forest and meadow and hill, and the steel- 
blue rim of the ocean, 

Lying silent and sad, in the afternoon shad- 
ows and sunshine. 

Over his countenance flitted a shadow like 
those on the landscape, 

Gloom intermingled with light ; and his 
voice was subdued with emotion, 

Tenderness, pity, regret, as after a pause 
he proceeded : 60 

' Yonder there, on, the hill by the sea, lies 
buried Rose Standish; 

Beautiful rose of love, that bloomed for me 
by the wayside ! 

She was the first to die of all who came in 
the Mayflower ! 

Green above her is growing the field of 
wheat we have sown there, 

Better to hide from the Indian scouts the 
graves of our people, 

Lest they should count them and see how 
many already have perished ! ' 

Sadly his face he averted, and strode up 
and down, and was thoughtful. 



Fixed to the opposite wall was a shelf of 
books, and among them 

Prominent three, distinguished alike for 
bulk and for binding; 

Bariffe's Artillery Guide, and the Com- 
mentaries of Csesar 7 o 

Out of the Latin translated by Arthur 
Goldinge of London, 

And, as if guarded by these, between them 
was standing the Bible. » 

Musing a momont before them, Miles 
Standish paused, as if doubtful 

Which of the three he should choose for 
his consolation and comfort, 

Whether the wars of the Hebrews, the fa- 
mous campaigns of the Romans, 

Or the Artillery practice, designed for bel- 
ligerent Christians. 

Finally down from its shelf he dragged the 
ponderous Roman, 

Seated himself at the window, and opened 
the book, and in silence 

Turned o'er the well-worn leaves, where 
thumb-marks thick on the margin, 

Like the trample of feet, proclaimed the 
battle was hottest. 80 

Nothing was heard in the room but the 
hurrying pen of the stripling, 

Busily writing epistles important, to go by 
the Mayflower, 

Ready to sail on the morrow, or next day 
at latest, God willing ! 

Homeward bound with the tidings of all 
that terrible winter, 

Letters written by Alden, and full of the 
name of Priscilla ! 

Full of the name and the fame of the Pu- 
ritan maiden Priscilla ! 



II 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP 

Nothing was heard in the room but the 
hurrying pen of the stripling, 

Or an occasional sigh from the laboring 
heart of the Captam, 

Reading the marvellous words and achieve- 
ments of Julius Caesar. 

After a while he exclaimed, as he smote 
with his hand, palm downwards, 

Heavily on the page : ' A wonderful man 
was this Csesar ! 

You are a writer, and I am a fighter, but 
here is a fellow 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



2I 5 



Who could both write and fight, and in 
both was equally skilful ! ' 

Straightway answered and spake John 
Alden, the comely, the youthful : 

1 Yes, he was equally skilled, as you say, 
with his pen and his weapons. 

Somewhere have I read, but where I for- 
get, he could dictate 10 

Seven letters at once, at the same time 
writing his memoirs.' 

1 Truly,' continued the Captain, not heed- 
ing or hearing the other, 

' Truly a wonderful man was Caius Julius 
Caesar ! 

Better be first, he said, in a little Iberian 
village, 

Than be second in Rome, and I think he was 
right when he said it. 

Twice was he married before he was twenty, 
and many times after ; 

Battles five hundred he fought, and a thou- 
sand cities he conquered ; 

He, too, fought in Flanders, as he himself 
has recorded ; 

Finally he was stabbed by his friend, the 
orator Brutus ! 

Now, do you know what he did on a certain 
occasion in Flanders, 20 

When the rear-guard of his army retreated, 
the front giving way too, 

And the immortal Twelfth Legion was 
crowded so closely together 

There was no room for their swords ? Why, 
he seized a shield from a soldier, 

Put himself straight at the head of his 
troops, and commanded the captains, 

Calling on each by his name, to order for- 
ward the ensigns ; 

Then to widen the ranks, and give more 
room for their weapons ; 

So he won the day, the battle of something- 
or-other. 

That 's what I always say ; if you wish a 
thing to be well done, 

You must do it yourself, you must not leave 
it to others ! ' 

All was silent again; the Captain con- 
tinued his reading, 30 

Nothing was heard in the room but the 
hurrying pen of the stripling 

Writing epistles important to go next day 
by the Mayflower, 

Filled with the name and the fame of the 
Puritan maiden Priscilla; 



Every sentence began or closed with the 
name of Priscilla, 

Till the treacherous pen, to which he con- 
fided the secret, 

Strove to betray it by singing and shouting 
the name of Priscilla! 

Finally closing his book, with a bang of the 
ponderous cover, 

Sudden and loud as the sound of a soldier 
grounding his musket, 

Thus to the young man spake Miles Stan- 
dish the Captain of Plymouth: 

' When you have finished your work, I 
have something important to tell 
you. 40 

Be not however in haste ; I can wait; I shall 
not be impatient! ' 

Straightway Alden replied, as he folded the 
last of his letters, 

Pushing his papers aside, and giving respect- 
ful attention: 

' Speak; for whenever you speak, I am al- 
ways ready to listen, 

Always ready to hear whatever pertains to 
Miles Standish.' 

Thereupon answered the Captain, embar- 
rassed, and culling his phrases: 

' 'T is not good for a man to be alone, say 
the Scriptures. 

This I have said before, and again and again 
I repeat it; 

Every hour in the day, I think it, and feel 
it, and say it. 

Since Rose Standish died, my life has been 
weary and dreary; 50 

Sick at heart have I been, beyond the heal- 
ing of friendship ; 

Oft in my lonely hours have I thought of 
the maiden Priscilla. 

She is alone in the world; her father and 
mother and brother 

Died in the winter together; I saw her 
gomg and coming, 

Now to the grave of the dead, and now to 
the bed of the dying, 

Patient, courageous, and strong, and said to 
myself, that if ever 

There were angels on earth, as there are 
angels in heaven, 

Two have I seen and known ; and the angel 
whose name is Priscilla 

Holds in my desolate life the place which 
the other abandoned. 

Long have I cherished the thought, but 
never have dared to reveal it, 60 



2l6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Being a coward in this, though valiant 
enough for the most part. 

Go to the damsel Priscilla, the loveliest 
maiden of Plymouth, 

Say that a blunt old Captain, a man not of 
words but of actions, 

Offers his hand and his heart, the hand and 
heart of a soldier. 

Not in these words, you know, but this in 
short is my meaning; 

I am a maker of war, and not a maker of 
phrases. 

You, who are bred as a scholar, can say it in 
elegant language, 

Such as you read in your books of the plead- 
ings and wooings of lovers, 

Such as you think best adapted to win the 
heart of a ruaideu.' 

When he had spoken, John Alden, the 

fair-haired, taciturn stripling, 7 o 

All aghast at his words, surprised, embar- 
rassed, bewildered, 
Trying to mask his dismay by treating the 

subject with lightness, 
Trying to smile, and yet feeling his heart 

stand still in his bosom, 
Just as a timepiece stops in a house that is 

stricken by lightning, 
Thus made answer and spake, or rather 

stammered than answered: 
' Such a message as that, I am sure I should 

mangle and mar it; 
If you would have it well done, — I am only 

repeating your maxim, — 
You must do it yourself, you must not leave 

it to others ! ' 
But with the air of a man whom nothing can 

turn from his purpose, 
Gravely shaking his head, made answer the 

Captain of Plymouth : 80 

' Truly the maxim is good, and I do not 

mean to gainsay it; 
But we must use it discreetly, and not waste 

powder for nothing. 
Now, as I said before, I was never a maker 

of phrases. 
I can march up to a fortress and summon 

the place to surrender, 
But march up to a woman with such a pro- 
posal, I dare not. 
I 'm not afraid of bullets, nor shot from the 

mouth of a cannon, 
But of a thundering " No ! " point-blank 

from the mouth of a woman, 



That I confess I 'm afraid of, nor am I 

ashamed to confess it ! 
So you must grant my request, for you are 

an elegant scholar, 
Having the graces of speech, and skill in the 

turning of phrases.' 9 o 

Taking the hand of his friend, who still was 

reluctant and doubtful, 
Holding it long in his own, and pressing it 

kindly, he added: 
' Though I have spoken thus lightly, yet 

deep is the feeling that prompts me ; 
Surely you cannot refuse what I ask in the 

name of our friendship ! ' 
Then made answer John Alden: ' The name 

of friendship is sacred; 
What you demand in that name, I have not 

the power to deny you ! ' 
So the strong will prevailed, subduing and 

moulding the gentler, 
Friendship prevailed over love, and Alden 

went on his errand. 



Ill 

THE LOVER'S ERRAND 

So the strong will prevailed, and Alden 

went on his errand, 
Out of the street of the village, and into the 

paths of the forest, 
Into the tranquil woods, where bluebirds 

and robins were building 
Towns in the populous trees, with hanging 

gardens of verdure, 
Peaceful, aerial cities of joy and affection 

and freedom. 
All around him was calm, but within him 

commotion and conflict, 
Love contending with friendship, and self 

with each generous impulse. 
To and fro in his breast his thoughts were 

heaving and dashing, 
As in a foundering ship, with every roll of 

the vessel, 
Washes the bitter sea, the merciless surge 

of the ocean ! 10 

1 Must I relinquish it all,' he cried with a 

wild lamentation, — 
' Must I relinquish it all, the joy, the hope, 

the illusion ? 
Was it for this I have loved, and waited, 

and worshipped in silence ? 
Was it for this I have followed the flying 

feet and the shadow 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



217 



Over the wintry sea, to the desolate shores 

of New England ? 
Truly the heart is deceitful, and out of its 

depths of corruption 
Rise, like an exhalation, the misty phantoms 

of passion; 
Angels of light they seem, but are only de- 
lusions of Satan. 
All is clear to me now; I feel it, I see it 

distinctly! 
This is the hand of the Lord; it is laid upon 

me in anger, 20 

For I have followed too much the heart's 

desires and devices, 
Worshipping Astaroth blindly, and impious 

idols of Baal. 
This is the cross I must bear; the sin and 

the swift retribution.' 

So through the Plymouth woods John 

Alden went on his errand ; 
Crossing the brook at the ford, where it 

brawled over pebble and shallow, 
Gathering still, as he went, the May-flowers 

blooming around him, 
Fragrant, filling the air with a strange and 

wonderful sweetness, 
Cmldren lost in the woods, and covered 

with leaves in their slumber. 
1 Puritan flowers,' he said, ' and the type of 

Puritan maidens, 
Modest and simple and sweet, the very 

type of Priscilla ! 30 

So I will take them to her; to Priscilla the 

Mayflower of Plymouth, 
Modest and simple and sweet, as a parting 

gift will I take them; 
Breathing their silent farewells, as they 

fade and wither and perish, 
Soon to be thrown away as is the heart of 

the giver.' 
So through the Plymouth woods John 

Alden went on his errand; 
Came to an open space, and saw the disk of 

the ocean, 
Sailless, sombre and cold with the comfort- 
less breath of the east wind; 
Saw the new-built house, and people at 

work in a meadow; 
Heard, as he drew near the door, the mu- 
sical voice of Priscilla 
Singing the hundredth Psalm, the grand old 

Puritan anthem, 40 

Music that Luther sang to the sacred words 

of the Psalmist, 



Full of the breath of the Lord, consoling 

and comforting many. 
Then, as he opened the door, he beheld the 

form of the maiden 
Seated beside her wheel, and the carded 

wool like a snow-drift 
Piled at her knee, her white hands feeding 

the ravenous spindle, 
While with her foot on the treadle she 

guided the wheel in its motion. 
Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn 

psalm-book of Ainsworth, 
Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the 

music together, 
Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in 

the wall of a churchyard, 
Darkened and overhung by the running 

vine of the verses. 50 

Such was the book from whose pages she 

sang the old Puritan anthem, 
She, the Puritan girl, in the solitude of the 

forest, 
Making the humble house and the modest 

apparel of homespun 
Beautiful with her beauty, and rich with 

the wealth of her being ! 
Over him rushed, like a wind that is keen 

and cold and relentless, 
Thoughts of what might have been, and the 

weight and woe of his errand; 
All the dreams that had faded, and all the 

hopes that had vanished, 
All his life henceforth a dreary and tenant- 
less mansion, 
Haunted by vain regrets, and pallid, sorrow- 
ful faces. 
Still he said to himself, and almost fiercely 

he said it, 60 

' Let not him that putteth his hand to the 

plough look backwards; 
Though the ploughshare cut through the 

flowers of life to its fountains, 
Though it pass o'er the graves of the dead 

and the hearths of the living, 
It is the will of the Lord; and his mercy 

endureth forever ! ' 

So he entered the house : and the hum of 

the wheel and the singing 
Suddenly ceased; for Priscilla, aroused by 

his step on the threshold, 
Rose as he entered, and gave him her hand, 

in signal of welcome, 
Saying, ' I knew it was you, when I heard 

your step in the passage; 



2lS 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



For I was thinking of you, as I sat there 
singing and spinning.' 

Awkward and dumb with delight, that a 
thought pi him had been mingled 70 

Thus in the sacred psalm, that came from 
the heart of the maiden, 

Silent before her he stood, and gave her 
the flowers for an answer, 

Finding no words for his thought. He re- 
membered that day in the whiter, 

After the first great snow, when he broke 
a path from the village. 

Keeling and plunging along through the 
drifts that encumbered the doorway, 

Stamping the snow from his feet as he en- 
tered the house, and Priseilla 

Laughed at his snowy locks, and gave him 
a seat by the fireside, 

Grateful and pleased to know he had 
thought of her in the snow-storm. 

Had he but spoken then ! perhaps not in 
vain had he spoken; 

Xow it was all too late: the golden mo- 
ment had vanished ! So 

So he stood there abashed, and gave her 
the flowers for an answer. 

Then they sat down and talked of the 

birds and the beautiful spring-time, 
Talked of their friends at home, and the 

Mayflower that sailed on the morrow. 
' I have been thinking all day,' said gently 

the Puritan maiden, 
' Dreaming all night, and thinking all day, 

of the hedge-rows of England, — 
They are in blossom now, and the country 

is all like a garden: 
Thinking of lanes and fields, and the song 

of the lark and the linnet. 
Seeing the village street, and familiar faces 

of neighbors 
Going about as of old, and stopping to gos- 
sip together. 
And, at the end of the street, the village 

church, with the ivy 90 

Climbing the old gray tower, and the quiet 

graves in the churchyard. 
Kind are the people I live with, and dear 

to me my religion; 
Still my heart is so sad, that I wish myself 

back in Old England. 
Yoti will say it is wrong, but I cannot help 

it : I almost 
Wish myself back in Old England, I feel 

so lonely and wretched.' 



Thereupon answered the youth: • Indeed 
I do not condemn you; 

Stouter hearts than a woman's have quailed 
in this terrible winter. 

Yours is tender and trusting, and needs a 
stronger to lean on; 

So I have come to you now, with an offer 
and proffer of marriage 

Made by a good man and true. Miles Stan- 
dish the Captain of Plymouth ! ' 100 

Thus he delivered his message, the dex- 
terous writer of letters, — 
Did not embellish the theme, nor array it 

in beautiful phrases. 
But came straight to the point, and blurted 

it otit like a school-boy; 
Even the Captain himself could hardly 

have said it more bluntly. 
Mute with amazement and sorrow, Priseilla 

the Puritan maiden 
Looked into Alden's face, her eyes dilated 

with wonder, 
Feeling his words like a blow, that stmined 

her and rendered her speech- 
less; 
Till at length she exclaimed, interrupting 

the ominous silence: 
1 If the great Captain of Plymouth is so 

very eager to wed me, 
Why does he not come himself, and take 

the troiible to woo me ? no 

If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am 

not worth the winning ! ' 
Then John Alden began explaining and 

smoothing the matter, 
Making it worse as he went, by saying the 

Captain was busy, — 
Had no time for such things — such things ! 

the words grating harshly 
Fell on the ear of Priseilla; and swift as a 

flash she made answer: 
• Has he no time for such things, as you 

call it, before he is married, 
Would he be likely to find it, or make it, 

after the wedding ? 
That is the way with you men; you don't 

understand us, you cannot. 
When you have made up your minds, 

after thinking of this one and that 

one, 
Choosing, selecting, rejecting, comparing 

one with another, 120 

Then you make known your desire, with 

abrupt and sudden avowal. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



219 



And are offended and hurt, and indignant 

perhaps, that a woman 
Does not respond at once to a love that she 

never suspected, 
Does not attain at a bound the height to 

which you have been climbing. 
This is not right nor just: for surely a 

woman's affection 
Is not a thing to be asked for, and had for 

only the asking. 
When one is truly in love, one not only 

says it, but shows it. 
Had he but waited awhile, had he only 

showed that he loved me, 
Even this Captain of yours — who knows ? 

— at last might have won me, 
Old and rough as he is; but now it never 

can happen.' 130 

Still John Alden went on, unheeding the 

words of Priseilla, 
Urging the suit of his friend, explaining, 

persuading, expanding; 
Spoke of his courage and skill, and of all 

his battles in Flanders, 
How with the people of God he had chosen 

to suffer affliction; 
How, in return for his zeal, they had made 

him Captain of Plymouth; 
He was a gentleman born, could trace his 

pedigree plainly 
Back to Hugh Standish of Duxbury Hall, 

in Lancashire, England, 
Who was the son of Ralph, and the grand- 
son of Thurston de Standish; 
Heir unto vast estates, of which he was 

basely defrauded, 
Still bore the family arms, and had for his 

crest a cock argent, 140 

Combed and wattled gules, and all the rest 

of the blazon. 
He was a man of honor, of noble and gen- 
erous nature; 
Though he was rough, he was kindly; she 

knew how during the winter 
He had attended the sick, with a hand as 

gentle as woman's; 
Somewhat hasty and hot, he could not deny 

it, and headstrong, 
Stern as a soldier might be, but hearty, and 

placable always, 
Not to be laughed at and scorned, because 

he was little of stature; 
For he was great of heart, magnanimous, 

courtly, courageous; 



Any woman in Plymouth, nay, any woman 

in England, 
Might be happy and proud to be called the 

wife of Miles Standish ! 150 

But as he warmed and glowed, in his 

simple and eloquent language, 
Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise 

of his rival, 
Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes 

overrunning with laughter, 
Said, in a tremulous voice, ' Why don't you 

speak for yourself, John ? ' 



IV 



JOHN ALDEN 

Into the open air John Alden, perplexed 
and bewildered, 

Rushed like a man insane, and wandered 
alone by the sea-side; 

Paced up and down the sands, and bared bis 
head to the east-wind, 

Cooling his heated brow, and the fire and 
fever within him. 

Slowly as out of the heavens, with apocalyp- 
tical splendors, 

Sank the City of God, in the vision of John 
the Apostle, 

So, with its cloudy walls of chrysolite, jas- 
per, and sapphire, 

Sank the broad red sun, and over its turrets 
uplifted 

Glimmered the golden reed of the angel 
who measured the city. 

1 Welcome, O wind of the East ! ' he ex- 
claimed in his wild exultation, 10 

' Welcome, O wind of the East, from the 
caves of the misty Atlantic ! 

Blowing o'er fields of dulse, and measure- 
less meadows of sea-grass, 

Blowing o'er rocky wastes, and the grottoes 
and gardens of ocean ! 

Lay thy cold, moist hand on my burning 
forehead, and wrap me 

Close in thy garments of mist, to allay the 
fever within me ! ' 

Like an awakened conscience, the sea was 
moaning and tossing, 
Beating remorseful and loud the mutable 
sands of the sea-shore. 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Fierce in his soul was the struggle and tu- 
mult of passions contending; 

Love triumphant and crowned, and friend- 
ship wounded and bleeding, 

Passionate cries of desire, and importunate 
pleadings of duty ! 20 

* Is it my fault,' he said, ' that the maiden 
has chosen between us ? 

Is it my fault that he failed, — my fault 
that I am the victor ? ' 

Then within him there thimdered a voice, 
like the voice of the Prophet: 

' It hath displeased the Lord ! ' — and he 
thought of David's transgression, 

Bathsheba's beautiful face, and his friend 
in the front of the battle ! 

Shame and confusion of guilt, and abase- 
ment and self-condemnation, 

Overwhelmed him at once; and he cried 
in the deepest contrition: 

' It hath displeased the Lord! It is the 
temptation of Satan! ' 

Then, uplifting his head, he looked at the 

sea, and beheld there 
Dimly the shadowy form of the Mayflower 

riding at anchor, 30 

Rocked on the rising tide, and ready to sail 

on the morrow; 
Heard the voices of men through the mist, 

the rattle of cordage 
Thrown on the deck, the shouts of the mate, 

and the sailors' ' Ay, ay, Sir ! ' 
Clear and distinct, but not loud, in the drip- 
ping air of the twilight. 
Still for a moment he stood, and listened, 

and stared at the vessel, 
Then went hurriedly on, as one who, seeing 

a phantom, 
Stops, then qiuckens his pace, and follows 

the beckoning shadow. 
'Yes, it is plain to me now,' he murmured; 

' the hand of the Lord is 
Leading me out of the land of darkness, 

the bondage of error, 
Through the sea, that shall lift the walls of 

its waters around me, 40 

Hiding me, cutting me off, from the cruel 

thoughts that pursue me. 
Back will I go o'er the ocean, this dreary 

land will abandon, 
Her whom I may not love, and him whom 

my heart has offended. 
Better to be in my grave in the green old 

churchyard in England, 



Close by my mother's side, and among the 
dust of my kindred; 

Better be dead and forgotten, than living 
in shame and dishonor; 

Sacred and safe and unseen, in the dark of 
the narrow chamber 

With me my secret shall lie, like a buried 
jewel that glimmers 

Bright on the hand that is dust, in the 
chambers of silence and dark- 
ness, — 

Yes, as the marriage ring of the great es- 
pousal hereafter ! ' 50 

Thus as he spake, he turned, in the 

strength of his strong resolution, 
Leaving behind him the shore, and hurried 

along in the twilight, 
Through the congenial gloom of the forest 

silent and sombre, 
Till he beheld the lights in the seven houses 

of Plymouth, 
Shining like seven stars in the dusk and 

mist of the evening. 
Soon he entered his door, and found the re- 
doubtable Captain 
Sitting alone, and absorbed in the martial 

pages of Caesar, 
Fighting some great campaign in Hainault 

or Brabant or Flanders. 
' Long have you been on your errand,' he 

said with a cheery demeanor, 
Even as one who is waiting an answer, and 

fears not the issue. 60 

' Not far off is the house, although the 

woods are between us; 
But you have lingered so long, that while 

you were going and coming 
I have fought ten battles and sacked and 

demolished a city. 
Come, sit down, and in order relate to me 

all that has happened.' 

Then John Alden spake, and related the 

wondroxis adventure, 
From beginning to end, minutely, just as it 

happened; 
How he had seen Priscilla, and how he had 

sped in his courtship, 
Only smoothing a little, and softening down 

her refusal. 
But when he came at length to the words 

Priscilla had spoken, 
Words so tender and cruel : ' Why don't 

you speak for yourself, John ? ' 70 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



221 



Up leaped the Captain of Plymouth, and 
stamped on the floor, till his armor 

Clanged on the wall, where it hung, with a 
sound of sinister omen. 

All his pent-up wrath burst forth in a sud- 
den explosion, 

E'en as a hand-grenade, that scatters de- 
struction around it. 

Wildly he shouted, and loud: 'John Alden! 
you have betrayed me! 

Me, Miles Standish, your friend! have 
supplanted, defrauded, betrayed me! 

One of my ancestors ran his sword through 
the heart of Wat Tyler; 

Who shall prevent me from running my 
own through the heart of a traitor ? 

Yours is the greater treason, for yours is a 
treason to friendship ! 

You, who lived under my roof, whom I 
cherished and loved as a brother; 80 

You, who have fed at my board, and drunk 
at my cup, to whose keeping 

I have intrusted my honor, my thoughts the 
most sacred and secret, — 

You too, Brutus ! ah woe to the name of 
friendship hereafter ! 

Brutus was Caesar's friend, and you were 
mine, but henceforward 

Let there be nothing between us save war, 
and implacable hatred ! ' 

So spake the Captain of Plymouth, and 
strode about in the chamber, 

Chafing and choking with rage ; like cords 
were the veins on his temples. 

But in the midst of his anger a man ap- 
peared at the doorway, 

Bringing in uttermost haste a message of 
urgent importance, 

Rumors of danger and war and hostile in- 
cursions of Indians ! 9 o 

Straightway the Captain paused, and, with- 
out further question or parley, 

Took from the nail on the wall his sword 
with its scabbard of iron, 

Buckled the belt round his waist, and, 
frowning fiercely, departed. 

Alden was left alone. He heard the clank 
of the scabbard 

Growing fainter and fainter, and dying 
away in the distance. 

Then he arose from his seat, and looked 
forth into the darkness, 

Felt the cool air blow on his cheek that 
was hot with the insult, 



Lifted his eyes to the heavens, and, folding 
his hands as in childhood, 

Prayed in the silence of night to the Father 
who seeth in secret. 

Meanwhile the choleric Captain strode 

wrathful away to the council, " 100 
Found it already assembled, impatiently 

waiting his coming; 
Men in the middle of life, austere and grave 

in deportment, 
Only one of them old, the hill that was 

nearest to heaven, 
Covered with snow, but erect, the excellent 

Elder of Plymouth. 
God had sifted three kingdoms to find the 

wheat for his planting, 
Then had sifted the wheat, as the living 

seed of a nation; 
So say the chronicles old, and such is the 

faith of the people ! 
Near them was standing an Indian, in atti- 
tude stern and defiant, 
Naked down to the waist, and grim and 

ferocious in aspect; 
While on the table before them was lying 

unopened a Bible, 1 10 

Ponderous, bound in leather, brass- studded, 

printed in Holland, 
And beside it outstretched the skin of a 

rattlesnake glittered, 
Filled, like a quiver, with arrows; a signal 

and challenge of warfare, 
Brought by the Indian, and speaking with 

arrowy tongues of defiance. 
This Miles Standish beheld, as he entered, 

and heard them debating 
What were an answer befitting the hostile 

message and menace, 
Talking of this and of that, contriving, sug- 
gesting, objecting; 
One voice only for peace, and that the 

voice of the Elder, 
Judging it wise and well that some at least 

were converted, 
Rather than any were slain, for this was 

but Christian behavior ! 120 

Then out spake Miles Standish, the stal- 
wart Captain of Plymouth, 
Muttering deep in his throat, for his voice 

was husky with anger, 
' What ! do you mean to make war with 

milk and the water of roses ? 
Is it to shoot red squirrels you have your 

howitzer planted 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



There on the roof of the church, or is it to 

shoot red devils ? 
Truly the only tongue that is understood 

by a savage 
Must be the tongue of fire that speaks from 

the mouth of the cannou ! ' 
Thereupon answered and said the excellent 

Elder of Plymouth, 
Somewhat amazed and alarmed at this ir- 
reverent language; 
' Not so thought St. Paul, nor yet the other 

Apostles; 130 

Not from the cannon's mouth were the 

tougues of fire they spake with ! ' 
But unheeded fell this mild rebuke on the 

Captain, 
Who had advanced to the table, and thus 

continued discoursing: 
• Leave this matter to me, for to me by 

right it pertaineth. 
War is a terrible trade; but in the cause 

that is righteous, 
Sweet is the smell of powder; and thus I 

answer the challenge ! ' 

Then from the rattlesnake's skin, with a 

sudden, contemptuous gesture, 
Jerking the Indian arrows, he filled it with 

powder and bullets 
Full to the very jaws, and handed it back to 

the savage, 
Saying, in thundering tones : ' Here, take 

it ! this is your answer ! ' 140 

Silently out of the room then glided the 

glisteniug savage, 
Bearing the serpent's skin, and seeming 

himself like a serpent, 
Winding his sinuous way in the dark to the 

depths of the forest. 



V 



THE SAILING OF THE MAYFLOWER 

Just in the gray of the dawn, as the mists 
uprose from the meadows, 

There was a stir and a sound in the slum- 
bering village of Plymouth; 

Clanging and clicking of arms, and the order 
imperative, ' Forward ! ' 

Given in tone suppressed, a tramp of feet, 
and then sdence. 

Figures ten, in the mist, marched slowly out 
of the village. 



Standish the stalwart it was, with eight of 

his valorous army, 
Led by their Indian guide, by Hobomok, 

friend of the white men, 
Northward marching to quell the sudden 

revolt of the savage. 
Giants they seemed in the mist, or the 

mighty men of King David; 
Giants in heart they were, who believed hi 

God and the Bible, — 10 

Ay, who believed in the smiting of Midian- 

ites and Philistines. 
Over them gleamed far off the crimson 

banners of mornmg; 
Under them loud on the sands, the serried 

billows, advancing, 
Fired along the line, and in regular order 

retreated. 

Many a mile had they marched, when at 

length the village of Plymouth 
Woke from its sleep, and arose, intent on 

its manifold labors. 
Sweet was the air and soft; and slowly the 

smoke from the chimneys 
Rose over roofs of thatch, and pointed 

steadily eastward; 
Men came forth from the doors, and paused 

and talked of the weather, 
Said that the wind had changed, and was 

blowing fair for the Mayflower; 20 
Talked of their Captain's departure, and 

all the dangers that menaced, 
He being gone, the town, and what should 

be done in his absence. 
Merrily sang the birds, and the tender voices 

of women 
Consecrated with hymns the common cares 

of the household. 
Out of the sea rose the sun, and the billows 

rejoiced at his coining; 
Beautiful were his feet on the purple tops 

of the mountains; 
Beautiful on the sails of the Mayflower rid- 
ing at anchor, 
Battered and blackened and worn by all 

the storms of the whiter. 
Loosely against her masts was hanging and 

flapping her canvas, 
Rent by so many gales, and patched by the 

hands of the sailors. 30 

Suddenly from her side, as the sun rose over 

the ocean, 
Darted a puff of smoke, and floated sea- 
ward; anon rang 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



223 



Loud over field and forest the camion's 

roar, and the echoes 
Heard and repeated the sound, the signal- 
gun of departure ! 
Ah ! but with louder echoes replied the 

hearts of the people ! 
Meekly, in voices subdued, the chapter was 

read from the Bible, 
Meekly the prayer was begun, but ended in 

fervent entreaty ! 
Then from their houses in haste came forth 

the Pilgrims of Plymouth, 
Men and women and children, all hurrying 

down to the sea-shore, 
Eager, with tearful eyes, to say farewell to 

the Mayflower, 40 

Homeward bound o'er the sea, and leaving 

them here in the desert. 

Foremost among them was Alden. All 
night he had lain without slumber, 

Turning and tossing about hi the heat and 
unrest of his fever. 

He had beheld Miles Standish, who came 
back late from the council, 

Stalking into the room, and heard him mut- 
ter and murmur; 

Sometimes it seemed a prayer, and some- 
times it sounded like swearing. 

Once he had come to the bed, and stood 
there a moment in silence; 

Then he had turned away, and said: ' I will 
not awake him; 

Let him sleep on, it is best; for what is the 
use of more talking ! ' 

Then he extinguished the light, and threw 
himself down on his pallet, 50 

Dressed as he was, and ready to start at 
the break of the morning, — 

Covered himself with the cloak he had worn 
in his campaigns in Flanders, — 

Slept as a soldier sleeps in his bivouac, 
ready for action. 

But with the dawn he arose ; in the twilight 
Alden beheld him 

Put on his corselet of steel, and all the rest 
of his armor, 

Buckle about his waist his trusty blade of 
Damascus, 

Take from the corner his musket, and so 
stride out of the chamber. 

Often the heart of the youth had burned 
and yearned to embrace him, 

Often his lips had essayed to speak, im- 
ploring for pardon; 



All the old friendship came back, with its 
tender and grateful emotions; 60 

But his pride overmastered the nobler na- 
ture within him, — 

Pride, and the sense of his wrong, and the 
burning fire of the insult. 

So he beheld his friend departing in anger, 
but spake not, 

Saw him go forth to danger, perhaps to 
death, and he spake not ! 

Then he arose from his bed, and heard 
what the people were saying, 

Joined hi the talk at the door, with Stephen 
and Richard and Gilbert, 

Joined in the morning prayer, and in the 
reading of Scripture, 

And, with the others, in haste went hurry- 
ing down to the sea-shore, 

Down to the Plymouth Rock, that had been 
to their feet as a doorstep 

Into a world unknown, — the corner-stone 
of a nation ! 7 c 

There with his boat was the Master, al- 
ready a little impatient 

Lest he should lose the tide, or the wind 
might shift to the eastward, 

Square-built, hearty, and strong, with an 
odor of ocean about him, 

Speaking with this one and that, and cram- 
ming letters and parcels 

Into his pockets capacious, and messages 
mingled together 

Into his narrow brain, till at last he was 
wholly bewildered. 

Nearer the boat stood Alden, with one foot 
placed on the gunwale, 

One still firm on the rock, and talking at 
times with the sailors, 

Seated erect on the thwarts, all ready and 
eager for starting. 

He too was eager to go, and thus put an 
end to his anguish, 80 

Thinking to fly from despair, that swifter 
than keel is or canvas, 

Thinking to drown in the sea the ghost 
that would rise and pursue him. 

But as he gazed on the crowd, he beheld 
the form of Priscilla 

Standing dejected among them, unconscious 
of all that was passing. 

Fixed were her eyes upon his, as if she di- 
vined his intention, 

Fixed with a look so sad, so reproachful, 
imploring, and patient, 



224 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



That with a sudden revulsion his heart re- 
coiled from its purpose, 

As from the verge of a crag, where one 
step more is destruction. 

Strange is the heart of man, with its quick, 
mysterious instincts ! 

Strange is the life of man, and fatal or 
fated are moments, 9 o 

Whereupon turn, as on hinges, the gates of 
the wall adamantine ! 

' Here I remain ! ' he exclaimed, as he 
looked at the heavens above him, 

Thanking the Lord whose breath had scat- 
tered the mist and the madness, 

Wherein, blind and lost, to death he was 
staggering headlong. 

' Yonder snow-white cloud, that floats in 
the ether above me, 

Seems like a hand that is pointing and beck- 
oning over the ocean. 

There is another hand, that is not so spec- 
tral and ghost-like, 

Holding me, drawing me back, and clasp- 
ing mine for protection. 

Float, O hand of cloud, and vanish away in 
the ether ! 

Roll thyself up like a fist, to threaten and 
daunt me ; I heed not ioo 

Either your warning or menace, or any 
omen of evil ! 

There is no land so sacred, no air so pure 
and so wholesome, 

As is the air she breathes, and the soil that 
is pressed by her footsteps. 

Here for her sake will I stay, and like an 
invisible presence 

Hover around her forever, protecting, sup- 
porting her weakness ; 

Yes ! as my foot was the first that stepped 
on this rock at the landing, 

So, with the blessing of God, shall it be the 
last at the leaving ! ' 

Meanwhile the Master alert, but with dig- 
nified air and important, 

Scanning with watchful eye the tide and 
the wind and the weather, 

Walked about on the sands, and the people 
crowded around him no 

Saying a few last words, and enforcing his 
careful remembrance. 

Then, taking each by the hand, as if he 
were grasping a tiller, 

Into the boat he sprang, and in haste 
shoved off to his vessel, 



Glad in his heart to get rid of all this worry 

and flurry, 
Glad to be gone from a land of sand and 

sickness and sorrow, 
Short allowance of victual, and plenty of 

nothing but Gospel ! 
Lost in the sound of the oars was the last 

farewell of the pilgrims. 
strong hearts and true ! not one went 

back in the Mayflower ! 
No, not one looked back, who had set his 

hand to this ploughing ! 

Soon were heard on board the shouts 
and songs of the sailors no 

Heaving the windlass round, and hoisting 
the ponderous anchor. 

Then the yards were braced, and all sails 
set to the west-wind, 

Blowing steady and strong; and the May- 
flower sailed from the harbor, 

Rounded the point of the Gurnet, and leav- 
ing far to the southward 

Island and cape of sand, and the Field of 
the First Encounter, 

Took the wind on her quarter, and stood 
for the open Atlantic, 

Borne on the send of the sea, and the swell- 
ing hearts of the Pilgrims. 

Long in silence they watched the reced- 
ing sail of the vessel, 
Much endeared to them all, as something 

living and human; 
Then, as if filled with the spirit, and wrapt 

in a vision prophetic, 130 

Baring his hoary head, the excellent Elder 

of Plymouth 
Said, ' Let us pray ! ' and they prayed, and 

thanked the Lord and took courage. 
Mournfully sobbed the waves at the base 

of the rock, and above them 
Bowed and whispered the wheat on the 

hill of death, and their kindred 
Seemed to awake in their graves, and to 

join in the prayer that they ut- 
tered. 
Sun-illumined and white, on the eastern 

verge of the ocean 
Gleamed the departing sail, like a marble 

slab in a graveyard; 
Buried beneath it lay forever all hope of 

escaping. 
Lo ! as they hirned to depart, they saw the 

form of an Indian, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



225 



Watching them from the hill; but while 
they spake with each other, 140 

Pointing wi£h outstretched hands, and say- 
ing, ' Look ! ' he had vanished. 

So they returned to their homes ; but Alden 
lingered a little, 

Musing alone on the shore, and watching 
the wash of the billows 

Round the base of the rock, and the sparkle 
and flash of the sunshine, 

Like the spirit of God, moving visibly over 
the waters. 



VI 



PRISCILLA 

Thus for a while he stood, and mused by 

the shore of the ocean, 
Thinking of many things, and most of all 

of Priscilla; 
And as if thought had the power to draw 

to itself, like the loadstone, 
Whatsoever it touches, by subtile laws of 

its nature, 
Lo! as he turned to depart, Priscilla was 

standing beside him. 

' Are you so much offended, you will not 

speak to me ? ' said she. 
' Am I so much to blame, that yesterday, 

when you were pleading 
Warmly the cause of another, my heart, 

impulsive and wayward, 
Pleaded your own, and spake out, forgetful 

perhaps of decorum ? 
Certainly you can forgive me for speaking 

so frankly, for saying 10 

What I ought not to have said, yet now I 

can never unsay it; 
For there are moments in life, when the 

heart is so full of emotion, 
That if by chance it be shaken, or into its 

depths like a pebble 
Drops some careless word, it overflows, and 

. its secret, 
Spilt on the ground like water, can never 

be gathered together. 
Yesterday I was shocked, when I heard 

you speak of Miles Standish, 
Praising his virtues, transforming his very 

defects into virtues, 
Praising his courage and strength, and even 

his fighting in Flanders, 



As if by fighting alone you could win the 
heart of a woman, 

Quite overlooking yourself and the rest, in 
exalting your hero. 20 

Therefore I spake as I did, by an irre- 
sistible impulse. 

You will forgive me, I hope, for the sake 
of the friendship between us, 

Which is too true and too sacred to be so 
easily broken! ' 

Thereupon answered John Alden, the 
scholar, the friend of Miles Stand- 
ish: 

' I was not angry with you, with myself 
alone I was angry, 

Seeing how badly I managed the matter I 
had in my keeping.' 

' No! ' interrupted the maiden, with answer 
prompt and decisive; 

' No ; you were angry with me, for speak- 
ing so frankly and freely. 

It was wrong, I acknowledge; for it is the 
fate of a woman 

Long to be patient and silent, to wait like 
a ghost that is speechless, 30 

Till some questioning voice dissolves the 
spell of its silence. 

Hence is the inner life of so many suffering 
women 

Sunless and silent and deep, like subter- 
ranean rivers 

Running through caverns of darkness, un- 
heard, unseen, and unfruitful, 

Chafing their channels of stone, with end- 
less and profitless murmurs.' 

Thereupon answered John Alden, the young 
man, the lover of women: 

' Heaven forbid it, Priscilla ; and truly they 
seem to me always 

More like the beautiful rivers that watered 
the garden of Eden, 

More like the river Euphrates, through 
deserts of Havilah flowing, 

Filling the land with delight, and memories 
sweet of the' garden! ' 40 

' Ah, by these words, I can see,' again in- 
terrupted the maiden, 

' How very little you prize me, or care for 
what I am saying. 

When from the depths of my heart, in pain 
and with secret misgiving, 

Frankly I speak to you, asking for sympa- 
thy only and kindness, 

Straightway you take up my words, that 
are plain and direct and in earnest, 



226 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Turn them away froni their meaning, and 
answer with nattering phrases. 

This is not right, is not just, is not true to 
the best that is in you; 

For I know and esteem you, and feel that 
your nature is noble, 

Lifting mine up to a higher, a more ethereal 
level^ 

Therefore I value your friendship, and feel 
it perhaps the more keenly 50 

If you say aught that implies I am only as 
one among many, 

If you make use of those common and com- 
plimentary phrases 

Most men think so fine, in dealing and 
speaking with women, 

But which women reject as insipid, if not 
as insulting.' 

Mute and amazed was Alden; and lis- 
tened and looked at Priscilla, 
Thinking he never had seen her more fair, 

more divine in her beauty. 
He who but yesterday pleaded so glibly the 

cause of another, 
Stood there embarrassed and silent, and 

seeking hi vain for an answer. 
So the maiden went on, and little divined 

or imagined 
What was at work in his heart, that made 

him so awkward and speechless. 60 
' Let us, then, be what we are, and speak 

what we think, and in all things 
Keep ourselves loyal to truth, and the sa- 
cred professions of friendship. 
It is no secret I tell you, nor am I ashamed 

to declare it: 
I have liked to be with you, to see you, to 

speak with you always. 
So I was hurt at your words, and a little 

affronted to hear you 
Urge me to marry your friend, though he 

were the Captain Miles Standish. 
For I must tell you the truth: much more 

to me is your friendship 
Than all the love he could give, were he 

twice the hero you think him.' 
Then she extended her hand, and Alden, 

who eagerly grasped it, 
Felt all the wounds in his heart, that were 

aching and bleeding so sorely, 70 
Healed by the touch of that hand, and he 

said, with a voice full of feeling: 
' Yes, we must ever be friends ; and of all 

who offer you friendship 



Let me be ever the first, the truest, the 
nearest and dearest ! ' 

Casting a farewell look at the glimmer- 
ing sail of the Mayflower, 

Distant, but still in sight, and sinking be- 
low the horizon, 

Homeward together they walked, with a 
strange, indefinite feeling, 

That all the rest had departed and left 
them alone in the desert. 

But, as they went through the fields in 
the blessing and smile of the sun- 
shine, 

Lighter grew their hearts, and Priscilla 
said very archly: 

' Now that our terrible Captain has gone 
in pursuit of the Indians, 80 

Where he is happier far than he would be 
commanding a household, 

You may speak boldly, and tell me of all 
that happened between you, 

When you returned last night, and said 
how ungrateful you found me.' 

Thereupon answered John Alden, and told 
her the whole of the story, — 

Told her his own despair, and the direful 
wrath of Miles Standish. 

Whereat the maiden smiled, and said be- 
tween laughing and earnest, 

' He is a little chimney, and heated hot in 
a moment ! ' 

But as he gently rebuked her, and told her 
how he had suffered, — 

How he had even determined to sail that 
day in the Mayflower, 

And had remained for her sake, on hearing 
the dangers that threatened, — 90 

All her manner was changed, and she said 
with a faltering accent, 

' Truly I thank you for this : how good 
you have been to me always ! ' 

Thus, as a pilgrim devout, who toward 

Jerusalem journeys, 
Taking three steps in advance, and one 

reluctantly backward, 
Urged by importunate zeal, and withheld 

by pangs of contrition; 
Slowly but steadily onward, receding yet 

ever advancing, 
Journeyed this Puritan youth to the Holy 

Land of his longings, 
Urged by the fervor of love, and withheld 

by remorseful misgivings. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



227 



VII 

THE MARCH OF MILES STANDISH 

Meanwhile the stalwart Miles Standish 

was marching steadily northward, 
Winding through forest and swamp, and 

along the trend of the sea-shore, 
All day long, with hardly a halt, the fire of 

his anger 
Burning and crackling within, and the sul- 
phurous odor of powder 
Seeming more sweet to his nostrils than all 

the scents of the forest. 
Silent and moody he went, and much he 

revolved his discomfort; 
He who was used to success, and to easy 

victories always, 
Thus to be flouted, rejected, and laughed 

to scorn by a maiden, 
Thus to be mocked and betrayed by the 

friend whom most he had trusted ! 
Ah ! 't was too much to be borne, and he 

fretted and chafed in his armor ! 10 

' I alone am to blame,' he muttered, 
' for mine was the folly. 

What has a rough old soldier, grown grim 
and gray in the harness, 

Used to the camp and its ways, to do with 
the wooing of maidens ? 

'T was but a dream, — let it pass, — let it 
vanish like so many others ! 

What I thought was a flower, is only a 
weed, and is worthless; 

Out of my heart will I pluck it, and throw 
it away, and henceforward 

Be but a fighter of battles, a lover and 
wooer of dangers ! ' 

Thus he revolved in his mind his sorry de- 
feat and discomfort, 

While he was marching by day or lying at 
night in the forest, 

Looking up at the trees, and the constella- 
tions beyond them. 20 

After a three days' march he came to an 
Indian encampment 

Pitched on the edge of a meadow, between 
the sea and the forest; 

Women at work by the tents, and warriors, 
horrid with war-paint, 

Seated about a fire, and smoking and talk- 
ing together; 

Who, when they saw from afar the sudden 
approach of the white men, 



Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate and 

sabre and musket, 
Straightway leaped to their feet, and two, 

from among them advancing, 
Came to parley with Standish, and offer him 

furs as a present; 
Friendship was in their looks, but in their 

hearts there was hatred. 
Braves of the tribe were these, and brothers, 

gigantic in stature, 30 

Huge as Goliath of Gath, or the terrible 

Og, king of Bashan; 
One was Pecksuot named, and the other 

was called Wattawamat. 
Round their necks were suspended their 

knives in scabbards of wampum, 
Two-edged, trenchant knives, with points as 

sharp as a needle. 
Other arms had they none, for they were 

cunning and crafty. 
' Welcome, English ! ' they said, — these 

words they had learned from the 

traders 
Touching at times on the coast, to barter 

and chaffer for peltries. 
Then in their native tongue they began to 

parley with Standish, 
Through his guide and interpreter, Hobo- 

mok, friend of the white man, 
Begging for blankets and knives, but mostly 

for muskets and powder, 4 o 

Kept by the white man, they said, con- 
cealed, with the plague, in his cellars, 
Ready to be let loose, and destroy his 

brother the red man ! 
But when Standish refused, and said he 

would give them the Bible, 
Suddenly changing their tone, they began 

to boast and to bluster. 
Then Wattawamat advanced with a stride 

in front of the other, 
And, with a lofty demeanor, thus vaunt- 
in gly spake to the Captain: 
• Now Wattawamat can see, by the fiery 

eyes of the Captain, 
Angry is he in his heart; but the heart of 

the brave Wattawamat 
Is not afraid at the sight. He was not 

born of a woman, 
But on a mountain at night, from an oak- 
tree riven by lightning, 50 
Forth he sprang at a bound, with all his 

weapons about him, 
Shouting, " Who is there here to fight with 

the brave Wattawamat ? " ' 



228 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whet- 
ting the blade on his left hand, 

Held it aloft and displayed a woman's face 
on the handle; 

Saying, with bitter expression and look of 
sinister meaning: 

' I have another* at home, with the face of 
a man on#fefie handle ; 

By and by they shall marry; and there 
will be plenty of children ! ' 

Then stood Pecksuot forth, self -vaunting, 
insulting Miles Standish : 

While with his fingers he patted the knife 
that hung at his bosom, 

Drawing it half from its sheath, and plung- 
ing it back, as he muttered, 60 

' By and by it shall see; it shall eat; ah, ha ! 
but shall speak not ! 

This is the mighty Captain the white men 
have sent to destroy us ! 

He is a little man; let him go and work 
with the women ! ' 

Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces 
and figures of Indians 

Peeping and creeping about from bush to 
tree hi the forest, 

Feigning to look for game, with arrows set 
on their bow-strings, 

Drawing about him still closer and closer 
the net of their ambush. 

But undaunted he stood, and dissembled 
and treated them smoothly; 

So the old chronicles say, that were writ in 
the days of the fathers. 

But when he heard their defiance, the boast, 
the taunt, and the insult, 70 

All the hot blood of his.race, of Sir Hugh 
and of Thurston de Standish, 

Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in 
the veins of his temples. 

Headlong he leaped on the boaster, and, 
snatching his knife from its scab- 
bard, 

Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling back- 
ward, the savage 

Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiend- 
like fierceness upon it. 

Straight there arose from the forest the 
awful sound of the war-whoop. 

And, like a flurry of snow on the whistling 
wind of December, 

Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of 
feathery arrows. 



Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the 

cloud came the lightning, 
Out of the lightning thunder; and death un- 
seen ran before it. 80 
Frightened the savages fled for shelter in 

swamp and in thicket, 
Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, 

the brave Wattawamat, 
Fled not ; he was dead. Unswerving and 

swift- had a bullet 
Passed through his brain, and he fell with 

both hands clutching the greensward, 
Seeming in death to hold back from his foe 

the land of his fathers. 

There on the flowers of the meadow the 
warriors lay, and above them, 

Silent, with folded arms, stood Hobomok, 
friend of the white man. 

Smiling at length he exclaimed to the stal- 
wart Captain of Plymouth: — 

' Pecksuot bragged very loud, of his cour- 
age, his strength, and his stature, — 

Mocked the great Captain, and called him 
a little man; but I see now 90 

Big enough have you been to lay him 
speechless before you ! ' 

Thus the first battle was fought and won 

by the stalwart Miles Standish. 
When the tidings thereof were brought to 

the village of Plymouth, 
And as a trophy of war the head of the 

brave Wattawamat 
Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at 

once was a church and a fortress, 
All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the 

Lord, and took courage. 
Only Priscilla averted her face from this 

spectre of terror, 
Thanking God in her heart that she had not 

married Miles Standish; 
Shrinking, fearing almost, lest, coming 

home from his battles, 
He should lay claim to her hand, as the 

prize and reward of his valor. 100 

VIII 

THE SPINNING-WHEEL 

Month after month passed away, and in 
autumn the ships of the merchants 

Came with kindred and friends, with cattle 
and corn for the Pilgrims. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



229 



All in the village was peace ; the men were 
intent on their labors, 

Busy with hewing and building, with gar- 
den-plot and with merestead, 

Busy with breaking the glebe, and mowing 
the grass in the meadows, 

Searching the sea for its fish, and hunting 
the deer in the forest. 

All in the village was peace; but at times 
the rumor of warfare 

Filled the air with alarm, and the appre- 
hension of danger. 

Bravely the stalwart Standish was scouring 
the land with Ins forces, 

Waxing valiant in fight and defeating the 
alien armies, 10 

Till his name had become a sound of fear 
to the nations. 

Anger was still in his heart, but at times 
the remorse and contrition 

Which in all noble natures succeed the pas- 
sionate outbreak, 

Came like a rising tide, that encounters the 
rush of a river, 

Staying its current awhile, but making it 
bitter and brackish. 

Meanwhile Alden at home had built him 
a new habitation, 

Solid, substantial, of timber rough - hewn 
from the firs of the forest. 

Wooden-barred was the door, and the roof 
was covered with rushes; 

Latticed the windows were, and the win- 
dow-panes were of paper, 

Oiled to admit the light, while wind and 
rain were excluded. 20 

There too he dug a well, and around it 
planted an orchard: 

Still may be seen to this day some trace of 
the well and the orchard. 

Close to the house was the stall, where, safe 
and secure from annoyance, 

Raghorn, the snow-white bull, that had 
fallen to Alden's allotment 

In the division of cattle, might ruminate in 
the night-time 

Over the pastures he cropped, made fra- 
grant by sweet pennyroyal. 

Oft when his labor was finished, with 
eager feet would the dreamer 
Follow the pathway that ran through 
the woods to the house of Pris- 
cilla, 



Led by illusions romantic and subtile 

deceptions of fancy, 
Pleasure disguised as duty, and love in the 

semblance of friendship. 30 

Ever of her he thought, when he fashioned 

the walls of his dwelling; 
Ever of her he thought, when he delved 

in the soil of his garden; 
Ever of her he thought, when he read in 

his Bible on Sunday 
Praise of the virtuous woman, as she is 

described in the Proverbs, — 
How the heart of her husband doth safely 

trust in her always, 
How all the days of her life she will do him 

good, and not evil, 
How she seeketh the wool and the flax and 

worketh with gladness, 
How she layeth her hand to the spindle and 

holdeth the distaff, 
How she is not afraid of the snow for her- 
self or her household, 
Knowing her household are clothed with 

the scarlet cloth of her weaving ! 4 o 

So as she sat at her wheel one afternoon 

in the Autumn, 
Alden, who opposite sat, and was watching 

her dexterous fingers, 
As if the thread she was spinning were that 

of his life and his fortune, 
After a pause in their talk, thus spake to 

the sound of the spindle. 
4 Tridy, Priscilla,' he said, ' when I see 

you spinning and spinning, 
Never idle a moment, but thrifty and 

thoughtful of others, 
Suddenly you are transformed, are visibly 

changed in a moment; 
You are no longer Priscilla, but Bertha 

the Beautiful Spinner.' 
Here the light foot on the treadle grew 

swifter and swifter; the spindle 
Uttered an angry snarl, and the thread 

snapped short in her fingers ; 50 

While the impetuous speaker, not heeding 

the mischief, continued: 
' You are the beautiful Bertha, the spinner, 

the queen of Helvetia; 
She whose story I read at a stall in the 

streets of Southampton, 
Who, as she rode on her palfrey, o'er 

valley and meadow and mountain, 
Ever was spinning her thread from a distaff 

fixed to her saddle. 



230 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



She was so thrifty and good, that her name 
passed into a proverb. 

So shall it be with your own, when the 
spinning-wheel shall no longer 

Hum in the house of the farmer, and fill 
its chambers with music. 

Then shall the mothers, reproving, relate 
how it was in then- childhood, 

Praising the good old times, and the days 
of Priscilla the spinner ! ' 60 

Straight uprose from her wheel the beau- 
tiful Puritan maiden, 

Pleased with the praise of her thrift from 
him whose praise was the sweetest, 

Drew from the reel on the table a snowy 
skein of her spinning, 

Thus making answer, meanwhile, to the 
flattering phrases of Alden; 

'Come, you must not be idle; if I am a 
pattern for housewives, 

Show yourself equally worthy of being the 
model of husbands. 

Hold this skein on your hands, while I wind 
it, ready for knitting; 

Then who knows but hereafter, when fash- 
ions have changed and the manners, 

Fathers may talk to their sons of the good 
old times of John Alden ! ' 

Thus, with a jest and a laugh, the skein on 
his hands she adjusted, 7 o 

He, sitting awkwardly there, with his arms 
extended before him, 

She, standing graceful, erect, and winding 
the thread from his fingers, 

Sometimes chiding a little his cliunsy man- 
ner of holding, 

Sometimes touching his hands, as she dis- 
entangled expertly 

Twist or knot in the yarn, unawares — for 
how could she help it ? — 

Sending electrical thrills through every 
nerve hi Ins body. 

Lo ! in the midst of this scene, a breath- 
less messenger entered, 

Bringing in hurry and heat the terrible 
news from the village. 

Yes ; Miles Standish was dead ! — an Indian 
had brought them the tidings, — 

Slain by a poisoned arrow, shot down in the 
front of the battle, So 

Into an ambush beguiled, cut off with the 
whole of his forces; 

All the town would be burned, and all the 
people be murdered ! 



Such were the tidings of evil that burst on 

the hearts of the hearers. 
Silent and statue-like stood Priscilla, her 

face looking backward 
Still at the face of the speaker, her arms 

uplifted iu horror; 
But John Alden, upstarting, as if the barb 

of the arrow 
Piercing the heart of his friend had struck 

his own, and had sundered 
Once and forever the bonds that held him 

bound as a captive, 
Wild with excess of sensation, the awful 

delight of his freedom, 
Mingled with pain and regret, unconscious 

of what he was doing, 90 

Clasped, almost with a groan, the motion- 
less form of Priscilla, 
Pressing her close to his heart, as forever 

his own, and exclaiming: 
' Those whom the Lord hath imited, let no 

man put them asunder ! ' 

Even as rivulets twain, from distant and 
separate sources, 

Seeing each other afar, as they leap from 
the rocks, and pursuing 

Each one its devious path, but drawing 
nearer and nearer, 

Rush together at last, at their trysting-place 
in the forest; 

So these lives that had run thus far in sep- 
arate channels, 

Coming in sight of each other, then swerv- 
ing and flowing asunder, 

Parted by barriers strong, but drawing 
nearer and nearer, 100 

Rushed together at last, and one was lost 
hi the other. 



IX 



THE WEDDING-DAY 

Forth from the curtain of clouds, from the 

tent of purple and scarlet, 
Issued the sim, the great High-Priest, in 

his garments resplendent, 
Holiness unto the Lord, in letters of light, 

on his forehead, 
Round the hem of his robe the golden bells 

and pomegranates. 
Blessing the world he came, and the bars 

of vapor beneath him 






HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



231 



Gleamed like a grate of brass, and the sea 
at his feet was a laver ! 

This was the wedding morn of Priscilla 
the Puritan maiden. 

Friends were assembled together; the Elder 
and Magistrate also 

Graced the scene with their presence, and 
stood like the Law and the Gospel, 

One with the sanction of earth and one with 
the blessing of heaven. 10 

Simple and brief was the wedding, as that 
of Ruth and of Boaz. 

Softly the youth and the maiden repeated 
the words of betrothal, 

Taking each other for husband and wife in 
the Magistrate's presence, 

After the Puritan way, and the laudable 
custom of Holland. 

Fervently then, and devoutly, the excellent 
Elder of Plymouth 

Prayed for the hearth and the home, that 
were founded that day in affec- 
tion, 

Speaking of life and of death, and implor- 
ing Divine benedictions. 

Lo ! when the service was ended, a form 
appeared on the threshold, 

Clad in armor of steel, a sombre and sor- 
rowful figure ! 

Why does the bridegroom start and stare 
at the strange apparition ? 20 

Why does the bride turn pale, and hide her 
face on his shoulder ? 

Is it a phantom of air, — a bodiless, spec- 
tral illusion ? 

Is it a ghost from the grave, that has come 
to forbid the betrothal ? 

Long had it stood there unseen, a guest un- 
invited, unwelcomed; 

Over its clouded eyes there had passed at 
times an expression 

Softening the gloom and revealing the warm 
heart hidden beneath them, 

As when across the sky the driving rack of 
the rain-cloud 

Grows for a moment thin, and betrays the 
sun by its brightness. 

Once it had lifted its hand, and moved its 
lips, but was silent, 

As if an iron will had mastered the fleeting 
intention. 30 

But when were ended the troth and the 
prayer and the last benediction, 



Into the room it strode, and the people be- 
held with amazement 
Bodily there in his armor Miles Standish, 

the Captain of Plymouth ! 
Grasping the bridegroom's hand, he said 

with emotion, ' Forgive me ! 
I have been angry and hurt, — too long have 

I cherished the feeling; 
I have been cruel and hard, but now, thank 

God ! it is ended. \ 

Mine is the same hot blood that leaped in 

the veins of Hugh Standish, 
Sensitive, swift to resent, but as swift in 

atoning for error. 
Never so much as now was Miles Standish 

the friend of John Alden.' 
Thereupon answered the bridegroom: 'Let 

all be forgotten between us, — 40 
All save the dear old friendship, and that 

shall grow older and dearer ! ' 
Then the Captain advanced, and, bowing, 

saluted Priscilla, 
Gravely, and after the manner of old-fash- 
ioned gentry in England, 
Something of camp and of court, of town 

and of country, commingled, 
Wishing her joy of her wedding, and loudly 

lauding her husband. 
Then he said with a smile : ' I should have 

remembered the adage, — 
If you would be well served, you must serve 

yourself; and moreover, 
No man can gather cherries in Kent at the 

season of Christmas ! ' 

Great was the people's amazement, and 

greater yet their rejoicing, 
Thus to behold once more the sunburnt face 

of their Captain, 50 

Whom they had mourned as dead ; and they 

gathered and crowded about him, 
Eager to see him and hear him, forgetful 

of bride and of bridegroom, 
Questioning, answering, laughing, and each 

interrupting the other, 
Till the good Captain declared, being quite 

overpowered and bewildered, 
He had rather by far break into an Indian 

encampment, 
Than come again to a wedding to which he 

had not been invited. 

Meanwhile the bridegroom went forth 
and stood with the bride at the door- 
way, 






.* 



2$: 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Breathing the perfumed air of that warm 

aud beautiful morning. 
Touched with autumnal tints, but lonely 

and sad in the sunshine, 
Lay extended before them the land of toil 

and privation; to 

There were the graves of the dead, and the 

barren waste of the sea-shore, 
There the familiar fields, the groves of 

pine, and the meadows; 
But to their eyes (transfigured, it seemed 

as the Garden of Eden, 
Filled with the presence of God, whose 

voice was the sound of the ocean. 

Soon was their vision disturbed by the 
noise and stir of departure, 

Friends coming forth from the house, and 
impatient of longer delaying, 

Each with his plan for the day, and the 
work that was left uncompleted. 

Then from a stall near at hand, amid ex- 
clamations of wonder, 

Aldeu the thoughtful, the careful, so happy, 
so proud of Prise ilia, 

Brought out his snow-white Imll, obeying 
the hand o'f its master, 70 

Led by a cord that was tied to an iron ring 
in its nostrils, 

Covered with crimson cloth, and a cushion 
placed for a saddle. 

She shoidd not walk, he said, through 
the dust and heat of the noon- 
day; 

Nay, she should ride like a queen, not plod 
along like a peasant. 

Somewhat alarmed at first, but reassured 
by the others, 



Placing her baud on the cushion, her foot 

in the hand of her husband, 
Cayly, with joyous laugh, lMscilla mounted 

her palfrey. 
" Nothing is wanting now,' he said with a 

smile, 'but the distaff; 
Then you would be in truth my queen, my 

beautiful Bertha ! ' 

Onward the bridal procession now moved 
to their new habitation, 8o 

Happy husband and wife, and friends con- 
versing together. 

Pleasantly murmured the brook, as they 
crossed the fowl in the forest. 

Pleased with the image that passed, like a 
dream of love, through its bosom, 

Tremulous, floating in air, o'er the depths 
of the azure abysses. 

Down through the golden leaves the sun 
was pouring his splendors, 

Gleaming on purple grapes, that, from 
branches above them suspended, 

Mingled their odorous breath with the 
balm of the pine and the fir-tree, 

Wdd and sweet as the clusters that grew 
in the valley of Eshcol. 

Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, 
pastoral ages, 

Fresh with the youth of the world, and re- 
calling Rebecca and Isaac, 90 

Old and yet ever new, and simple and 
beautiful always. 

Love immortal and young in the endless 
succession of lovers. 

So through the Plymouth woods passed on- 
ward the bridal procession. 

1S57-58. 1858. 



THE CHILDREN'S HOUR 1 

Betweex the dark and the daylight, 
When the night is beginning to lower, 

1 The ideal commentary on this poem is found in a 

letter of Longfellow's ' To Emily A ,' August IS, 

1S59: 

' Tour letter followed me down here by the seaside, 
where I am passing the summer with my three little 
girls. The oldest is about your age ; but as little girls' 
ages keep changing every year, I can never remember 
exactly how old she is, and have to ask her mamma, 
who has a better memory than I have. Her name is 
Alice ; I never forget that. She is a nice girl, and 
loves poetry almost as much as you do. 

1 The second is Edith, with blue eyes and beautiful 



Comes a pause in the day's occupations, 
That is known as the Children's Hour. 



golden locks which I sometimes call her " nankeen 
hair " to make her laugh. She is a very busy little 
woman, and wears gray boots. 

' The youngest is Allegra ; which, you know, means 
merry ; aud she is the merriest little thing you ever 
saw, — always singing and laughing all over the 
house. . . . 

' I do not say anything about the two boys. They 
are such noisy fellows it is of no use to talk about 
them.' {Life, vol. ii. pp. 892-83.) 

Longfellow and Victor Hugo may perhaps be called 
the two greatest poet* of childhood, and Victor Hugo's 
letters to his own children are strikingly like the one 
just quoted. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



233 



I hear in the chamber above me 

The patter of little feet, 
The sound of a door that is opened, 

And voices soft and sweet. 

From my study I see in the lamplight, 
Descending the broad hall stair, 10 

Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, 
And Edith with golden hair. 

A whisper, and then a silence: 
Yet I know by their merry eyes 

They are plotting and planning together 
To take me by surprise. 

A sudden rush from the stairway, 
A sudden raid from the hall ! 

By three doors left unguarded 

They enter my castle wall ! 20 

They climb up into my turret 

O'er the arms and back of my chair; 

If I try to escape, they surround me; 
They seem to be everywhere. 

They almost devour me with kisses, 
Their arms about me entwine, 

Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen 
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine ! 

Do you think, blue-eyed banditti, 
Because you have scaled the wall, 30 

Such an old mustache as I am 
Is not a match for you all ! 

I have you fast in my fortress, 
And will not let you depart, 

But put you down into the dungeon 
In the round-tower of my heart. 

And there will I keep you forever, 

Yes, forever and a day, 
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, 

And moulder in dust away ! 40 

1859. 1860. 



PAUL REVERE'S RIDE 1 

Listen, my children, and you shall hear 
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, 

1 It is possible tliat Mr. Longfellow derived the story 
from Paul Revere's account of the incident in a letter 
to Dr. Jeremy Belknap, printed in Mass. Hist. Coll. V. 
Mr. Frothingham, in his Siege of Boston, pp. 57-59, 
gives the story mainly according to a memorandum of 
Richard Devens, Revere's friend and associate. The 
publication of Mr. Longfellow's poem called out a pro- 
tracted discussion both as to the church from which 



On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy -five; 
Hardly a man is now alive 
Who remembers that famous day and year. 
He said to his friend, ' If the British march 
By land or sea from the town to-night, 
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch 
Of the North Church tower as a signal 

light, — 
One, if by land, and two, if by sea; 10 

And I on the opposite shore will be, 
Ready to ride and spread the alarm 
Through every Middlesex village and farm, 
For the country folk to be up and to arm.' 

Then he said, ' Good-night ! ' and with 

muffled oar 
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, 
Just as the moon rose over the bay, 
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay 
The Somerset, British man-of-war ; 
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar 20 
Across the moon like a prison bar, 
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified 
By its own reflection in the tide. 

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and 

street, 
Wanders and watches with eager ears, 
Till in the silence around him he hears 
The muster of men at the barrack door, 
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, 
And the measured tread of the grenadiers, 
Marching down to their boats on the shore. 30 

the signals were hung, and as to the friend who hung 
the lanterns. The subject is discussed and authorities 
cited in Memorial History of Boston, iii, 101. (Com- 
bridge Edition, p. GC8.) 

' Paul Revere's Ride ' is the first story in the Tales 
of a Wayside Inn, a series of tales in verse set in a 
frame-work something like that of Chaucer's Canter- 
bury Tales, and supposed to be told by a group of 
friends gathered at the Red-Horse Inn at Sudbury, 
about twenty miles from Cambridge. The story of 
Paul Revere is told by the landlord, whose portrait is 
thus drawn in the ' Prelude : ' — 

But first the Landlord will I trace ; 

Grave in his aspect and attire ; 

A man of ancient pedigree, 

A Justice of the Peace was he, 

Known in all Sudbury as ' The Squire." 

Proud was he of his nam"; and race, 

Of old Sir William and Sir Hugh, 

And in the parlor, full in view, 

His eoat-of-arrns, well framed and glazed, 

Upon the wall in colors blazed ; 

He bearcth gules upon his shield, 

A chevron ardent in the field. 

With three wolf's-heads, and for the crest 

Awyvern part-per-pale uddrcssed 

Upon a helmet barred i below 

The scroll rends, ' By the name of Howe.' 

And over this, no longer bright, 

Though glimmering with a latent light, 

Was hung the sword his grundsirc bore 

In the rebellious days of yore, 

l>own there in Concord in the fight. 



»34 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Then he climbed the tower of the Old North 
Church, 

By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread. 
To the belfry-chamber overhead, 
And startled the pigeons from their perch 
On the sombre rafters, that round him 

made 
Masses and moving- shapes of shade, — 
By the trembling- ladder, steep and tall, 
To the highest window in the wall, 
Where he paused to listen and look down 
A moment on the roofs of the town, 4 o 

And the moonlight flowing over all. 

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, 
In their night-encampment on the hill, 
Wrapped in silence so deep and still 
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread, 
The watchful night-wind, as it went 
Creeping along from tent to tent, 
And seeming to whisper, ' All is well ! ' 
A moment only he feels the spell 
Of the place and the hour, and the secret 
dread S o 

Of the lonely belfry and the dead; 
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent 
On a shadowy something far away. 
"Where the river widens to meet the bay, — 
A line of black that bends and floats 
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats. 

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, 
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride 
On the opposite shore walked Paid Revere. 
Now he patted his borse's side, 60 

Now gazed at the landscape far and near, 
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, 
And turned and tightened bis saddle-girth; 
But mostly he watched with eager search 
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, 
As it rose above the graves on the bill, 
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. 
And lo ! as be looks, on the belfry's height 
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light ! 
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he 
turns, 70 

But lingers and gazes, till full on bis sight 
A second lamp in the belfry burns ! 

A hurry of hoofs in a village street, 

A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, 

And beneath, from the pebbles, in passmg, 

a spark 
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and 

fleet; 



That was all ! And yet, through the gloom 

and the light, 
The fate of a nation was riding that night; 
And the spark struck out by that steed, in 

bis flight, 
Kindled the land into flame with its beat. So 

He has left the village and mounted the 

steep, 
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and 

deep, 
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; 
And under the alders that skirt its edge, 
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the 

ledge, 
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. 

It was twelve by the village clock, 

When he crossed the bridge into Medford 

town. 
He heard the crowing of the cock, 
And the barking of the farmer's dog, 90 
And felt the damp of the river fog, 
That rises after the sun goes down. 

It was one by the village clock, 

When he galloped into Lexington. 

He saw the gilded weathercock 

Swim in the moonlight as he passed. 

And the meeting-house windows, blank and 

bare, 
Gaze at him with a spectral glare, 
As if they already stood aghast 
At the bloody work they would look 

upon. 100 

It was two by the village clock, 

When he came to the bridge in Concord 

town. 
He beard the bleating of the flock, 
And the twitter of birds among the trees, 
And felt the breath of the morning breeze 
Blowing over the meadows brown. 
And one was safe and asleep in his bed 
Who at the bridge would be first to fall, 
Who that day would be lying dead, 
Pierced by a British musket-ball. no 

You know the rest. In the books you have 

read. 
How the British Regulars fired and fled, — 
How the farmers gave them ball for ball. 
From behind each fence and form-yard wall, 
Chasing the red-coats down the lane, 
Then crossing the fields to emerge again 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



235 



Under the trees at the turn of the road, 
And only pausing to lire and load. 

So through the night rode Paul Revere; 
And so through the night went his cry of 

alarm 120 

To every Middlesex village and farm, — 
A cry of defiance and not of fear, 
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, 
And a word that shall echo forevermore ! 
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, 
Through all our history, to the last, 
In the hour of darkness and peril and need, 
The people will waken and listen to hear 
The hurrying hoof-heats of that steed, 
And the midnight message of Paul 

Revere. 130 

1800. mm. 



THE CUMBERLAND 

At anchor in Hampton Roads we lay, 
On hoard of the Cumberland, sloop-of- 
war; 
And at times from the fortress across the 
hay 
The alarum of drums swept past, 
Or a bugle blast 
From the camp on the shore. 

Then far away to the south uprose 

A little feather of snow-white smoke, 
And we knew that the iron ship of our foes 
Was steadily steering its course 10 

To try the force 
Of our ribs of oak. 

Down upon us heavily runs, 

Silent and sullen, the floating fort; 
Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns, 
And leaps the terrible death, 
With fiery breath, 
From each open port. 

We are not idle, but send her straight 

Defiance back in a full broadside ! 20 
As hail rebounds from a roof of slate, 
Rebounds our heavier hail 
From each iron scale 
Of the monster's hide. 

' Strike your flag ! ' the rebel cries, 

In his arrogant old plantation strain. 
' Never ! ' our gallant Morris replies; 



' It is better to sink than to yield ! ' 
And the whole air pealed 
With the cheers of our men. 30 

Then, like a kraken huge and black, 

She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp ! 
Down went the Cumberland all a wrack, 
With a sudden shudder of death, 
And the cannon's breath 
For her dying gasp. 

Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay, 

Still floated our flag at the mainmast head. 
Lord, how beautiful was thy day ! 

Every waft of the air 40 

Was a whisper of prayer, 
Or a dirge for the dead. 

Ho ! brave hearts that went down in the 
seas ! 
Ye are at peace in the troubled stream ; 
Ho ! brave land ! with hearts like these, 
Thy flag, that is rent in twain, 
Shall be one again, 
And without a seam ! 
1802. 1862. 



THE BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH * 

It was the season, when through all the 
land 
The merle and mavis build, and building 
sing 
Those lovely lyrics, written by his hand, 
Whom Saxon C«dmon calls the Blithe- 
heart King; 
When on the boughs the purple buds ex- 
pand, 

1 The lant story in Tales of a Wayside Inn, First Se- 
ries, and the only one of those ' tales' which was almost 
wholly original with Longfellow. There is a slight foun- 
dation for it, in the history of the town of Killingworth 
in Connecticut. The Cambridge Edition of Longfellow 
quotes a letter of Mr. Henry Hull, who, writing from 
personal recollection, says : — 

' The men of the northern part of the town did yearly 
in the spring choose two leaders, and then the two 
sides were formed : the side that got beaten should pay 
the bills. Their special game was the hawk, the owl, 
the crow, the blackbird, and any other bird supposed 
to be mischievous to the corn. Some years each side 
would bring them in by the bushel. This was followed 
up for only a few years, for the birds began to grow 
scarce.' 

In this poem, for once, Longfellow enters a field pe- 
culiarly belonging to Lowell : the half-humorous treat- 
ment of New England country life. 

Emerson considered it the best of the Tales, and 
called it (perhaps with a little exaggeration !), ' Serene, 
happy, and immortal as Chaucer.' 



236 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



The banners of the vanguard of the 
Spring, 

And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap, 
And wave their fluttering signals from the 
steep. 

The robin and the bluebird, piping loud, 
Filled all (be blossoming orchards with 
their glee; to 

The sparrows chirped as if they still were 
proud 
Their race in Holy Writ should men- 
tioned be; 
And hungry crows, assembled in a crowd. 

Clamored their piteous prayer incessantly. 
Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and 

said: 
1 Give us, O Lord, this day, our daily 
bread ! ' 

Across the Sound the birds of passage 
sailed, 
Speaking some unknown language strange 

and sweet 
Of tropic isle remote, and passing hailed 
The village with the cheers of all their 
fleet; 20 

Or quarrelling together, laughed and railed 
Like foreign sailors, landed in the street 
Of seaport town, and with outlandish noise 
Of oaths and gibberish frightening girls and 
boys. 

Thus came the jocund Spring in Killing- 
worth, 
In fabulous days, some hundred years 
ago; 
And thrifty farmers, as they tilled the 
earth, 
Heard with alarm the cawing of the crow, 

That mingled with the universal mirth, 

Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe; 30 
They shook their beads, and doomed with 

dreadful words 
To swift destruction the whole race of 

birds. 

And a town-meeting was convened straight- 
way 
To set a price upon the guilty heads 
Of these marauders, who, in lieu of pay, 

Levied black-mail upon the garden beds 
And cornfields, and beheld without dismay 
The awful scarecrow, with his fluttering 
shreds; 



The skeleton that waited at their feast, 
Whereby their sinful pleasure was in- 
creased. A o 

Then from his house, a temple painted 
white, 
With tinted columns, and a roof of red, 
The Squire came forth, august and splen- 
did sight! 
Slowly descending, with majestic tread, 
Three flights of steps, nor looking left nor 
right, 
Down the long street he walked, as one 
who said, 
' A town that boasts inhabitants like me 
Can have no lack of good society 1 ' 

The Parson, too, appeared, a man austere, 
The instinct of whose nature was to kill; 50 
The wrath of God he preached from year 
to year, 
And read, with fervor, Edwards on the 
Will; 
His favorite pastime was to slay the deer 

In summer on some Adirondae hill; 
E'en now, while walking down the rural 

lane, 
He lopped the wayside lilies with his cane. 

From the Academy, whose belfry crowned 
The hill of Science with its vane of brass, 

Came the Preceptor, gazing idly round, 
Now at the clouds, and now at the green 
grass, 60 

And all absorbed in reveries profound 
Of fair Almira in the upper class, 

Who was, as in a sonnet he had said, 

As pure as water, and as good as bread. 

And next the Deacon issued from his door, 
In his voluminous neck-cloth, white as 
snow; 
A s\ut of sable bombazine ho wore; 

His form was ponderous, and his step 
was slow; 
There never was so wise a man before; 
He seemed the incarnate ' Well, I told 



you so 



And to perpetuate his great renown 
There was a street named after him hi 
town. 

These came together in the new town-hall, 
With sundry farmers from the region 
round. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



"237>- 



The Squire presided, dignified and tall, 
J lis air impressive and his reasoning 

sound; 
111 fared it with the birds, hoth great and 

small; 
Hardly a friend in all that crowd they 

found, 
But enemies enough, who every one 
Charged them with all the crimes beneath 

the sun. ik> 

When they had ended, from his place apart 
Rose the Preceptor, to redress the 
wrong, 
And, trembling like a steed before the 
start, 
Looked round bewildered on the expect- 
ant throng; 
Then thought of fair Almira, and took 
beart 
To speak out what was in him, clear and 
strong, 
Alike regardless of their smile or frown, 
And quite determined not to be laughed 
down. 

' Plato, anticipating the Reviewers, 

From his Republic banished without pity 
The Poets; in this little town of yours, 91 
You put to death, by means of a Com- 
mittee, 
The ballad-singers and the Troubadours, 
The street-musicians of the heavenly 
city, 
The birds, who make sweet music for us 

all 
In our dark hours, as David did for Saul. 

' The thrush tliat carols at the dawn of 
day 
From the green steeples of the piny 
wood ; 
The oriole in the elm ; the noisy jay, 

Jargoning like a foreigner at his food; 

Tlie bluebird balanced on some topmost 

spray, 101 

Flooding with melody the neighborhood; 

Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng 

That dwell in nests, and have the gift of 

song. 

' You slay them all ! and wherefore ? for 
the gain 
Of a scant handful more or less of 
wheat, 



Or rye, or barley, or some other grain, 
Scratched up at random by industrious 
feet, 
Searching for worm or weevil after rain! 

Or a few cherries, that are not so sweet 
As are the songs these uninvited guests m 
Sing at their feast with comfortable 
breasts. 

' Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings 
these ? 
Do you ne'er think who made them, and 
who taught 
The dialect they speak, where melodies 

Alone are the interpreters of thought? 
Whose household words are songs in many 
keys, 
Sweeter than instrument of man e'er 
caught ! 
Whose habitations in the tree-tops even 
Are half-way houses on the road to 
heaven! 120 

< I'll ink, every morning when the sun peeps 
through 
The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the 
grove, 
How jubilant the happy birds renew 

Their old, melodious madrigals of love ! 
And when you think of this, remember too 
'T is always morning somewhere, and 
above 
The awakening continents, from shore to 

shore, 
Somewhere the birds are singing evermore. 

' Think of your woods and orchards with- 
out birds ! 
Of empty nests that cling to boughs and 
beams 130 

As in an idiot's brain remembered words 
Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his 
dreams ! 
Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds 
Make up for the lost music, when your 
teams 
Drag home the stingy harvest, and no 

more 
The feathered gleaners follow to your 
door ? 

' What ! would you rather see the mces- 
sant stir 
Of insects in the windrows of the hay, 
And hear the locust and the grasshopper 



2 3 8 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play ?i 4 o 
Is this more pleasant to you than the whir 
Of nieadow-lark, and her sweet rounde- 
lay, 
Or twitter of little field-fares, as you take 
Your nooning in the shade of bush and 
brake ? 

'You call them thieves and pillagers; but 
know, 
They are the winged wardens of your 
farms, 
Who from the cornfields drive the insidi- 
ous foe, 
And from your harvests keep a hundred 
harms ; 
Even the blackest of them all, the crow, 
Renders good service as your man-at- 
arms, 150 
Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, 
And crying havoc on the slug and snail. 

1 How can I teach your children gentleness, 

And mercy to the weak, and reverence 
For Life, which, in its weakness or excess, 

Is still a gleam of God's omnipotence, 
Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no 
less 
The selfsame light, although averted 
hence, 
When by your laws, your actions, and 
your speech, 159 

You contradict the very things I teach ? ' 

With this he closed; and through the au- 
dience went 
A murmur, like the rustle of dead 
leaves; 
The farmers laughed and nodded, and some 
bent 
Their yellow heads together like their 
sheaves ; 
Men have no faith in fine-spun sentiment 
Who put their trust in bullocks and in 
beeves. 
The birds were doomed ; and, as the record 

shows, 
A bounty offered for the heads of crows. 

There was another audience out of reach, 
Who had no voice nor vote in making 
laws, 170 

But in the papers read his little speech, 
And crowned his modest temples with 
applause ; 



They made him conscious, each one more 

than each. 
He still was victor, vanquished in their 

cause. 
Sweetest of all the applause he won from 

thee, 
O fair Almira at the Academy ! 

And so the dreadful massacre began; 
O'er fields and orchards, and o'er wood- 
land crests, 
The ceaseless fusillade of terror ran. 

Dead fell the birds, with blood-stains on 

their breasts, 1S0 

Or wounded crept away from sight of man, 

While the yoimg died of famine in their 

nests; 

A slaughter to be told in groans, not words, 

The very St. Bartholomew of Birds ! 

The summer came, and all the birds were 
dead; 
The days were like hot coals; the very 
ground 
Was burned to ashes; in the orchards fed 

Myriads of caterpillars, and around 
The cidtivated fields and garden beds 
Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and 
found 190 

No foe to check their march, till they had 

made 
The land a desert without leaf or shade. 

Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the 
town, 
Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly 
Slaughtered the Innocents. From the trees 
spim down 
The canker-worms upon the passers-by, 
Upon each woman's bonnet, shawl, and 
gown, 
Who shook them off with just a little 
cry; 
They were the terror of each favorite 

walk, 
The endless theme of all the village talk. 200 

The farmers grew impatient, but a few 
Confessed their error, and would not 
complain, 
For after all, the best thing one can do 

AVhen it is raining, is to let it rain. 
Then they repealed the law, although they 
knew 
It would not call the dead to life again; 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



239 



As school-boys, finding their mistake too 

late, 
Draw a wet sponge across the accusing 

slate. 

That year in Killingworth the Autumn 
came 
Without the light of his majestic look, 210 
The wonder of the falling tongues of flame, 
The illumined pages of his Doom's-Day 
book. 
A few lost leaves blushed crimson with 
their shame, 
And drowned themselves despairing in 
the brook, 
While the wild wind went moaning every- 
where, 
Lamenting the dead children of the air ! 

But the next spring a stranger sight was 
seen, 
A sight that never yet by bard was 
sung, 
As great a wonder as it would have been 
If some dumb animal had found a 
tongue ! 220 

A wagon, overarched with evergreen, 
Upon whose boughs were wicker cages 
hung, 
All full of singing birds, came down the 

street, 
Filling the air with music wild and sweet. 

From all the country round these birds 
were brought, 
By order of the town, with anxious quest, 
And, loosened from their wicker prisons, 
sought 
In woods and fields the places they loved 
best, 
Singing loud canticles, which many thought 
Were satires to the authorities ad- 
dressed, 230 
While others, listening in green lanes, 

averred 
Such lovely music never had been heard ! 

But blither still and louder carolled they 
Upon the morrow, for they seemed to 
know 
It was the fair Almira's wedding-day, 

And everywhere, around, above, below, 
When the Preceptor bore his bride away, 
Their songs burst forth in joyous over- 
flow, 



And a new heaven bent over a new earth 
Amid the sunny farms of Killingworth. 240 
1803. 1863. 

WEARINESS 

O little feet ! that such long years 
Must wander on through hopes and fears, 

Must ache and bleed beneath your load; 
I, nearer to the wayside inn 
Where toil shall cease and rest begin, 

Am weary, thinking of your road ! 

O little hands ! that, weak or strong, 
Have still to serve or rule so long, 

Have still so long to give or ask; 
I, who so much with book and pen 
Have toiled among my fellow-men, 

Am weary, thinking of your task. 

O little hearts ! that throb and beat 
With such impatient, feverish heat, 

Such limitless and strong desires; 
Mine, that so long has glowed and burned, 
With passions into ashes turned, 

Now covers and conceals its fires. 

O little souls ! as pure and white 
And crystalline as rays of light 

Direct from heaven, their source divine; 
Refracted through the mist of years, 
How red my setting sun appears, 

How lurid looks this soul of mine ! 
1863 ? 1863. 

HAWTHORNE 1 

How beautiful it was, that one bright day 

In the long week of rain ! 
Though all its splendor could not chase 
away 

The omnipresent pain. 

The lovely town was white with apple- 
blooms, 

And the great elms o'erhead 
Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms 

Shot through with golden thread. 

1 Hawthorne and Longfellow were friends for many 
years. This poem records the impressions and feelings 
of the day of Hawthorne's burial, May 23, 18C4 : 'It 
was a lovely day ; the village all sunshine and blossoms 
and the song of birds. You cannot imagine anything at 
once more sad and beautiful. He is buried on a hill-top 
under the pines.' (See the Life, vol. iii, pp. 36, 38, 39 ; 
and Mrs. Hawthorne's letter to Longfellow, pp. 40-42.) 



240 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Across the meadows, by the gray old manse, 

The historic river flowed : 
I was as one who wanders in a trance, 

Unconscious of his road. 

The faces of familiar friends seemed 
strange; 
Their voices I could bear, 
And yet the words they uttered seemed to 
change 
Their meaning to my ear. 

For the one face I looked for was not there, 

The one low voice was unite; 
Only an unseen presence tilled the air, 

And baffled my pursuit. 

Now I look hack, and meadow, manse, and 
stream 

Dimly my thought defines; 
1 only see — a dream within a dream — 

The hill-top hearsed with pines. 

I only hear above his place of rest 

Their tender undertone, 
The infinite longings of a troubled breast, 

The voice so like his own. 

There in seclusion and remote from men 

The wizard hand lies cold, 
Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen, 

And left the tale half told. 

Ah ! who shall lift that wand of magic 
power, 

And the lost clew regain ? 
The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower 

Unfinished must remain I 
1S64. 1864. 



DIVINA COMMEDIA 1 
I 

Oft have I seen at some cathedral door 
A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, 

1 The poet's life and work were interrupted by the 
tragic death, through Are, of Mrs. Longfellow. What 
he felt most deeply, he never expressed, and this bur- 
den of sorrow is scarcely alluded to in his poetry, ex- 
cept in the first of these sonnets, and in ' The Cross of 
Snow,' written eighteen years later, and not published 
till after his death. Unable to write, and unable to live 
without writing, ho took refuge in the work of trans- 
lating Dante's Divine Comedy, which he had begun in 
1843, taken up again in 1853, and now continued and 
completed, finishing the long task in 1867. From 18G1 
to 1809 he wrote hardly anything else, except some 



Lay down his burden, and with reverent 

feet 
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor 
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er; 
Far otf the noises of the world retreat; 
The loud vociferations of the street 
Become an undistinguishable roar. 
80, as 1 enter here from day to day, 
And leave my burden at this minster gate, 
Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to 

pray, 
The tumult of the time disconsolate 
To inarticulate murmurs dies away, 
While the eternal ages watch and wait. 
1864. 1864. 



How strange the sculptures that adorn theso 
towers ! 

This crowd of statues, in whose folded 
sleeves 

Birds build their nests ; while canopied with 
leaves 

Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bow- 
ers, 

And the vast minster seems a cross of flow- 
ers ! 

But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled 
eaves 

Watch the dead Christ between the living 
thieves, 

And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers ! 

Ah ! from what agonies of heart and brain, 

What exultations trampling on despair, 

What tenderness, what tears, what hate of 
wrong, 

What passionate outcry of a soid in pain, 

Uprose this poem of the earth and air, 

This mediaeval miracle of song ! 

1864. 1866. 



I enter, and I see thee in the gloom 
Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine ! 

fragments needed to completo the first part of Tales of 
a wayside inn. 

During the same years Robert Browning was trying 
to benumb the intensity of his own sorrow through ab- 
sorption in the Ring and the Hook ; and Bryant, after 
the loss of a wife whom he had worshipped, yet whom 
he scarcely alludes to in his verse (see ' O Fairest of 
the Rural Maids,' ' The Future Life,' and ' A Life- 
time'), took for his task the translation of Homer. 

Longfellow's Journal, and his letters to Sumner, 
show also how deeply he felt th£ life-and-death crisis 
through which his country was passing in the same 
years, and to which, also, his verse hardly alludes ex- 
cept for the first of these sonnets. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



241 



And strive to make my steps keep pace 

with thine. 
The air is filled with some unknown per- 
fume; 
The congregation of the dead make room 
For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine; 
Like rooks that liaunt Ravenna's groves of 

pine 
The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb. 
From the confessionals I hear arise 
Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies, 
And lamentations from the crypts below; 
And then a voice celestial that begins 
With the pathetic words, ' Although your 

sins 
As scarlet be,' and ends with ' as the snow.' 
1865. 1866. 



With snow-white veil and garments as of 

flame, 
She stands before thee, who so long ago 
Filled thy young heart with passion and the 

woe 
From which thy song and all its splendors 

came; 
And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy 

name, 
The ice about thy heart melts as the snow 
On mountain heights, and in swift overflow 
Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of 

shame. 
Thou makest full confession; and a gleam, 
As of the dawn on some dark forest cast, 
Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase ; 
Lethe and Eunoe — the remembered dream 
And the forgotten sorrow — bring at last 
That perfect pardon which is perfect peace. 
1867. 1867. 



I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze 

With forms of Saints and holy men who 
died, 

Here martyred and hereafter glorified ; 

And the great Rose upon its leaves dis- 
plays 

Christ's Triumph, and the angelic rounde- 
lays, 

With splendor upon splendor multiplied; 

And Beatrice again at Dante's side 

No more rebukes, but smiles her words of 
praise. 

And then the organ sounds, and unseen 
choirs 



Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love 
And benedictions of the Holy Ghost; 
And the melodious bells among the spires 
O'er all the house-tops and through heaven 

above 
Proclaim the elevation of the Host ! 
1866. 1886. 

VI 

O star of morning and of liberty ! 

bringer of the light, whose splendor 

shines 
Above the darkness of the Apennines, 
Forerunner of the day that is to be ! 
The voices of the city and the sea, 
The voices of the mountains and the pines, 
Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines 
Are footpaths for the thought of Italy ! 
Thy flame is blown abroad from all the 

heights, 
Through all the nations, and a sound is 

heard, 
As of a mighty wind, and men devout, 
Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes, 
In their own language hear the wondrous 

word, 
And many are amazed and many doubt. 
1866. 1866. 

KILLED AT THE FORD* 

He is dead, the beautiful youth, 
The heart of honor, the tongue of truth, 
He, the life and light of us all, 
Whose voice was blithe as a bugle-call, 
Whom all eyes followed with one consent, 
The cheer of whose laugh, and whose plea- 
sant word, 
Hushed all murmurs of discontent. 

Only last night, as we rode along, 
Down the dark of the mountain gap, 
To visit the picket-guard at the ford, 10 
Little dreaming of any mishap, 
He was humming the words of some old 
song: 

1 The poem you speak of was not a record of any 
one event which came to my knowledge, but of many 
which came to my imagination. It in an attempt to ex- 
press something of the inexpressible sympathy which 

1 feel for the death of the young men in the war, which 
makes my heart bleed whenever I think of it. (Long- 
fellow, in a letter of March 23, 180(j.) 

Longfellow's oldest son, Charles, was a lieutenant of 
cavalry in the Army of the Potomac before he was 
twenty years old. Toward the end of 1863 he was seri- 
ously wounded, but recovered. (Life, vol. iii, pp. 21, 
24-27. 



24- 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



' Two red roses he had on his cap 
And another he bore at the point of his 
sword.' 

Sudden and swift a whistling - ball 

Came out of a wood, and the voice was 

still: 
Something 1 heard in the darkness fall, 
And tor a moment my blood grew chill; 
I spake in a whisper, as lie who speaks 
In a room where some one is lying dead; 20 
But he made no answer to what 1 said. 

We lifted him up to his saddle again. 
And through the mire and the mist and 

the rain 
Carried him back to the silent camp, 
And laid him as if asleep on his bed; 
And I saw by the light of the surgeon's 

lamp 
Two white roses upon his cheeks, 
And one, just over his heart, blood-red! 

And I saw in a vision how far and fleet 
That fatal bullet wont speeding forth, 30 
Till it reached a town in the distant North, 
Till it reached a house in a sunny street, 
Till it reached a heart that ceased to beat 
Without a murmur, without a cry; 
And a bell was tolled, in that far-off town, 
For one who had passed from cross to 

crown, 
And the neighbors wondered that she should 

die. 
1866, 1866. 



GIOTTO'S TOWER 

How many lives, made beautiful and sweet 
By self-devotion and by self-restraint, 
Whose pleasure is to run without complaint 
On unknown errands of the Paraclete, 
Wanting the reverence of unshodden feet, 
Fail of the nimbus which the artists paint 
Around the shining forehead of the saint, 
And are in their completeness incomplete ! 
In the old Tuscan town stands Giotto's 

tower, 
The lily of Florence blossoming in stone, — 
A vision, a delight, and a desire, — 
The builder's perfect and centennial flower, 
That in the night of ages bloomed alone, 
But wanting still the glory of the spire. 
1866. lSliti. 



FINALE OF CHRISTUS 

SAINT JOHN 

Saint John wandering oirr the face of the 
Earth. 

SAINT JOHN : 

Thk Ages come and go, 
The Centuries pass as Years; 
My hair is white as the snow, 
My feet are weary and slow, 
The earth is wet with my tears ! 
The kingdoms crumble, and fall 
Apart, like a ruined wall. 
Or a bank that is undermined 
By a river's ceaseless tlow, 
And leave no trace behind ! 10 

The world itself is old; 
The portals of Time unfold 
On hinges of iron, that grate 
And groan with the rust and the weight, 
Like the hinges of a gate 
That hath fallen to decay ; 
But the evil doth not cease; 
There is war instead of peace, 
Instead of Love there is hate; 
And still I must wander and wait, 30 

Still I must watch and pray, 
Not forgetting in whose sight, 
A thousand years in their flight 
Are as a single day. 

The life of man is a gleam 

Of light, that conies and goes 

Like the course of the Holy Stream, 

The eityless river, that flows 

From fountains no one knows, 

Through the Lake of Galilee, 30 

Through forests and level lands, 

Over rocks, and shallows, and sands 

Of a wilderness wild and vast, 

Till it findeth its rest at last 

In the desolate Dead Sea ! 

But alas ! alas for me 

Nor yet this rest shall be ! 

What, then ! doth Charity fail ? 

Is Faith of no avail ? 

Is Hope blown out like a light 40 

By a gust of Avind in the night ? 

The clashing of creeds, and the strife 

Of the many beliefs, that in vain 

Perplex man's heart and brain, 

Are naught but the rustle of leaves. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



243 



When the breath of God upheaves 

The boughs of the Tree of Life, 

A no! they subside again ! 

And I remember still 

The words, and from whom they came, 

Not he that repeateth the name, 51 

But he that doeth the will ! 

And Him evermore 1 behold 

Walking in Galilee, 

Throngs the cornfield's waving gold, 

In hamlet, in wood, and in wold, 

By the shores of the Beautiful Sea. 

He toueheth the sightless eyes; 

Before Him the demons flee; 

To the dead He sayeth: Arise ! 60 

To the living: Follow me ! 

And that voice still soundeth on 

From the centuries that are gone, 

To the centuries that shall be ! 

From all vain pomps and shows, 

From the pride that overflows, 

And the false conceits of men; 

From all the narrow rules 

And subtleties of Schools, 

And the craft of tongue and pen; 70 

Bewildered in its search, 

Bewildered with the cry: 

Lo, here ! lo, there, the Church ! 

Poor, sad Humanity 

Through all the dust and heat 

Turns back with bleeding feet, 

By the weary road it came, 

Unto the simple thought 

By the great Master taught, 

And that remaineth still: 80 

Not he that repeateth the name, 

But he tliat doeth the will ! 



1871. 



1872. 



THE HANGING OF THE CRANE 1 



The lights are out, and gone are all the 

guests 
That thronging came with merriment and 

jests 

1 ' One morning in the spring of 1807,' write* Mr. 
T. B. Aldrich, ' Mr. Longfellow came to the little, home 
in Pinckney Street [Boston], where we had net up house- 
keeping In the light of our honeymoon. As we angered 
a moment at the dining-room door, Mr. Longfellow 
turning to me said, "Ah, Mr. Aldrich, your small round 
table will not always be closed. By and by you will 
find new young faces clustering about it ; as years go 



To celebrate the Hanging of the Crane 
In the new house, — into the night are 

gone; 
But still the fire upon the hearth burns on, 
And I alone remain. 

O fortunate, O happy day, 
When a new household finds its place 
Among the myriad homes of earth, 
Like a new star just sprung to birth, 10 
And rolled on its harmonious way 
Into the boundless realms of space ! 

So said the guests in speech and song, 
As in the chimney, burning bright, 
We hung the iron crane to-night, 
And merry was the feast and long. 



And now I sit and muse on what may be, 
And in my vision see, or seem to see, 
Through floating vapors interfused with 
light, 
Shapes indeterminate, that gleam • and 
fade, 20 

As shadows passing into deeper shade 
Sink and elude the sight. 

For two alone, there in the hall, 

Is spread the table round and small; 

Upon the polished silver shine 

The evening lamps, but, more divine, 

The light of love shines over all; 

Of love, that says not mine and thine, 

But ours, for ours is thine and mine. 

They want no guests, to come between 30 
Their tender glances like a screen, 
And tell them tales of land and sea, 

on, leaf after leaf will be added until the time comes 
when the young guests will take flight, one by one, to 
build nests of their own elsewhere. Gradually the long 
table will shrink to a circle again, leaving two old peo- 
ple sitting there alone together. This is the story of 
life, the sweet and pathetic poem of the fireside. Make 
an idyl of it. 1 give the idea to you." Several months 
afterward, I received a note from Mr. Longfellow in 
which lie expressed a desire to use this motif in case I 
had done nothing in the matter. The theme was one 
peculiarly adapted to his sympathetic handling, and out 
of it grew Tat Hanging of the ('■Time,.' 1 Just when the 
poem was written does not appear, but its first publica- 
tion wan in the New York Ledi/nr, March 28, 1874. Mr. 
Longfellow's old friend, Mr. Samuel Ward, had heard 
the [ioem, and offered to secure it for Mr. Robert Bon- 
ner, the proprietor of the //c/'/er, ' touched ' as he wrote 

to Mr. Longfellow, ' by your kindness to poor , 

and haunted by the idea of increasing handsomely 
your noble charity fund.' Mr. Bonner paid the poet 
the sum of three thousand dollars for this poem. ( Cam- 
brvl'je Editi'/n.j 



244 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And whatsoever may betide 
The great, forgotten world outside; 
They want no guests ; they needs must be 
Each other's own best company. 



The picture fades; as at a village fair 
A showman's views, dissolving into air, 

Again appear transfigured on the screen, 
So in my fancy this ; and now once more, 4 o 
In part transfigured, through the open door 
Appears the selfsame scene. 

Seated, I see the two again, 

But not alone ; they entertain 

A little angel unaware, 

With face as round as is the moon, 

A royal guest with flaxen hair, 

Who, throned upon his lofty chair, 

Drums on the table with his spoon, 

Then drops it careless on the floor, 50 

To grasp at things unseen before. 

Are these celestial manners ? these 
The ways that win, the arts that please ? 
Ah yes; consider well the guest, 
And whatsoe'er he does seems best; 
He ruleth by the right divine 
Of helplessness, so lately born 
In purple chambers of the morn, 
As sovereign over thee and thine. 
He speaketh not; and yet there lies 60 
A conversation in his eyes; 
The golden silence of the Greek, 
The gravest wisdom of the wise, 
Not spoken in language, but in looks 
More legible than printed books, 
As if he could but would not speak. 
And now, O monarch absolute, 
Thy power is put to proof; for, lo! 
Resistless, fathomless, and slow, 
The nurse comes rustling like the sea, 70 
JAnd pushes back thy chair and thee, 
And so good night to King Canute. 



As one who walking in a forest sees 
A lovely landscape through the parted 
trees, 
Then sees it not, for boughs that inter- 
vene; 
Or as we see the moon sometimes revealed 
Through drifting clouds, and then again 
concealed, 
So I behold the scene. 



There are two guests at table now; 
The king, deposed and older grown, 80 
No longer occupies the throne, — 
The crown is on his sister's brow; 
A Princess from the Fairy Isles, 
The very pattern girl of girls, 
All covered and embowered in curls, 
Rose-tinted from the Isle of Flowers, 
And sailing with soft, silken sails 
From far-off Dreamland into ours. 
Above their bowls with rims of blue 
Four azure eyes of deeper hue 90 

Are looking, dreamy with delight; 
Limpid as planets that emerge 
Above the ocean's rounded verge, 
Soft-shining through the summer night. 
Steadfast thy gaze, yet nothing see 
Beyond the horizon of their bowls; 
Nor care they for the world that rolls 
With all its freight of troubled souls 
Into the days that are to be. 



Again the tossing boughs shut out the 
scene, 100 

Again the drifting vapors intervene, 

And the moon's pallid disk is hidden quite ; 
And now I see the table wider grown, 
As round a pebble into water thrown 
Dilates a ring of light. 

I see the table wider grown, 
I see it garlanded with guests, 
As if fair Ariadne's Crown 
Out of the sky had fallen down; 
Maidens within whose tender breasts no 
A thousand restless hopes and fears, 
Forth reaching to the coming years, 
Flutter awhile, then quiet lie, 
Like timid birds that fain would fly, 
But do not dare to leave their nests ; — 
And youths, who in their strength elate 
Challenge the van and front of fate, 
Eager as champions to be 
In the divine knight-errantry 
Of youth, that travels sea and land 120 
Seeking adventures, or pursues, 
Through cities, and through solitudes 
Frequented by the lyric Muse, 
The phantom with the beckoning hand, 
That still allures and still eludes. 
O sweet illusions of the brain ! 
O sudden thrills of fire -and frost ! 
The world is bright while ye remain, 
And dark and dead when ye are lost ! 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



245 



The meadow-brook, that seemeth to stand 
still, 130 

Quickens its current as it nears the mill; 
And so the stream of Time that linger- 
eth 
In level places, and so dull appears, 
Runs with a swifter current as it nears 
The gloomy mills of Death. 

And now, like the magician's scroll, 

That in the owner's keeping shrinks 

With every wish he speaks or thinks, 

Till the last wish consumes the whole, 

The table dwindles, and again 140 

I see the two alone remain. 

The crown of stars is broken in parts ; 

Its jewels, brighter than the day, 

Have one by one been stolen away 

To shine in other homes and hearts. 

One is a wanderer now afar 

In Ceylon or in Zanzibar, 

Or sunny regions of Cathay; 

And one is in the boisterous camp 

'Mid clink of arms and horses' tramp, 150 

And battle's terrible array. 

I see the patient mother read, 

With aching heart, of wrecks that float 

Disabled on those seas remote, 

Or of some great heroic deed 

On battle-fields, where thousands bleed 

To lift one hero into fame. 

Anxious she bends her graceful head 

Above these chronicles of pain, 

And trembles with a secret dread 160 

Lest there among the drowned or slain 

She find the one beloved name. 



After a day of cloud and wind and rain 
Sometimes the setting sun breaks out again, 
And, touching all the darksome woods 
with light, 
Smiles on the fields, until they laugh and 

sing, 
Then like a ruby from the horizon's ring 
Drops down into the night. 

What see I now ? The night is fair, 

The storm of grief, the clouds of care, 170 

The wind, the rain, have passed away; 

The lamps are lit, the fires burn bright, 

The house is full of life and light; 

It is the Golden Wedding day. 

The guests come thronging in once more, 



Quick footsteps sound along the floor, 

The trooping children crowd the stair, 

And in and out and everywhere 

Flashes along the corridor 

The sunshine of their golden hair. 180 

On the round table in the hall 

Another Ariadne's Crown 

Out of the sky hath fallen down; 

More than one Monarch of the Moon 

Is drumming with his silver spoon; 

The light of love shines over all. 

O fortunate, O happy day ! 
The people sing, the people say. 
The ancient bridegroom and the bride, 
Smiling contented and serene 190 

Upon the blithe, bewildering scene, 
Behold, well pleased, on every side 
Their forms and features multiplied, 
As the reflection of a light 
Between two burnished mirrors gleams, 
Or lamps upon a bridge at night 
Stretch on and on before the sight, 
Till the long vista endless seems. 
1873. 1874. 



CHAUCER 

An old man in a lodge within a park; 
The chamber walls depicted all around 
With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and 

hound, 
And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark, 
Whose song comes with the sunshine 

through the dark 
Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound; 
He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound, 
Then writeth in a book like any clerk. 
He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote 
The Canterbury Tales, and his old age 
Made beautiful with song; and as I read 
I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note 
Of lark and linnet, and from every page 
Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery 

mead. 
1873. (1875.) 



SHAKESPEARE 

A vision as of crowded city streets, 
With human life in endless overflow; 
Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that 
blow 



246 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



To battle; clamor, in obscure retreats, 
Of sailors landed froni tbeir anchored fleets ; 
Tolling of bells in turrets, and below 
Voices of children, and bright flowers that 

throw 
O'er garden walls their intermingled 

sweets ! 
This vision comes to me when I unfold 
The volume of the Poet paramount, 
Whom all the Muses loved, not one 

alone ; — 
Into his hands they put the lyre of gold, 
And, crowned with sacred laurel at their 

fount, 
Placed him as Musagetes on their throne. 
1873. (1875J 



MILTON 

I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold 
How the voluminous billows roll and run, 
Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun 
Shines through their sheeted emerald far 

unrolled, 
And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by 

fold 
All its loose-flowing garments into one, 
Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dim 
Pale reach of sands, and changes them to 

gold. 
So in majestic cadence rise and fall 
The mighty undidations of thy song, 
O sightless bard, England's Mseonides ! 
And ever and anon, high over all 
Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong, 
Floods all the soul with its melodious seas. 
1873. (1875.) 



KEATS 

The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's 

sleep ; 
The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half 

told! 
The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold 
To the red rising moon, and loud and deep 
The nightingale is singing from the steep; 
It is midsummer, but the air is cold; 
Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold 
A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his 

sheep. 
Lo ! in the moonlight gleams a marble 

white, 



On which I read: 'Here lieth one whose 

name 
Was writ in water.' * And was this the meed 
Of his sweet singing ? Rather let me write : 
' The smoking flax before it burst to flame 
Was quenched by death, and broken the 

bruised reed.' 
1873. (1875.) 



THE SOUND OF THE SEA 

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep, 
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide 
I heard the first wave of the rising tide 
Rush onward with iininterrupted sweep; 
A voice out of the silence of the deep, 
A sound mysteriously multiplied 
As of a cataract from the mountain's side, 
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep. 
So comes to us at times, from the miknown 
And inaccessible solitudes of being, 
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul; 
And inspirations, that we deem our own, 
Are some divine foreshadowing and foresee- 

ing 
Of things beyond our reason or control. 
1874. (1875.) 



THREE FRIENDS OF MINE 



When I remember them, those friends of 

mine, 
Who are no longer here, the noble three, 
Who half my life were more than friends to 

me, 
And whose discourse was like a generous 

wine, 
I most of all remember the divine 
Something, that shone in them, and made us 

see 
The archetypal man, and what might be 
The amplitude of Nature's first design. 
In vain I stretch my hands to clasp their 

hands ; 
I cannot find them. Nothing now is left 10 

1 Keats' epitaph upon himself , inscribed on the simple 
stone that stands at the head of his grave beside the 
walls of Rome. Of the many poets' protests against 
its cutting pathos, perhaps the best is this, by J. E. 
Spingarn : — 

The Star of Fame shines down upon the river. 
And answering, the stream of Life repeats: 

Upon our waters shall be writ forever 
The name of Keats ! ' 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



247 



But a majestic memory. They mean- 
while 
Wander together hi Elysian lands, 
Perchance remembering me, who am bereft 
Of their dear presence, and, remembering, 
smile. 

ni 

In Attica thy birthplace should have been, 
On the Ionian Isles, or where the seas 
Encircle in their arms the Cyclades, 
So wholly Greek wast thou in thy serene 
And childlike joy of life, Philhellene ! 
Around thee would have swarmed the Attic 

bees; 20 

Homer had been thy friend, or Socrates, 
And Plato welcomed thee to his demesne. 
For thee old legends breathed historic 

breath ; 
Thou sawest Poseidon in the purple sea, 
And in the sunset Jason's fleece of gold ! 
Oh, what hadst thou to do with cruel Death, 
Who wast so full of life, or Death with 

thee, 
That thou shouldst die before thou hadst 

grown old ! 



I stand again on the familiar shore, 
And hear the waves of the distracted sea 
Piteously calling and lamenting thee, 31 
And waiting restless at thy cottage door. 
The rocks, the sea-weed on the ocean 

floor, 
The willows in the meadow, and the free 
Wild winds of the Atlantic welcome me; 
Then why shouldst thou be dead, and come 

no more ? 
Ah, why shouldst thou be dead, when com- 
mon men 
Are busy with their trivial affairs, 
Having and holding ? Why, when thou 

hadst read 
Nature's mysterious manuscript, and then 40 
Wast ready to reveal the truth it bears, 
Why art thou silent ? Why shouldst thou 
be dead ? 

1 C. C. Felton, for many years professor of Greek at 
Harvard, and president of the University from 1860 
till his death in 1862. See the Life of Longfellow, in 
many passages, but especially vol. iii, pp. 4, 7, 9. 

2 Agassiz was a constant companion of Longfellow's. 
See note on p. 211, and many passages in the Life. 

s Charles Sumner was lecturer in the Harvard Law 
School when Longfellow first came to Cambridge, in 
1836, and from that time until his death, in 1874, was 
one of Longfellow's closest friends. 



IV 8 

River, that stealest with such silent pace 
Around the City of the Dead, 4 where lies 
A friend who bore thy name, and whom 

these eyes 
Shall see no more in his accustomed 

place, 
Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace, 
And say good night, for now the western 

skies 
Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise 
Like damps that gather on a dead man's 

face. 50 

Good night ! good night ! as we so of t have 

said 
Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days 
That are no more, and shall no more re- 
turn. 
Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to 

bed; 
I stay a little longer, as one stays 
To cover up the embers that still burn. 



The doors are all wide open; at the gate 
The blossomed lilacs counterfeit a blaze, 
And seem to warm the air; a dreamy 

haze 
Hangs o'er the Brighton meadows like a 

fate, 60 

And on their margin, with sea-tides elate, 
The flooded Charles, as in the happier 

days, 
Writes the last letter of his name, and 

stays 
His restless steps, as if compelled to wait. 
I also wait; but they will come no more, 
Those friends of mine, whose presence sat- 
isfied 
The thirst and hunger of my heart. Ah 

me ! 
They have forgotten the pathway to my 

door ! 
Something is gone from nature since they 

died, 
And summer is not summer, nor can be. 70 
1874. (1875.) 

4 The River Charles, whose windings ' write the last 
letter of his name,' flows near the Cemetery of Mount 
Auburn. There Sumner is buried, on the hillside near- 
est the river. Longfellow himself and Agassiz, Lowell, 
Holmes, Pierpont, Willis, and Parsons, and the histo- 
rians Prescott, Motley, and Parkman now lie buried 
there also. 



!48 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



MORITURI SALUTAMUS 1 

POEM FOR THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
OF THE CLASS OF 1 825 IN BOWDOIN 
COLLEGE 

Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus minis, 
Et fugiuut freno nou remorante dies. 

Ovid, Fasiortmx, Lib. vi. 

' O Cesar, we who are about to die 
Salute you ! ' was the gladiators' cry 
In the arena, standing face to face 
With death aud with the Roman populace. 

O ye familiar scenes, — ye groves of pine, 
That once were mine and are no longer 

mine, — 
Thou river, widening through the meadows 

green 
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen, — 
Ye halls, hi whose seclusion and repose 
Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose 10 
And vanished, — we who are about to die, 
Salute yon; earth and air and sea and sky, 
And the Imperial Sun that scatters down 
His sovereign splendors upon grove and 

town. 

Ye do not answer us ! ye do not hear ! 
We are forgotten; and in your austere 
And calm indifference, ye little care 
Whether we come or go, or whence or 

where. 
What passing generations fill these halls, 
What passing voices echo from these walls, 

1 In October, 1S74, Mr. Longfellow was urged to 
write a poem for the fiftieth anniversary of the gradua- 
tion of his college class, to be held the next summer. 
At first he said that he could not write the poem, so 
averse was he from occasional poems, but a sudden 
thought seems to have struck him, very likely upon 
seeing a representation of Gerome's famous picture, 
and ten days later he notes in his diary that he had fin- 
ished the writing. 

The painting by Gerome, referred to, represents a 
Roman arena, where the gladiators, about to engage in 
mortal combat, salute the emperor, who with a great 
concourse of people is to witness the scene. Beneath 
the painting, Gerome, following a popular tradition, 
wrote the words, Are Caesar, Imperator, Morituri te 
Sahdant: 'Hail, C;i?sar, Emperor! those who go to 
their death salute thee.' The reference to a gladia- 
torial combat, which these words imply, is doubted by 
some scholars, who quote ancient authors as using the 
phrase in connection with the great sea-fight exhibition 
given by the emperor on Lacus Fucinus. The comba- 
tants on that occasion were condemned criminals, who 
were to fight until one of the sides was slain, unless 
spared by the mercy of the emperor. {Rirerside Lit- 
erature Series.) 

Compare Emerson's ' Terminus,' Holmes's ' The Iron 
Gate,' Whittier's ' To Oliver Wendell Holmes,' etc. 



Ye heed not; we are only as the blast, 3 i 
A moment heard, and then forever past. 

Not so the teachers who in earlier days 
Led our bewildered feet through learning's 

maze; 
They answer us — alas ! what have I said ? 
What greetings come there from the voice- 
less dead ? 
What salutation, welcome, or reply ? 
What pressure from the hands that lifeless 

lie? 
They are no longer here; they all are 

gone 
Into the land of shadows, — all save one. 30 
Honor and reverence, and the good repute 
That follows faithful service as its fruit, 
Be unto him, whom living we salute. • 

The great Italian poet, when he made 
His dreadful journey to the realms of 

shade, 
Met there the old instructor of his youth, 
And cried hi tones of pity and of ruth: 
' Oh, never from the memory of my heart 
Your dear, paternal image shall depart, 
Who while on earth, ere yet by death sur- 
prised, 40 
Taught me how mortals are immortalized; 
How gratefid am I for that patient care 
All my life long my language shall de- 
clare.' 2 

To-day we make the poet's words our own, 
And utter them hi plaintive undertone; 
Nor to the living only be they said, 
But to the other living called the dead, 
Whose dear, paternal images appear 
Not wrapped hi gloom, but robed in sun- 
shine here; 
Whose simple lives, complete and without 
flaw, 50 

Were part and parcel of great Nature's 

law; 
Who said not to their Lord, as if afraid, 
' Here is thy talent in a napkin laid,' 
But labored in their sphere, as men who 

live 
In the delight that work alone can give. 
Peace be to them ; eternal peace and rest, 
And the fulfilment of the great behest: 
' Ye have been faithful over a few things, 
Over ten cities shall ye reign as kings.' 

a Dante to Brunetto Latini. Inferno, Canto xv, 
lines S2-S7. 



H.h\RY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



249 



And ye who fill the pb n( vs we once filled, 60 
And follow hi the farrows that we tilled, 
Young men, whose generous hearts are 

beating high, 
We who are old, and are about to die, 
Salute you; hail you; take your hands in 

ours, 
And crown you with our welcome as with 

flowers ! 

How beautiful is youth ! how bright it 

gleams 
With its illusions, aspirations, dreams ! 
Book of Beginnings, Story without End, 
Each maid a heroine, and each man a 

friend ! 
Aladdin's Lamp, and Fortunatus' Purse, 70 
That holds the treasures of the universe ! 
All possibilities are in its hands, 
No danger daunts it, and no foe withstands ; 
In its sublime audacity of faith, 
' Be thou removed ! ' it to the mountain 

saith, 
And with ambitious feet, secure and proud, 
Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud ! 

As ancient Priam at the Scjean gate 
Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state 
With the old men, too old and weak to 

fight, 80 

Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight 
To see the embattled hosts, with spear and 

shield, 
Of Trojans and Achaians in the field; 
So from the snowy summits of our years 
We see you in the plain, as each appears, 
And question of you; asking, ' Who is he 
That towers above the others ? Which 

may be 
Atreides, Menelaus, Odysseus, 
Ajax the great, or bold Idomeneus ? ' 

Let him not boast who puts his armor on 90 

As he who puts it off, the battle done. 

Study yourselves; and most of all note 
well 

Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel. 

Not every blossom ripens into fruit; 

Minerva, the inventress of the flute, 

Flung it aside, when she her face sur- 
veyed 

Distorted in a fountain as she played; 

The unlucky Marsyas found it, and his 
fate 

Was one to make the bravest hesitate. 



Write on your doors the saying wise and 

old, ioo 

' Be bold ! be bold ! ' and everywhere, • Be 

bold; 
Be not too bold ! ' Yet better the excess 
Than the defect; better the more than less; 
Better like Hector in the field to die, 
Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly. 

And now, my classmates ; ye remaining few 
That number not the half of those we knew, 
Ye, against whose familiar names not yet 
The fatal asterisk of death is set, 
Ye I salute ! The horologe of Time no 
Strikes the half-century with a solemn 

chime, 
And summons us together once again, 
The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain. 

Where are the others ? Voices from the 

deep 
Caverns of darkness answer me: 'They 

sleep ! ' 
I name no names; instinctively I feel 
Each at some well-remembered grave will 

kneel, 
And from the inscription wipe the weeds 

and moss, 
For every heart best knoweth its own loss. 
I see their scattered gravestones gleaming 

white 120 

Through the pale dusk of the impending 

night; 
O'er all alike the impartial sunset throws 
Its golden lilies mingled with the rose; 
We give to each a tender thought, and pass 
Out of the graveyards with their tangled 

grass, 
Unto these scenes frequented by our feet 
When we were young, and life was fresh 

and sweet. 

What shall I say to you ? What can I say 
Better than silence is ? When I survey 
This throng of faces turned to meet my 

own, 130 

Friendly and fair, and yet to me unknown, 
Transformed the very landscape seems to 

be; 
It is the same, yet not the same to me. 
So many memories crowd upon my brain, 
So many ghosts are in the wooded plain, 
I fain would steal away, with noiseless 

tread, 
As from a house where some one lieth dead 



25° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



I cannot go ; — I pause ; — I hesitate ; 
My feet reluctant linger at the gate ; 
As one who struggles in a troubled dream 140 
To speak and cannot, to myself I seem. 

Vanish the dream ! Vanish the idle fears ! 
Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years ! 
Whatever time or space may intervene, 
I will not be a stranger in this scene. 
Here every doubt, all indecision, ends; 
Hail, my companions, comrades, classmates, 
friends ! 

Ah me ! the fifty years since last we met 
Seem to me fifty folios bound and set 
By Time, the great transcriber, on his 
shelves, 150 

Wherein are written the histories of our- 
selves. 
What tragedies, what comedies, are there; 
What joy and grief, what rapture and de- 
spair ! 
What chronicles of triumph and defeat, 
Of struggle, and temptations, and retreat ! 
What records of regrets, and doubts, and 

fears ! 
What pages blotted, blistered by our tears ! 
What lovely landscapes on the margin 

shine, 
What sweet, angelic faces, what divine 
And holy images of love and trust, 160 

Undimmed by age, unsoiled by damp or 
dust! 

Whose hand shall dare to open and explore 
These volumes, closed and clasped forever- 
more ? 
Not mine. With reverential feet I pass; 
I hear a voice that cries, ' Alas ! alas ! 
Whatever hath been written shall remain, 
Nor be erased nor written o'er again; 
The unwritten only still belongs to thee: 
Take heed, and ponder well what that shall 
be.' 

As children frightened by a thunder-cloud 
Are reassured S some one reads aloud 171 
A tale of wonder,with enchantment fraught, 
Or wild adventure, that diverts their 

thought, 
Let me endeavor with a tale to chase 
The gathering shadows of the time and 

place, 
And banish what we all too deeply feel 
Wholly to say, or wholly to conceal. 



In mediaeval Rome e V know not where, 
There stood an ima^e with its arm in air, 
And on its lifted finger, shining clear, 180 
A golden ring with the device, 'Strike 

here ! ' 
Greatly the people wondered, though none 

guessed 
The meaning that these words but half ex- 
pressed, 
Until a learned clerk who at noonday 
With downcast eyes was passing on his 

way, 
Paused, and observed the spot, and marked 

it well, 
Whereon the shadow of the finger fell; 
And, coming back at midnight, delved, and 

found 
A secret stairway leading underground. 
Down this he passed into a spacious hall, 190 
Lit by a flaming jewel on the wall; 
And opposite, in threatening attitude, 
With bow and shaft a brazen statue stood. 
Upon its forehead, like a coronet, 
Were these mysterious words of menace 

set: 
' That which I am, I am ; my fatal aim 
None can escape, not even yon luminous 

flame ! ' 

Midway the hall was a fair table placed, 
With cloth of gold, and golden cups en- 
chased 
With rubies, and the plates and knives 
were gold, 200 

And gold the bread and viands manifold. 
Around it, silent, motionless, and sad, 
Were seated gallant knights in armor clad, 
And ladies beautiful with plume and zone, 
But they were stone, their hearts within 

were stone; 
And the vast hall was filled in every part 
With silent crowds, stony in face and heart. 

Long at the scene, bewildered and amazed, 
The trembling clerk in speechless wonder 

gazed; 
Then from the table, by his greed made 

bold, 210 

He seized a goblet and a knife of gold, 
And suddenly from their seats the guests 

upsprang, 
The vaulted ceiling with loud clamors 

rang, 
The archer sped his arrow, at their call, 
Shattering the lambent jewel on the wall, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



2 5* 



And all was dark around and overhead; — 
Stark on the floor the luckless clerk lay 
dead ! 

The writer of this legend then records 
Its ghostly application in these words: 
The image is the Adversary old, 220 

Whose beckoning finger points to realms of 

gold; 
Our lusts and passions are the downward 

stair 
That leads the soul from a diviner air; 
The archer, Death; the flaming jewel, 

Life; 
Terrestrial goods, the goblet and the knife ; 
The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and 

bone 
By avarice have been hardened into stone; 
The clerk, the scholar whom the love of 

pelf 
Tempts from his books and from his nobler 

self. 

The scholar and the world ! The endless 
strife, 230 

The discord in the harmonies of life ! 
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, 
And all the sweet serenity of books; 
The market-place, the eager love of gain, 
Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is 
pain ! 

But why, you ask me, should this tale be 

told 
To men grown old, or who are growing old ? 
It is too late ! Ah, nothing is too late 
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. 
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles 240 
Wrote his grand CEdipus, and Simonides 
Bore off the prize of verse from his com- 
peers, 
When each had numbered more than four- 
score years, 
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, 
Had but begun his ' Characters of Men.' 
Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightin- 
gales, 
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; 
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, 
Completed Faust when eighty years were 

past. 
These are indeed exceptions; but they 
show 250 

How far the gulf-stream of our youth may 
flow 



Into the arctic regions of our lives, 
Where little else than life itself survives. 

As the barometer foretells the storm 
While still the skies are clear, the weather 

warm, 
So something in us, as old age draws near, 
Betrays the pressure of the atmosphere. 
The nimble mercury, ere we are aware, 
Descends the elastic ladder of the air; 
The telltale blood in artery and vein 260 
Sinks from its higher levels in the brain; 
Whatever poet, orator, or sage 
May say of it, old age is still old age. 
It is the waning, not the crescent moon; 
The dusk of evening, not the blaze of 

noon; 
It is not strength, but weakness; not de- 
sire, 
But its surcease; not the fierce- heat of fire, 
The burning and consuming element, 
But that of ashes and of embers spent, 
In which some living sparks we still dis- 
cern, 270 
Enough to warm, but not enough to burn. 

What then ? Shall we sit idly down and 

say 
The night hath come ; it is no longer day ? 
The night hath not yet come; we are not 

quite 
Cut off from labor by the failing light; 
' Something remains for us to do or dare ; 
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear; 
Not CEdipus Coloneus, or Greek Ode, 
Or tales of pilgrims that one morning rode 
Out of the gateway of the Tabard Inn, 280 
But other something, would we but begin; 
For age is opportunity no less 
Than youth itself, though in another dress, 
And as the evening twilight fades away 
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day. 
1874. 1875. 



THE HERONS OF ELMWOOD 1 

Warm and still is the summer night, 
As here by the river's brink I wander; 

White overhead are the stars, and white 
The glimmering lamps on the hillside 
yonder. 

1 ' Elmwood ' was the home of James Russell Lowell, 
in Cambridge, about a half mile distant from the Long- 
fellow home. 



-5- 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Silent are all the sounds of day ; 

Nothing I hear but the chirp of crickets, 
And the cry of the herons winging their 
way 
O'er the poet's house in the Elmwood 
thickets. 

Call to him, herons, as slowly von pass 
To your roosts in the haunts of the exiled 
thrushes. 10 

Sing him the song of the green morass, 
And the tides that water the weeds and 
rushes. 

Sing him the mystical Song of the Hern, 
And the secret that battles our utmost 
seeking: 
For only a sound of lament we discern. 
And cannot interpret the words you are 
speaking. 

Sing of the air, and the wild delight 

Of wings that uplift and winds that up- 
hold you. 
The joy of freedom, the rapture of flight 
Through the drift of the floating mists 
that infold you; 20 

Of the landscape lying so far below, 

With its towns and rivers and desert 
places : 
And the splendor of light above, and the 
glow ' 

Of the limitless, blue, ethereal spaces. 

Ask him if songs of the Troubadours, 
Or of Minnesingers in old black-letter, 

Sound in his ears more sweet than yours, 
And if yours are not sweeter and wilder 
and better. 

Sing to him, say to him, here at his gate, 
Where the boughs of the stately elms are 
meeting, 30 

Some one bath lingered to meditate. 

And send him unseen this friendly greet- 



That many another hath done the same, 
Though not by a sound was the silence 
broken; 
The surest pledge of a deathless name 
Is the silent homage of thoughts un- 
spoken. 
1876. 1877. 



IN 



THE CHURCHYARD 
TARRY TOWN » 



AT 



Hkrk lies the gentle humorist, who died 
In the bright Indian Summer of his tame ! 
A simple stone, with but a date and name, 
Marks his secluded resting-place beside 
The river that he loved and glorified. 
Here in the autumn of his days he came. 
But the dry leaves of life were all aflame 
With tints that brightened and were multi- 
plied. 
How sweet a life was his; how sweet a death! 
Living, to wing with mirth the weary hours. 
Or with romantic tales the heart to cheer; 
Dying, to leave a memory like the breath 
Of Summers full of sunshine and of showers, 
A grief and gladness in the atmosphere. 
t876. 1877. 



THE POETS 

O YE dead Toots, who are living still 
Immortal in your verse, though life be fled, 
And ye, living Poets, who are dead 
Though ye are living, if neglect can kill, 
Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill, 
With drops of anguish falling fast and 

red 
From the sharp crown of thorns upon your 

head, 
Ye were not glad your errand to fulfil? 
Yes: for the gift and ministry of Song 
Have something in them so divinely sweet. 
It can assuage the bitterness of wrong; 
Not in the clamor of the Crowded street. 
Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng. 
But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat, 
1876. (1878J 



NATURE 

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, 
Leads by the hand her little child to bed, 
Half willing, half reluctant to be led. 
And leave bis broken playthings on the 

floor, 
Still gazing at them through the open door, 
Nor wholly reassured and comforted 
By promises of others in their stead, 

1 The burial-place of Washington Irving. On Long- 
fellow's great admiration for Irving, see the Lift\ vol. 
i, p. 12, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



253 



Which, though more splendid, may not 

please him more; 
So Nature deals with us, and takes away 
Our playthings one hy one, and hy the hand 
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go 
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, 
Being too full of sleep to understand 
How far the unknown transcends the what 

we know. 1 
1H7Q. 1877- 



VENICE 

White swan of cities, slumbering in thy 

nest 
So wonderfully built among the reeds 
Of the lagoon, that fences thee and feeds, 
As sayeth thy old historian and thy guest ! 
White water-lily, cradled and caressed 
By ocean streams, and from the silt and 

weeds 
Lifting thy golden filaments and seeds, 
Thy sun-illumined spires, thy crown and 

crest ! 
White phantom city, whose untrodden 

streets 
Are rivers, and whose pavements are the 

shifting 
Shadows of palaces and strips of sky; 
I wait to see thee vanish like the fleets 
Seen in mirage, or towers of cloud uplifting 
In air their unsubstantial masonry. 
1876. 1877. 



VICTOR AND VANQUISHED 

Afl one who long hath fled with panting 

breath 
Before his foe, bleeding and near to fall, 
I turn and set my back against the wall, 
And look thee in the face, triumphant 

Death. 
I call for aid, and no one answereth; 
I am alone with thee, who conquerest all; 



1 Foremost among American sonneteers stands 
Longfellow, the only member of the supreme group 
who uses this form with ease and dignity. Some score 
of examples — including the beautiful ' Divina Corn- 
media ' series — might be selected from his works and 
compared with twenty by any modern English poet, 
save Wordsworth, nor lose thereby for nobility of senti- 
ment and graciousness of diction. Wordsworth himself 
might have been proud to include ' Nature,' for in- 
stance, among his finest sonnets. (William Sharp, 
American Sonnets. ) 



Yet me thy threatening form doth not 

appall, 
For thou art but a phantom and a wraith. 
Wounded and weak, sword broken at the 

hilt, 
With armor shattered, and without a shield, 
I stand unmoved; do with me what thou 

wilt; 
I can resist no more, but will not yield. 
This is no tournament where cowaids tilt; 
The vanquished here is victor of the field. 
1876. (1882.) 



THE THREE SILENCES OF 
MOLINOS 

TO JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 2 

Three Silences there are: the first of 

speech, 
The second of desire, the third of thought; 
This is the lore a Spanish monk, distraught 
With dreams and visions, was the first to 

teach. 
These Silences, commingling each with 

each, 
Made up the perfect Silence that he sought 
And prayed for, and wherein at times he 

caught 
Mysterious sounds from realms beyond our 

reach. 
O thou, whose daily life anticipates 
The life to come, and in whose thought and 

word 
The spiritual world preponderates, 
Hermit of Amesbury ! thou too hast heard 
Voices and melodies from beyond the gates, 
And speakest only when thy soul Is stirred ! 
1877. (1878.) 



WAPENTAKE 8 

TO ALFRED TENNYSON 

Poet ! I come to touch thy lance with mine; 
Not as a knight, who on the listed field 

2 Written for Whittier's seventieth birthday. 

3 When any came to take the government of the 
Hundred or Wapentake in a day and place appointed, 
as they were accustomed to meete, all the better sort 
met him with lances, and he alighting from his horse, 
all rise up to him, and he setting or holding his lance 
upright, all the rest come with their lances, according 
to the auncient cuetome in confirming league and pub- 
like peace and obedience, and touch his lance or wea- 
pon, and thereof called Wapentake, for the Saxon or 



254 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Of tourney touched his adversary's shield 
In token of defiance, but in sign 
Of homage to the mastery, which is thine, 
In English song; nor will I keep con- 
cealed, 
And voiceless as a rivulet frost-congealed, 
My admiration for thy verse divine. 
Not of the howling dervishes of song, 
Who craze the brain with their delirious 

dance, 
Art thou, O sweet historian of the heart ! 
Therefore to thee the laurel-leaves be- 
long, 
To thee our love and our allegiance, 
For tby allegiance to the poet's art. 
1877. 1877. 



A BALLAD OF THE FRENCH 
FLEET * 

OCTOBER, 1746 

Mr. Thomas Prince loquitur. 

A fleet with flags arrayed 

Sailed from the port of Brest, 
And the Admiral's ship displayed 

The signal: ' Steer southwest.' 
For this Admiral D'Anville 

Had sworn by cross and crown 
To ravage with fire and steel 

Our helpless Boston Town. 

old English wapun is weapon, and tac, tactus, a touch- 
ing, thereby this meeting called Wapentake, or touch- 
ing of weapon, because that by that signe and ceremo- 
nie of touching weapon or the lance, they were sworne 
and confederate. — Master Lamberd in Minshew. 
(Longfellow.) 

1 After the capture of Louisburg in 1745 by the Mas- 
sachusetts colonists, the French m revenge sent a large 
fleet against Boston the next year ; but it was so dis- 
abled by storms that it had to put back. 

Mr. Thomas Prince was the pastor of the Old South 
Meeting-house. 

In 1S77, when the Old South was in danger of 
being destroyed, Rev. Edward Everett Hale wrote to 
Longfellow : ' You told me that if the spirit moved, 
you would try to sing us a song for the Old South 
Meeting-house. I have fouud such a charming story 
that I think it will really tempt you. I want at least 
to tell it to you. . . . The whole story of the fleet is 
in Hutchinson's Massachusetts, ii. 384, 385. The story 
of Prince and the prayer is in a tract in the College 
Library, which I will gladly send you, or Mr. Sibley 
will. I should think that the assembly in the meeting- 
house in the gale, and then the terror of the fleet when 
the gale struck them, would make a ballad — if the 
spirit moved ! ' 

Compare Whittier's ' In the Old South ' and ' The 
Landmarks,' and Holmes's ' An Appeal for the Old 
South.' 



There were rumors in the street, 

In the houses there was fear 10 

Of the coming of the fleet, 

And the danger hovering near. 
And while from mouth to mouth 

Spread the tidings of dismay, 
I stood in the Old South, 

Saying humbly: ' Let us pray ! 

' O Lord ! we would not advise ; 

But if in thy Providence 
A tempest should arise 

To drive the French Fleet hence, 20 
And scatter it far and wide, 

Or sink it hi the sea, 
We should be satisfied, 

And thine the glory be.' 

This was the prayer I made, 

For my soul was all on flame, 
And even as I prayed 

The answering tempest came ; 
It came with a mighty power, 

Shaking the windows and walls, 30 
And tolling the bell in the tower, 

As it tolls at funerals. 

The lightning suddenly 

Unsheathed its flaming sword, 
And I cried: ' Stand still, and see 

The salvation of the Lord ! ' 
The heavens were black with cloud, 

The sea was white with hail, 
And ever more fierce and loud 

Blew the October gale. 40 

The fleet it overtook, 

And the broad sails in the van 
Like the tents of Cushan shook, 

Or the curtains of Midian. 
Down on the reeling decks 

Crashed the o'erwhelming seas; 
Ah, never were there wrecks 

So pitiful as these ! 

Like a potter's vessel broke 

The great ships of the line; 50 

They were carried away as a smoke, 

Or sank like lead in the brine. 
O Lord ! before thy path 

They vanished and ceased to be, 
When thou didst walk in wrath 

With thine horses through the sea ! 
1877. 1877. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



2 55 



SONG 

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest; 

Home-keeping hearts are happiest, 

For those that wander they know not 

where 
Are full of trouble and full of care; 
To stay at home is best. 

Weary and homesick and distressed, 
They wander east, they wander west, 
And are baffled and beaten and blown 

about 
By the winds of the wilderness of doubt: 
To stay at home is best. 

Then stay at home, my heart, and rest; 
The bird is safest in its nest; 
O'er all that flutter their wings and fly 
A hawk is hovering in the sky; 

To stay at home is best. 
1877. 1878. 



FROM MY ARM-CHAIR 

TO THE CHILDREN OF CAMBRIDGE 

WHO PRESENTED TO ME, ON MY SEVENTY- 
SECOND BIRTHDAY, FEBRUARY 2J, 1879, THIS 
CHAIR MADE FROM THE WOOD OF THE VIL- 
LAGE BLACKSMITH'S CHESTNUT TREE. 1 

Am I a king, that I should call my own 

This splendid ebon throne ? 
Or by what reason, or what right divine, 

Can I proclaim it mine ? 

Only, perhaps, by right divine of song 

It may to me belong; 
Only because the spreading chestnut tree 

Of old was sung by me. 

Well I remember it in all its prime, 

When in the summer-time 10 

The affluent foliage of its branches made 
A cavern of cool shade. 

There, by the blacksmith's forge, beside 
the street, 
Its blossoms white and sweet 

1 For an account of the chair, with its inscriptions, 
see the Hfe, vol. iii, pp. 446^448. Longfellow gave 
orders that every child who wished to see the chair 
and sit in it should be allowed to do so ; and had a 
large number of copies of this poem printed, one of 
which was given to each child who wished it. 



Enticed the bees, until it seemed alive, 
And murmured like a hive. 

And when the winds of autumn, with a 
shout, 
Tossed its great arms about, 
The shining chestnuts, bursting from the 
sheath, 
Dropped to the ground beneath. 20 

And now some fragments of its branches 
bare, 
Shaped as a stately chair, 
Have by my hearthstone found a home at 
last, 
And whisper of the past. 

The Danish king could not in all his 
pride 

Repel the ocean tide, 
But, seated in this chair, I can in rhyme 

Roll back the tide of Time. 

I see again, as one in vision sees, 

The blossoms and the bees, 30 

And hear the children's voices shout and 
call, 
And the brown chestnuts fall. 

I see the smithy with its fires aglow, 

I hear the bellows blow, 
And the shrill hammers on the anvil beat 

The iron white with heat ! 

And thus, dear children, have ye made for 
me 
This day a jubilee, 
And to my more than threescore years and 
ten 
Brought back my youth again. 40 

The heart hath its own memory, like the 
mind, 
And in it are enshrined 
The precious keepsakes, into which is 
wrought 
The giver's loving thought. 

Only your love and your remembrance 
could 
Give life to this dead wood, 
And make these branches, leafless now so 
long, 
Blossom again in song. 
1879. 1879. 



256 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



ROBERT BURNS 1 

I see amid the fields of Ayr 

A ploughman, who, in foul and fair, 

Sings at his task 
So clear, we know not if it is 
The laverock's song we hear, or his, 

Nor care to ask. 

For him the ploughing of those fields 
A more ethereal harvest yields 

Than sheaves of gram; 
Songs flush with purple bloom the rye, 10 
The plover's call, the curlew's civ. 

Sing in his brain. 

Touched by his hand, the wayside weed 
Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed 

Beside the stream 
Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass 
And heather, where his footsteps pass, 

The brighter seem. 

He sings of love, whose flame illumes 
The darkness of lone cottage rooms; 20 

He feels the force, 
The treacherous imdertow and stress 
Of wayward passions, and no less 

The keen remorse. 

At moments, wrestling with his fate, 
His voice is harsh, but not with hate; 

The brush-wood, hung 
Above the tavern door, lets fall 
Its bitter leaf, its drop of gall 

Upon his tongue. 30 

But still the music of his song 
Rises o'er all, elate and strong; 

Its master-chords 
Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood, 
Its discords but an interlude 

Between the words. 

And then to die so young and leave 
Unfinished what he might achieve ! 

Yet better sure 
Is this, than wandering up and down, 40 
An old man in a country town, 

Infirm and poor. 

For now he haunts his native land 
As an immortal youth; his hand 

* Compare the poems on Burns by Whittier, Lowell 
(' At the Burns Centennial,' and ' Incident in a Bail- 
road Car'), Holmes, Wordsworth, etc. 



Giudes every plough; 
He sits beside each ingle-nook, 
His voice is in each rushing brook, 

Each rustling bough. 

His presence haunts this room to-night, 
A form of mingled mist and light 

From that far coast. 
Welcome beneath this roof of mine ! 
Welcome ! this vacant chair is thine, 

Dear guest aud ghost ! 
1879. 



1880. 



THE TIDE RISES, THE TIDE 
FALLS 

The tide rises, the tide falls, 
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls; 
Along the sea-sands damp and brown 
The traveller hastens toward the town, 
And the tide rises, the tide falls. 

Darkness settles on roofs and walls, 

But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls; 

The little waves, with their soft, white 

hands, 
Efface the footprints in the sands, 
And the tide rises, the tide falls. 

The morning breaks; the steeds in their 

stalls 
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls; 
The day returns, but nevermore 
Returns the traveller to the shore, 

And the tide rises, the tide falls. 
1879. (1880.) 



JUGURTHA 

How cold are thy baths, Apollo ! 

Cried the African monarch, the splendid, 

As down to his death in the hollow 

Dark dungeons of Rome he descended, 
Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended; 

How cold are thy baths, Apollo ! 

How cold are thy baths, Apollo ! 

Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended, 

As the vision, that lured him to follow, 
With the mist and the darkness blended, 
And the dream of his life was ended; 

How cold are thy baths, Apollo ! 

1S79. (1880.) 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



2 57 



THE CROSS OF SNOW' 

In the long, sleepless watches of the night, 
A gentle face — the face of one long dead — 
Looks at me from the wall, where round 

its head 
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. 
Here in this room she died; and soul more 

white 
Never through martyrdom of fire was led 
To its repose; nor can in books be read 
The legend of a life more henedight. 
There is a mountain in the distant West, 
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines 
Displays a cross of snow upon its side. 
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast 
These eighteen years, through all the chang- 
ing scenes 
And seasons, changeless since the day she 

died. 
1X7'.). 1886. 

NIGHT 

Into the darkness and hush of night 
Slowly the landscape sinks, and fades away, 
And with it fade the phantoms of the day, 
The ghosts of men and things, that haunt 

the light. 
The crowd, the clamor, the pursuit, the 

flight, 
The unprofitable splendor and display, 
The agitations, and the cares that prey 
Upon our hearts, all vanish out of sight. 
The better life begins; the world no more 
Molests us; all its records we erase 
From the dull commonplace book of our 

lives, 
That like a palimpsest is written o'er 
With trivial incidents of time and place, 
And lo ! the ideal, hidden beneath, revives. 
1879. (1880.) 

L'ENVOI 

THE POET AND HIS SONGS 

As the birds come in the spring, 
We know not from where; 

As the stars come at evening 
From depths of the air; 

As the rain comes from the cloud, 
And the brook from the ground^B 
1 See the note on ' Divina Commedia,' p. 240. 



As suddenly, low or loud, 
Out of silence a sound; 

As the grape comes to the vine, 

The fruit to the tree; 
As the wind comes to the pine, 

And the tide to the sea; 

As come the white sails of ships 

O'er the ocean's verge; 
As comes the smile to the lips, 

The foam to the surge ; 

So come to the Poet his songs, 

All hitherward blown 
From the misty realm, that belongs 

To the vast Unknown. 

His, and not his, are the lays 
He sings; and their fame 

Is his, and not his; and the praise 
And the pride of a name. 

For voices pursue him by day, 

And haunt him by night, 
And he listens, and needs must obey, 

When the Angel says, ' Write ! ' 
1880. 1880. 



POSSIBILITIES 2 

Where are the Poets, unto whom belong 
The Olympian heights; whose singing 

shafts were sent 
Straight to the mark, and not from bows 

half bent, 
But with the utmost tension of the thong ? 
Where are the stately argosies of song, 
Whose rushing keels made music as they 

went 
Sailing in search of some new continent, 
With all sail set, and steady winds and' 

strong ? 
Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, un- 
taught 
In schools, some graduate of the field or 

street, 
Who shall become a master of the art, 
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought, 
Fearless and first, and steering with his 

fleet 
For lands not yet laid down in any chart. 
1882. 1882. 

2 This is the last, but two, of Longfellow's poems. 



2 S 8 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



THE BELLS OF SAN BLAS 1 

What say the Bells of San Bias 
To the ships that southward pass 

From the harbor of Mazatlan ? 
To theni it is nothing more 
Than the sound of surf on the shore, — 

Nothing more to master or man. 

But to me, a dreamer of dreams, 
To whom what is and what seems 

Are often one and the same, — 
The Bells of San Bias to me 10 

Have a strange, wild melody, 

And are something more than a name. 

For bells are the voice of the church; 
They have tones that touch and search 

The hearts of young and old; 
One sound to all, yet each 
Lends a meaning to their speech, 

And the meaning is manifold. 

They are a voice of the Past, 

Of an age that is fading fast, 20 

Of a power austere and grand; 
When the flag of Spain unfurled 
Its folds o'er this western world, 

And the priest was lord of the land. 

The chapel that once looked down 
On the little seaport town 

Has crumbled into the dust; 
And on oaken beams below 
The bells swing to and fro, 

And are green with mould and rust. 30 

'Is, then, the old faith dead,' 
They say, 'and in its stead 

1 Longfellow's last poem, written (except the con- 
cluding stanza) on March 12, 1882. The subject was 
suggested by a few lines of an article on Mexico, in 
Harper's Magazine for March, telling of the destroyed 
convent of San Bias (on the Pacific Coast) and its bells. 



Is some new faith proclaimed, 
That we are forced to remain 
Naked to sun and rain, 

Unsheltered and ashamed ? 

' Once in our tower aloof 
We rang over wall and roof 

Our warnings and our complaints; 
And round about us there 4 o 

The white doves filled the air, 

Like the white souls of- the saints. 

' The saints ! Ah, have they grown 
Forgetful of their own ? 

Are they asleep, or dead, 
That open to the sky 
Their ruined Missions lie, 

No longer tenanted ? 

' Oh, bring us back once more 

The vanished days of yore, 50 

When the world with faith was filled; 
Bring back the fervid zeal, 
The hearts of fire and steel, 

The hands that believe and build. 

' Then from our tower again 
We will send over land and main 

Our voices of command, 
Like exiled kings who return 
To their thrones, and the people learn 

That the Priest is lord of the land ! ' 60 

O Bells of San Bias, in vain 
Ye call back the Past again ! 

The Past is deaf to your prayer; 
Out of the shadows of night 
The world rolls into light. 

It is daybreak everywhere. 2 
1882. 1882. 

2 These were Longfellow's last verses. He added 
the concluding stanza of the poem, written in a firm 
hand, and dated, only nine days before his death. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



ST 



THE VAUDOIS TEACHER 1 

' O lady fair, these silks of mine are beau- 
tiful and rare, — 

The richest web of the Indian loom, which 
beauty's queen might wear; 

And my pearls are pure as thy own fair neck, 
with whose radiant light they vie ; 

I have brought them with me a weary way, 
— will my gentle lady buy ? ' 

The lady smiled on the worn old man 

through the dark and clustering 

curls 
Which veiled her brow, as she bent to view 

his silks and glittering pearls ; 
And she placed their price in the old man's 

hand and lightly turned away, 
But she paused at the wanderer's earnest 

call, — ' My gentle lady, stay ! 

1 This poem was suggested by the account given of 
the manner in which the Waldenses disseminated their 
principles among the Catholic gentry. They gained 
access to the house through their occupation as ped- 
dlers of silks, jewels, and trinkets. ' Having disposed 
of some of their goods,' it is said by a writer who 
quotes the inquisitor Rainerus Sacco, ' they cautiously 
intimated that they had commodities far more valuable 
than these, inestimable jewels, which they would show 
if they could be protected from the clergy. They 
would then give their purchasers a Bible or Testament, 
and thereby many were deluded into heresy.' (Whit- 
tier.) 

The poem was early translated into French and 
Italian, and became a favorite among all the Wal- 
denses, who however did not know of its American 
origin. When the Waldensian synod learned of this, in 
1875, they instructed their Moderator to send Whittier 
a letter of thanks and appreciation. This letter, which 
Whittier greatly prized, began : — 

' Dear and Honored Brother, — I have recently 
learned by a letter from my friend, J. C. Fletcher, now 
residing in Naples, that you are the author of the 
charming little poem, "The Vaudois Colporteur," which 
was translated several years ago in French by Profes- 
sor de Felice", of Montauban, and of which there is also 
an excellent Italian translation, made by M. Giovanni 
Nicolini, Professor of our College at Torre" Pellice". 
There is not a single Vaudois who has received any 
education who cannot repeat from memory " The Vau- 
dois Colporteur " in French or in Italian.' 

See the whole letter, in Pickard's Life of Whittier, 
vol. ii, pp. 607-608. Whittier's reply (given in the Life, 
pp. 608-609) was translated into Italian and circulated 
throughout Italy. 



' O lady fair, I have yet a gem which a 

purer lustre flings, 
Than the diamond Hash of the jewelled 

crown on the lofty brow of kings; 
A wonderful pearl of exceeding price, 

whose virtue shall not decay, 
Whose light shall be as a spell to thee and 

a blessing on thy way ! ' 

The lady glanced at the mirroring steel 

where her form of grace was seen, 
Where her eye shone clear, and her dark 

locks waved their clasping pearls 

between ; 
' Bring forth thy pearl of exceeding worth, 

thou traveller gray and old, 
And name the price of thy precious gem, 

and my page shall count thy gold.' 

The cloud went off from the pilgrim's 

brow, as a small and meagre book, 
Unchased with gold or gem of cost, from 

his folding robe he took ! 
' Here, lady fair, is the pearl of price, may 

it prove as such to thee ! 
Nay, keep thy gold — I ask it not, for the 

word of God is free ! ' 

The hoary traveller went his way, but the 

gift he left behind 
Hath had its pure and perfect work on that 

highborn maiden's mind, 
And she hath turned from the pride of sin 

to the lowliness of truth, 
And given her human heart to God in its 

beautiful hour of youth ! 

And she hath left the gray old halls, where 

an evil faith had power, 
The courtly knights of her father's train, 

and the maidens of her bower; 
And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales by 

lordly feet untrod, 
Where the poor and needy of earth are 

rich in the perfect love of God ! 

1830. 



260 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



TO WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON 1 

Champion of those who groan beneath 

Oppression's iron hand: 
In view of penury, hate, and death, 

I see thee fearless stand. 
Still bearing up thy lofty brow, 

In the steadfast strength of truth, 
In manhood sealing well the vow 

And promise of thy youth. 

Go on, for thou hast chosen well; 

On in the strength of God ! IO 

Long as one human heart shall swell 

Beneath the tyrant's rod. 
Speak in a slumbering nation's ear, 

1 The earliest poem in this division [the Anti-Slavery 
Poems] was my youthful tribute to the great reformer 
when, himself a young man, he was sounding his trum- 
pet in Essex County. (Whittiek.) 

On Whittier's early relations with Garrison, see 
Pickard's Life of Whittle); pp. 50-52. See also the arti- 
cle on Garrison in Whittier's Prose Works, iii, 189-192. 

Whittier's anti-slavery poems must necessarily oc- 
cupy a large place in any selection at all representative 
of his work. For more than thirty years they formed 
the chief part of his poetical production. Even to-day 
no one can fail to recognize the intense sincerity and 
strength of such poems as ' Expostulation,' ' Massachu- 
setts to Virginia,' ' Ichabod,' ' The Rendition,' etc. On 
his role in the anti-slavery movement, and the sacrifices 
which he made to it, see especially Professor Carpen- 
ter's Whittier, chapters iv and v. See also the notes on 
' Ichabod ' and on Lowell's ' Stanzas on Freedom,' and 
the passage on Whittier in Lowell's 'Fable for Critics.' 

After the war Whittier was one of the most earnest 
workers against sectional prejudice in the North. It 
was largely through his efforts that the vote of censure 
against Sumner, who had advocated the return of all 
Confederate flags, was repealed. But he would never 
consent that the anti-slavery poems should be omitted 
from any edition of his works. His attitude is well 
shown by a passage in Pickard's Life of Whittier, with 
its significant quotation from one of his letters : — 

' Some other American poets, even those who had 
written bravely against the system of slavery, consented 
to leave out of their collected works such poems as 
would be offensive to their Southern readers. Whittier 
never made this concession . . . and issued no edition 
of his works that did not present him as an uncompro- 
mising foe of slavery. But it was easy to see that his 
enmity to the institution did not extend to individuals. 
All his life he numbered among his personal friends 
not only apologists for slavery, but slaveholders them- 
selves. In replying to the charge of a Southern paper 
that he was an enemy of the South, he once wrote to a 
friend : " I was never an enemy to the South or the 
holders of slaves. I inherited from my Quaker ances- 
try hatred of slavery, but not of slaveholders. To every 
call of suffering or distress in the South I have promptly 
responded to the extent of my ability. I was one of the 
very first to recognize the rare gift of the Carolinian poet 
Timrod, and I was the intimate friend of the lamented 
Paul H. Hayne, though both wrote fiery lyrics against 
the North." ' 

This poem was read at the Convention in Philadelphia 
which founded the American Anti-Slavery Society, in 
December, 1833. Whittier was a delegate from Massa- 
chusetts. ' I set a higher value on my name as appended 
to the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833,' he said in later 
life, ' than on the title-page of any book.' 



As thou hast ever spoken, 
Until the dead in sin shall hear, 
The fetter's link be broken ! 

I love thee with a brother's love, 

I feel my pulses thrill, 
To mark thy spirit soar above 

The cloud of human ill. 2 o 

My heart hath leaped to answer thine, 

And echo back thy words, 
As leaps the warrior's at the shine 

And flash of kindred swords ! 

They tell me thou art rash and vain, 

A searcher after fame ; 
That thou art striving but to gam 

A long-enduring name ; 
That thou hast nerved the Afric's hand 

And steeled the Afric's heart, 3 o 

To shake aloft his vengeful brand, 

And rend his chain apart. 

Have I not known thee well, and read 

Thy mighty purpose long ? 
And watched the trials which have made 

Thy human spirit strong ? 
And shall the slanderer's demon breath 

Avail with one like me, 
To dim the sunshine of my faith 

And earnest trust in thee ? 4 o 

Go on, the dagger's point may glare 

Amid thy pathway's gloom; 
The fate which sternly threatens there 

Is glorious martyrdom ! 
Then onward with a martyr's zeal; 

And wait thy sure reward 
When man to man no more shall kneel, 

And God alone be Lord ! 

1831. 

RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE 2 

O Mother Earth ! upon thy lap 
Thy weary ones receiving, 

And o'er them, silent as a dream, 
Thy grassy mantle weaving, 

2 In an article published in the Essex Gazette, in 
July, 1833, less than a month after Randolph's death, 
Whittier says : 'The late noble example of the eloquent 
statesman of Roanoke, the manumission of his slaves, 
speaks volumes to his political friends. In the last hour 
of his existence, when his soul was struggling from its 
broken tenement, his latest effort was the confirmation 
of this generous act of a former period. Light rest the 
turf upon him, beneath his patrimonial oaks ! The 
prayers of many hearts made happy by his benevolence 
shall linger over his grave, and bless it.' The poem was 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



26] 



Fold softly in thy long embrace 
That heart so worn and broken, 

And cool its pulse of fire beneath 
Thy shadows old and oaken. 

Shut out from him the bitter word 

And serpent hiss of scorning ; ■ 10 

Nor let the storms of yesterday 

Disturb his quiet morning. 
Breathe over him forgetfulness 

Of all save deeds of kindness, 
And, save to smiles of grateful eyes, 

Press down his lids in blindness. 

There, where with living ear and eye 

He heard Potomac's flowing, 
And, through his tall ancestral trees, 

Saw autumn's sunset glowing, 20 

He sleeps, still looking to the west, 

Beneath the dark wood shadow, 
As if he still would see the sun 

Sink down on wave and meadow. 

Bard, Sage, and Tribune ! in himself 

All moods of mind contrasting, — 
The tenderest wail of human woe, 

The scorn like lightning blasting; 
The pathos which from rival eyes 

Unwilling tears could summon, 30 

The stinging taunt, the fiery burst 

Of hatred scarcely human ! 

Mirth, sparkling like a diamond shower, 

From lips of life-long sadness; 
Clear picturings of majestic thought 

Upon a ground of madness; 
And over all Romance and Song 

A classic beauty throwing, 
And laurelled Clio at his side 

Her storied pages showing. 4 o 

All parties feared him : each in turn 

Beheld its schemes disjointed, 
As right or left his fatal glance 

And spectral finger pointed. 
Sworn foe of Cant, he smote it down 

With trenchant wit unsparing, 
And, mocking, rent with ruthless hand 

The robe Pretence was wearing. 

Too honest or too proud to feign 

A love he never cherished, 5 o 

probably written, according to Mr. Pickard, at the same 
time as the article. It was printed in the first number 
of the National Era issued after Whittier became cor- 
responding editor, in January, 1847. 



Beyond Virginia's border line 

His patriotism perished. 
While others hailed in distant skies 

Our eagle's dusky pinion, 
He only saw the mountain bird 

Stoop o'er his Old Dominion ! 

Still through each change of fortune 
strange, 

Racked nerve, and brain all burning, 
His loving faith in Mother-land 

Knew never shade of turning ; 60 

By Britain's lakes, by Neva's tide, 

Whatever sky was o'er him, 
He heard her rivers' rushing sound* 

Her blue peaks rose before kim. 

He held his slaves, yet made withal 

No false and vain pretences, 
Nor paid a lying priest to seek 

For Scriptural defences. 
His harshest words of proud rebuke, 

His bitterest taunt and scorning, 7 o 

Fell fire-like on the Northern brow 

That bent to him in fawning. 

He held his slaves; yet kept the while 

His reverence for the Human; 
In the dark vassals of his will 

He saw but Man and Woman ! 
No hunter of God's outraged poor 

His Roanoke valley entered; 
No trader in the souls of men 

Across his threshold ventured. 80 

And when the old and wearied man 

Lay down for his last sleeping, 
And at his side, a slave no more, 

His brother-man stood weeping, 
His latest thought, his latest breath, 

To Freedom's duty giving, 
With failing tongue and trembling hand 

The dying blest the living. 

Oh, never bore his ancient State 

A truer son or braver ! go 

None trampling with a calmer scorn 

On foreign hate or favor. 
He knew her faults, yet never stooped 

His proud and manly feeling 
To poor excuses of the wrong 

Or meanness of concealing. 

But none beheld with clearer eye 
The plague-spot o'er her spreading, 



262 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



None heard more sure the steps of Doom 
Along her future treading. 100 

For her as for himself he spake, 
When, his gaunt frame upbracing, 

He traced with dying hand ' Remorse ! ' 
And perished in the tracing. 

As from the grave where Henry sleeps, 

From Vernon's weeping willow, 
And from the grassy pall which hides 

The Sage of Monticello, 
So from the leaf-strewn burial-stone 

Of Randolph's lowly dwelling, no 

Virginia! o'er thy land of slaves 

A warning voice is swelling ! 

And hark ! from thy deserted fields 

Are sadder warnings spoken, 
From quenched hearths, where thy exiled 
sons 

Their household gods have broken. 
The curse is on thee, — wolves for men, 

And briers for corn-sheaves giving ! 
Oh, more than all thy dead renown 

Were now one hero living ! 120 

1S33 ? 1847. 

EXPOSTULATION! 

Our fellow-countrymen in chains ! 

Slaves, in a land of light and law ! 
Slaves, crouching on the very plains 

Where rolled the storm of Freedom's war! 
A groan from Eutaw's haunted wood, 

A wail where Camden's martyrs fell, 

1 Dr. Charles Follen, a German patriot, who had 
come to America for the freedom which was denied 
him in his native land, allied himself with the aboli- 
tionists, and at a convention of delegates from all the 
anti-slavery organizations in New England, held at 
Boston in May, 1834, was chairman of a committee to 
prepare an address to the people of New England. 
Toward the close of the address occurred the passage 
which suggested these lines : — 

' The despotism which pur fathers could not bear in 
their native country is expiring, and the sword of jus- 
tice in her reformed hands has applied its exterminat- 
ing edge to slavery. Shall the United States — the free 
United States, which could not bear the bonds of a 
king — cradle the bondage which a king is abolishing ? 
Shall a Republic be less free than a Monarchy ? Shall 
we, in the vigor and buoyancy of our manhood, be less 
energetic in righteousness than a kingdom in its age ? ' 
(Whittier.) 

The original title of the poem was simply ' Stanzas,' 
and later it was called ' Follen.' Garrison said of it 
when it first appeared : — 

' Our gifted Brother Whittier has again seized the 
great trumpet of Liberty, and blown a blast that shall 
ring from Maine to the Rocky Mountains.' 

The poem became popular throughout the North and 
West, and was for many years a favorite at declamation 
contests and anti-slavery meetings. 



By every shrine of patriot blood, 

From Moultrie's wall and Jasper's well ! 

By storied hill and hallowed grot, 

By mossy wood and marshy glen, jo 

Whence rang of old the rifle-shot, 

And hurrying shout of Marion's men ! 
The groan of breaking hearts is there, 

The falling lash, the fetter's clank ! 
Slaves, slaves are breathing in that air 

Which old De Kalb and Sumter drank ! 

What ho ! our countrymen hi chains ! 

The whip on woman's shrinking flesh ! 
Our soil yet reddening with the stains 

Caught from her scourging, warm and 

fresh ! 20 

What ! mothers from their children riven ! 

What ! God's own image bought and sold ! 
Americans to market driven, 

And bartered as the brute for gold ! 

Speak ! shall their agony of prayer 

Come thrilling to our hearts hi vain ? 
To us whose fathers scorned to bear 

The paltry menace of a chain ; 
To us, whose boast is loud and long 

Of holy Liberty and Light ; 30 

Say, shall these writhing slaves of Wrong 

Plead vainly for their plundered Right ? 

What ! shall we send, with lavish breath, 

Our sympathies across the wave, 
Where Manhood, on the field of death, 

Strikes for his freedom or a grave ? 
Shall prayers go up, and hymns be sung 

For Greece, the Moslem fetter spurning, 
And millions hail with pen and tongue 

Our light on all her altars burning ? 40 

Shall Belgium feel, and gallant France, 

By Vendome's pile and Schoenbrun's wall, 
And Poland, gasping on her lance, 

The impulse of our cheering call ? 
And shall the slave, beneath our eye, 

Clank o'er our fields his hateful chain ? 
And toss his fettered arms on high, 

And groan for Freedom's gift, in vain ? 

Oh, say, shall Prussia's banner be 

A refuge for the stricken slave ? 50 

And shall the Russian serf go free 
By Baikal's lake and Neva's wave ? 

And shall the wintry-bosomed Dane 
Relax the iron hand of pride, 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



263 



And bid his bondmen east the chain 
From fettered soul and limb aside ? 

Shall every flap of England's flag 

Proclaim that all around are free, 
From farthest Ind to each blue crag 

That beetles o'er the Western Sea ? 60 
And shall we scoff at Europe's kings, 

When Freedom's fire is dim with us, 
And round our country's altar clings 

The damning shade of Slavery's curse ? 

Go, let us ask of Constantine 

To loose his grasp on Poland's throat; 
And beg the lord of Mahmoud's line 

To spare the struggling Suliote; 
Will not the scorching answer come 

From turbaned Turk, and scornful Russ : 
' Go, loose your fettered slaves at home, 71 

Then turn and ask the like of us ! ' 

Just God ! and shall we calmly rest, 

The Christian's scorn, the heathen's mirth, 
Content to live the lingering jest 

And by-word of a mocking Earth ? 
Shall our own glorious land retain 

That curse which Europe scorns to bear ? 
Shall our own brethren drag the chain 

Which not even Russia's menials wear ? 

Up, then, in Freedom's manly part, 81 

From graybeard eld to fiery youth, 
And on the nation's naked heart 

Scatter the living coals of Truth ! 
Up ! while ye slumber, deeper yet 

The shadow of our fame is growing ! 
Up ! while ye pause, our sun may set 

In blood aroimd our altars flowing ! 

Oh ! rouse ye, ere the storm comes forth, 

The gathered wrath of God and man, 90 
Like that which wasted Egypt's earth, 

When hail and fire above it ran. 
Hear ye no warnings in the air ? 

Feel ye no earthquake underneath ? 
Up, up ! why will ye slumber where 

The sleeper only wakes in death ? 

Rise now for Freedom ! not in strife 
Like that your sterner fathers saw, 

The awful waste of human life, 

The glory and the guilt of war: 100 

But break the chain, the yoke remove, 
And smite to earth Oppression's rod, 



With those mild arms of Truth and Love, 
Made mighty through the living God ! 

Down let the shrine of Moloch sink, 

And leave no traces where it stood; 
Nor longer let its idol drink 

His daily cup of human blood; 
But rear another altar there, 

To Truth and Love and Mercy given, no 
And Freedom's gift, and Freedom's prayer, 

Shall call an answer down from Heaven ! 
1834. 1834. 

THE FAREWELL 1 

OF A VIRGINIA SLAVE MOTHER TO HER 
DAUGHTERS SOLD INTO SOUTHERN 
BONDAGE 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings, 
Where the noisome insect stings, 
Where the fever demon strews 
Poison with the falling dews, 
Where the sickly sunbeams glare 
Through the hot and misty air; 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 10 

From Virginia's hills and waters; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
There no mother's eye is near them, 
There no mother's ear can hear them; 
Never, when the torturing lash 
Seams their back with many a gash, 
Shall a mother's kindness bless them, 
Or a mother's arms caress them. 20 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
Oh, when weary, sad, and slow, 
From the fields at night they go, 
Faint with toil, and racked with pain, 
To their cheerless homes again, 30 

There no brother's voice shall greet them, 

1 Of all Whittier's anti-slavery poems this approaches 
nearest to the half-romantic style of Longfellow's 
' Poems on Slavery.' 



264 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



There no father's welcome meet them. 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
From the tree whose shadow lay 
On their childhood's place of play; 40 
From the cool spring where they drank; 
Rock, and hill, and rivulet bank; 
From the solemn house of prayer, 
And the holy counsels there; 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone; 50 
Toiling throtigh the weary day, 
And at night the spoiler's prey. 
Oh, that they had earlier died, 
Sleeping calmly, side by side, 
Where the tyrant's power is o'er, 
And the fetter galls no more ! 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 
From Virginia's hills and waters; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 60 

Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
By the holy love He beareth; 
By the bruised reed He spareth; 
Oh, may He, to whom alone 
All their cruel wrongs are known, 
Still their hope and refuge prove, 
With a more than mother's love. 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone, 70 
From Virginia's hills and waters; 
Woe is me, my stolen daughters ! 

1838. 

THE MERRIMAC 

Stream of my fathers ! sweetly still 
The sunset rays thy valley fill ; 
Poured slantwise down the long defile, 
Wave, wood, and spire beneath them smile. 
I see the winding Powow fold 
The green hill in its belt of gold, 
And following down its wavy line, 



Its sparkling waters blend with thine. 
There 's not a tree upon thy side, 
Nor rock, which thy returning tide 10 

As yet hath left abrupt and stark 
Above thy evening water-mark; 
No calm cove with its rocky hem, 
No isle whose emerald swells begem 
Thy broad, smooth current; not a sail 
Bowed to the freshening ocean gale; 
No small boat with its busy oars, 
Nor gray wall sloping to thy shores; 
Nor farm-house with its maple shade, 
Or rigid poplar colonnade, 20 

But lies distinct and full in sight, 
Beneath this gush of sunset light. 
Centuries ago, that harbor-bar, 
Stretching its length of foam afar, 
And Salisbury's beach of shining sand, 
And yonder island's wave-smoothed strand. 
Saw the adventurer's tiny sail, 
Flit, stooping from the eastern gale; 
And o'er these woods and waters broke 
The cheer from Britain's hearts of oak, 30 
As brightly on the voyager's eye 
Weary of forest, sea, and sky, 
Breaking the dull continuous wood, 
The Merrimac rolled down his flood; 
Mingling that clear pellucid brock, 
Which channels vast Agioochook 
When spring-time's sun and shower unlock 
The frozen fountains of the rock, 
And more abundant waters given 
From that pure lake, ' The Smile of 
Heaven,' 1 4 o 

Tributes from vale and mountain-side, — 
With ocean's dark, eternal tide ! 

On yonder rocky cape, which braves 
The stormy challenge of the waves, 
Midst tangled vine and dwarfish wood, 
The hardy Anglo-Saxon stood,' 2 
Planting upon the topmost crag 
The staff of England's battle-flag; 
And, while from out its heavy fold 
Saint George's crimson cross unrolled, 50 
Midst roll of drum and trumpet blare, 
And weapons brandishing in air, 
He gave to that lone promontory 8 

1 Winnipesaukee. The Indian name was thought to 
mean ' The Smile of the Great Spirit.' See ' The Lake- 
side ' and ' Summer by the Lakeside.' 

2 The celebrated Captain Smith, after resigning the 
government of the Colony in Virginia, in his capacity 
of 'Admiral of New England.' irf.de a careful survey 
of the coast from Penobscot to Cape Cod, in the sum- 
mer of 1614. (Whitttbr.) 

3 Captain Smith gave to the promontory now called 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



265 



The sweetest name in all his story; 
Of her, the flower of Islam's daughters, 
Whose harems look on Stamboul's wa- 
ters, — 
Who, when the chance of war had bound 
The Moslem chain his limbs around, 
Wreathed o'er with silk that iron chain, 
Soothed with her smiles his hours of pain, 
And fondly to her youthful slave 61 

A dearer gift than freedom gave. 

But look ! the yellow light no more 
Streams down on wave and verdant shore; 
And clearly on the calm air swells 
The twilight voice of distant bells. 
From Ocean's bosom, white and thin, 
The mists come slowly rolling in; 
Hills, woods, the river's rocky rim, 
Amidst the sea-like vapor swim, 7 o 

While yonder lonely coast-light, set 
Within its wave-washed minaret, 
Half quenched, a beamless star and pale, 
Shines dimly through its cloudy veil ! 

Home of my fathers ! — I have stood 

Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood: 

Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade 

Along his frowning Palisade; 

Looked down the Appalachian peak 

On Juniata's silver streak; 80 

Have seen along his valley gleam 

The Mohawk's softly winding stream; 

The level light of sunset shine 

Through broad Potomac's hem of pine; 

And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner 

Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna; 

Yet wheresoe'er his step might be7 

Thy wandering child looked back to thee ! 

Heard in his dreams thy river's sound 

Of murmuring on its pebbly bound, 90 

The unf orgotten swell and roar 

Of waves on thy familiar shore ; 

And saw, amidst the curtained gloom 

And quiet of his lonely room, 

Thy sunset scenes before him pass; 

As, in Agrippa's magic glass, 

The loved and lost arose to view, 

Remembered groves in greenness grew, 

Bathed still in childhood's morning dew, 

Along whose bowers of beauty swept 100 

Whatever Memory's mourners wept, 

Cape Ann, the name of Tragabizanda, in memory of 
his young and beautiful mistress of that name, who, 
while he was a captive at Constantinople, like Desde- 
mona, 'loved him for the dangers he had passed.' 
(Whittiee.) 



Sweet faces, which the charnel kept, 
Young, gentle eyes, which long had slept; 
And while the gazer leaned to trace, 
More near, some dear familiar face, 
He wept to find the vision flown, — 
A phantom and a dream alone I 

1841. 

MEMORIES 1 

A beautiful and happy girl, 2 

With step as light as summer air, 
Eyes glad with smiles, and brow of pearl, 
Shadowed by many a careless curl 

Of unconnned and flowing hair ; 
A seeming child in everything, 

Save thoughtful brow and ripening 
charms, 
As Nature wears the smile of Spring 

When sinking into Summer's arms. 

A mind rejoicing in the light 10 

Which melted through its graceful 
bower, 
Leaf after leaf, dew-moist and bright, 
And stainless in its holy white, 

Unfolding like a morning flower : 
A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute, 

With every breath of feeling woke, 
And, even when the tongue was mute, 

From eye and lip in music spoke. 

How thrills once more the lengthening 
chain 

Of memory, at the thought of thee ! 20 
Old hopes which long in dust have lain, 
Old dreams, come thronging back again, 

And boyhood lives again in me; 
I feel its glow upon my cheek, 

1 It was not without thought and deliberation, that 
in 1888 he directed this poem to be placed at the head 
of his Poems Subjective and Reminiscent. He had never 
before publicly acknowledged how much of his heart 
waB wrapped up in this delightful play of poetic fancy. 
The poem was written in 1841, and although the ro- 
mance it embalms lies far back of this date, possibly 
there is a heart still beating which fully understands 
its meaning. The biographer can do no more than 
make this suggestion, which has the sanction of the 
poet's explicit word. To a friend who told him that 
Memories was her favorite poem, he said, ' I love it 
too; but I hardly knew whether to publish it, it was 
so personal and near my heart.' (Packard's Life of 
Whiltier, vol. i, p. 276.) 

See also Pickard's Whittier-Land, pp. 66-67, and the 
poem ' My Playmate.' 

2 Whittier was especially fond of these two opening 
stanzas. He had already used the lines to describe an 
ideal character in ' Moll Pitcher,' published in 1832, but 
not now included in his collected works. 



2 66 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Its fulness of the heart is mine, 
As when I leaned to hear thee speak, 
Or raised my douhtful eye to thine. 

I hear again thy low replies, 

I feel thy arm within my own, 
And timidly again uprise 30 

The fringed lids of hazel eyes, 

With soft brown tresses overblown. 
Ah ! memories of sweet summer eves, 

Of moonlit wave and willowy way, 
Of stars and flowers, and dewy leaves, 

And smiles and tones more dear than 
they! 

Ere this, thy quiet eye hath smiled 

My picture of thy youth to see, 
When, half a woman, half a child, 
Thy very artlessness beguiled, 40 

And folly's self seemed wise in thee; 
I too can smile, when o'er that hour 

The lights of memory backward stream, 
Yet feel the while that manhood's power 

Is vainer than my boyhood's dream. 

Years have passed on, and left their trace, 

Of graver care and deeper thought; 
And unto me the calm, cold face 
Of manhood, and to thee the grace 

Of woman's pensive beauty brought. 50 
More wide, perchance, for blame than 
praise, 

The school-boy's humble name has flown; 
Thine, in the green and quiet ways 

Of unobtrusive goodness known. 

And wider yet in thought and deed 

Diverge our pathways, one in youth; 
Thine the Genevan's sternest creed, 
While answers to my spirit's need 

The Derby dalesman's simple truth. 
For thee, the priestly rite and prayer, 60 

And holy day, and solemn psalm; 
For me, the silent reverence where 

My brethren gather, slow and calm. 

Yet hath thy spirit left on me 

An impress Time has worn not out, 
And something of myself in thee, 
A shadow from the past, I see, 

Lingering, even yet, thy way about; 
Not wholly can the heart unlearn 

That lesson of its better hours, 70 

Not yet has Time's dull footstep worn 

To common dust that path of flowers. 



Thus, while at times before our eyes 

The shadows melt, and fall apart, 
And, smiling through them, round us lies 
The warm light of our morning skies, — 

The Indian Summer of the heart ! 
In secret sympathies of mind, 

In founts of feeling which retain 
Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may find 80 

Our early dreams not wholly vain ! 
1841. 1843. 

HAMPTON BEACH 

The sunlight glitters keen and bright, 

Where, miles away, 
Lies stretching to my dazzled sight 
A luminous belt, a misty light, 
Beyond the dark pine bluffs and wastes of 
sandy gray. 

The tremulous shadow of the Sea ! 

Against its ground 
Of silvery light, rock, hill, and tree, 
Still as a picture, clear and free, 
With varying outline mark the coast for 
miles around. 10 

On — on — we tread with loose-flung rein 

Our seaward way, 
Through dark-green fields and blossom- 

hig gram, 
Where the wild brier-rose skirts the lane, 
And bends above our heads the flowering 
locust spray. 

Ha ! like a kind hand on my brow 

Comes this fresh breeze, 
Cooling its dull and feverish glow, 
While through my being seems to flow 
The breath of a new life, the healing of the 
seas ! 20 

Now rest we, where this grassy mound 

His feet hath set 
In the great waters, which have bound 
His granite ankles greenly round 
With long and tangled moss, and weeds 
with cool spray wet. 

Good-by to Pain and Care ! I take 

Mine ease to-day: 
Here where these sunny waters break, 
And ripples this keen breeze, I shake 
All burdens from the heart, all weary 
thoughts away. 30 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



267 



I draw a freer breath, I seem 

Like all I see — 
Waves m the sun, the white-winged gleam 
Of sea-birds in the slanting beam, 
And far-off sails which flit before the 
southwind free. 

So when Time's veil shall fall asunder, 

The soul may know 
No fearful change, nor sudden wonder, 
Nor sink the weight of mystery under, 
But with the upward rise, and with the 
vastness grow. 40 

And all we shrink from now may seem 

No new revealing; 
Familial' as our childhood's stream, 
Or pleasant memory of a dream 
The loved and cherished Past upon the new 
life stealing. 

Serene and mild the untried light 

May have its dawning; 
And, as hi summer's northern night 
The evening and the dawn unite, 
The sunset hues of Time blend with the 
soul's new morning. 50 

I sit alone ; hi foam and spray 

Wave after wave 
Breaks on the rocks which, stern and gray, 
Shoulder the broken tide away, 
Or murmurs hoarse and strong through 
mossy cleft and cave. 

What heed I of the dusty land 

And noisy town ? 
I see the mighty deep expand 
From its white line of glimmering sand 
To where the blue of heaven on bluer 
waves shuts down ! 60 

In listless quietude of mind, 

I yield to all 
The change of cloud and wave and wind ; 
And passive on the flood reclined, 
I wander with the waves, and with them 
rise and fall. 

But look, thou dreamer ! wave and shore 

In shadow lie; 
The night-wind warns me back once more 
To where, my native hill-tops o'er, 
Bends like an arch of fire the glowing sun- 
set sky. 70 



So then, beach, bluff, and wave, farewell ! 

I bear with me 
No token stone nor glittering shell, 
But long and oft shall Memory tell 
Of this brief thoughtful hour of musing by 
the Sea. 

1843. 



CASSANDRA SOUTHWICK 1 

To the God of all sure mercies let my bless- 
ing rise to-day, 

From the scoffer and the cruel He hath 
plucked the spoil away; 

Yea, He who cooled the furnace around the 
faithful three, 

And tamed the Chaldean lions, hath set 
his handmaid free! 

Last night I saw the sunset melt through 
my prison bars, 

Last night across my damp earth-floor fell 
the pale gleam of stars; 

In the coldness and the darkness all through 
the long night-time, 

My grated casement whitened with au- 
tumn's early rime. 

Alone, in that dark sorrow, hour after hour 

crept by; 
Star after star looked palely in and sank 

adown the sky; 10 

No sound amid night's stillness, save that 

which seemed to be 
The dull and heavy beating of the pulses 

of the sea; 

All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that 
on the morrow 

The ruler and the cruel priest would mock 
me in my sorrow, 

Dragged to their place of market, and bar- 
gained for and sold, 

Like a lamb before the shambles, like a 
heifer from the fold ! 



1 In 1G58 two young persons, son and daughter of 
Lawrence Southwick of Salem, who had himself been 
imprisoned and deprived of nearly all his property for 
having entertained Quakers at his house, were fined 
for non-attendance at church. They being unable to pay 
the fine, the General Court issued an order empowering 
' The Treasurer of the County to sell the said persons 
to any of the English nation of Virginia or Barbadoes, 
to answer said fines.' An attempt was made to carry 
this order into execution, but no shipmaster was found 
willing to convey them to the West Indies. (Whittier.) 



268 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Oh, the weakness of the flesh was there, — 

the shrinking and the shame; 
And the low voice of the Tempter like 

whispers to me came: 
' Why sit'st thou thus forlornly,' the 

wicked murmur said, 
Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold 

earth thy maiden bed ? 20 

' Where be the smiling faces, and voices 

soft and sweet, 
Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in the 

pleasant street ? 
Where be the youths whose glances, the 

summer Sabbath through, 
Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy 

father's pew ? 

' Why sit'st thou here, Cassandra ? — Be- 
think thee with what mirth 

The happy schoolmates gather around the 
warm, bright hearth; 

How the crimson shadows tremble on fore- 
heads white and fair, 

On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in 
golden hair. 

' Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, 
not for thee kind words are spoken, 

Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods 
by laughing boys are broken; 30 

No first-fruits of the orchard within thy 
lap are laid, 

For thee no flowers of autumn the youth- 
ful hunters braid. 

' O weak, deluded maiden ! — by crazy 
fancies led, 

With wild and raving railers an evil path 
to tread; 

To leave a wholesome worship, and teach- 
ing pure and sound, 

And mate with' maniac women, loose- 
haired and sackcloth bound, — 

' Mad scoffers of the priesthood, who mock 
at things divine, 

Who rail against the pulpit, and holy bread 
and wine; 

Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and 
from the pillory lame, 

Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glory- 
ing in their shame. 4° 

• And what a fate awaits thee ! — a sadly 
toiling slave, 



Dragging the slowly lengthening chain of 

bondage to the grave ! 
Think of thy woman's nature, subdued in 

hopeless thrall, 
The easy prey of any, the scoff and scorn 

of all ! ' 

Oh, ever as the Tempter spoke, and feeble 

Nature's fears 
Wrung drop by drop the scalding flow of 

unavailing tears, 
I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and 

strove in silent prayer, 
To feel, O Helper of the weak ! that Thou 

indeed wert there ! 

I thought of Paul and Silas, within Phi- 

lippi's cell, 
And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the 

prison shackles fell, 50 

Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an 

angel's robe of white, 
And to feel a blessed presence invisible to 

sight. 

Bless the Lord for all his mercies ! — for 

the peace and love I felt, 
Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon my 

spirit melt ; 
When ' Get behind me, Satan ! ' was the 

language of my heart, 
And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his 

doubts depart. 

Slow broke the gray cold morning; again 
the sunshine fell, 

Flecked with the shade of bar and grate 
within my lonely cell; 

The hoar-frost melted on the wall, and up- 
ward from the street 

Came careless laugh and idle word, and 
tread of passing feet. 60 

At length the heavy bolts fell back, my 

door was open cast, 
And slowly at the sheriff's side, up the 

long street I passed; 
I heard the murmur round me, and felt, 

but dared not see, 
How, from every door and window, the 

people gazed on me. 

And doubt and fear fell on me, shame 
burned upon my cheek, 

Swam earth and sky around me, my trem- 
bling limbs grew weak: 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



269 



' O Lord ! support thy handmaid ; and from 

her soid cast out 
The fear of man, which brings a snare, the 

weakness and the doubt.' 

Then the dreary shadows scattered, like a 

cloud in morning's breeze, 
And a low deep voice within me seemed 

whispering words like these: 70 

' Though thy earth be as the iron, and thy 

heaven a brazen wall, 
Trust still his loving-kindness whose power 

is over all.' 

We paused at length, where at my feet the 

sunlit waters broke 
On glaring reach of shining beach, and 

shingly wall of rock; 
The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard 

clear lines on high, 
Tracing with rope and slender spar their 

network on the sky. 

And there were ancient citizens, cloak- 
wrapped and grave and cold, 

And grim and stout sea-captains with faces 
bronzed and old, 

And on his horse, with Rawson, his cruel 
clerk at hand, 

Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the ruler 
of the land. 80 

And poisoning with his evil words the 

ruler's ready ear, 
The priest leaned o'er his saddle, with laugh 

and scoff and jeer; 
It stirred my soul, and from my lips the 

seal of silence broke, 
As if through woman's weakness a warning 

spirit spoke. 

I cried, ' The Lord rebuke thee, thou smiter 

of the meek, 
Thou robber of the righteous, thou trampler 

of the weak ! 
Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones, — 

go turn the prison lock 
Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou 

wolf amid the flock ! ' 

Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and 

with a deeper red 
O'er Rawson 's wine-empurpled cheek the 

flush of anger spread; 9 o 



' Good people,' quoth the white-lipped priest, 
' heed not her words so wild, 

Her Master speaks within her, — the Devil 
owns his child ! ' 

But gray heads shook, and young brows 

knit, the while the sheriff read 
That law the wicked rulers against the poor 

have made, 
Who to their house of Rimmon and idol 

priesthood bring 
No bended knee of worship, nor gainful 

offering. 

Then to the stout sea-captains the sheriff, 
turning, said, — 

' Which of ye, worthy seamen, will take this 
Quaker maid ? 

In the Isle of fair Barbadoes, or on Vir- 
ginia's shore, 

You may hold her at a higher price than 
Indian girl or Moor.' 100 

Grim and silent stood the captains ; and when 

again he cried, 
' Speak out, my worthy seamen ! ' — no 

voice, no sign replied; 
But I felt a hard hand press my own, and 

kind words met my ear, — 
' God bless thee, and preserve thee, my 

gentle girl and dear ! ' 

A weight seemed lifted from my heart, a 

pitying friend was nigh, — 
I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw it 

in his eye; 
And when again the sheriff spoke, that 

voice, so kind to me, 
Growled back its stormy answer like the 

roaring of the sea, — 

' Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with 
coins of Spanish gold, 

From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the room- 
age of her hold, no 

By the living God who made me ! — I 
woidd sooner in your bay 

Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear 
this child away ! ' 

' Well answered, worthy captain, shame on 

their cruel laws ! ' 
Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud 

the people's just applause. 



270 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



' Like the herdsmen of Tekoa, in Israel of 

old, 
Shall we see the poor and righteous again 

for silver sold ? ' 

I looked on haughty Endieott; with weapon 

half-way drawn, 
Swept round the throng his lion glare of 

bitter hate and scorn; 
Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and turned 

in silence back, 
And sneering priest and battled clerk rode 

murmuring in his track. no 

Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bit- 
terness of soul; 

Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, and 
crushed his parchment roll. 

' Good friends,' he said, ' since both have 
tied, the ruler and the priest, 

Judge ye, if from their further work I be 
not well released.' 

Loud was the cheer which, full and clear, 
swept round the silent bay, 

As, with kind words and kinder looks, he 
bade me go my way; 

For He who turns the courses of the stream- 
let of the glen, 

And the river of great waters, had turned 
the hearts of men. 

Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed 
changed beneath my eye, 

A holier wonder round me rose the blue 
walls of the sky, 130 

A lovelier light on rock and hill and stream 
and woodland lay, 

And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the wa- 
ters of the bay. 

Thanksgiving to the Lord of life ! to Hun 

all praises be, 
Who from the hands of evil men hath set 

his handmaid free; 
All praise to Him before whose power the 

mighty are afraid, 
Who takes the crafty in the snare which 

for the poor is laid ! 

Sing, O my soul, rejoicingly, on evening's 

twilight calm 
Uplift the loud thanksgiving, pour forth 

the grateful psalm; 



Let all dear hearts with me rejoice, as did 

the saints of old, 
When of the Lord's good angel the rescued 

Peter told. i 4 o 

And weep and howl, ye evil priests and 

mighty men of wrong, 
The Lord shall smite the proud, and lay 

His hand upon the strong. 
Woe to the wicked rulers in his avenging 

hour ! 
Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks to 

raven and devour ! 

But let the humble ones arise, the poor in 

heart be glad, 
And let the mourning ones again with robes 

of praise be clad. 
For He who cooled the furnace, and 

smoothed the stormy wave, 
And tamed the Chaldean lions, is mighty 

still to save ! 

i84a. 



MASSACHUSETTS TO VIRGINIA 1 

The blast from Freedom's Northern hills, 
upon its Southern way, 

Bears greeting to Virginia from Massachu- 
setts Bay: 

No word of haughty challenging, nor battle 
bugle's peal, 

Nor steady tread of marching files, nor 
clang of horsemen's steel, 

No trains of deep-mouthed cannon along 

our highways go; 
Around our silent arsenals untrodden lies 

the snow; 

1 Written on reading an account of the proceedings 
of the citizens of Norfolk, V»., in reference to George 
Latimer, the alleged fugitive slave, who was seized in 
Boston without warrant at the request of James B. 
Grey, of Norfolk, claiming to be his master. The case 
caused great excitement North and South, and led to 
the presentation of a petition to Congress, signed by 
more than fifty thousand citizens of Massachusetts, 
calling for such laws and proposed amendments to the 
Constitution as should relieve the Commonwealth from 
all further participation in the crime of oppression. 
George Latimer himself was finally given free papers 
for the sum of four hundred dollars. (Whittier.) 

When the excitement w-as at its height, conventions 
were held simultaneously in every county in Massachu- 
setts, and this poem was read ai the Essex County con- 
vention. The most intense enthusiasm was aroused by 
those stanzas in which all the counties of the State 
speak successively, each in its own character. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



271 



And to the land-breeze of our ports, upon 

their errands far, 
A thousand sails of commerce swell, but 

none are spread for war. 

We hear thy threats, Virginia ! thy stormy 

words and high 
Swell harshly on the Southern winds which 

melt along our sky; 10 

Yet not one brown, hard hand foregoes its 

honest labor here, 
No hewer of our mountain oaks suspends 

his axe in fear. 

Wild are the waves which lash the reefs 
along St. George's bank; 

Cold on the shores of Labrador the fog lies 
white and dank; 

Through storm, and wave, and blinding 
mist, stout are the hearts which 
man 

The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea- 
boats of Cape Ann. 

The cold north light and wintry sun glare 

on their icy forms, 
Bent grimly o'er their straining lines or 

wrestling with the storms; 
Free as the winds they drive before, rough 

as the waves they roam, 
They laugh to scorn the shaver's threat 

against their rocky home. 20 

What means the Old Dominion ? Hath 

she forgot the day 
When o'er her conquered valleys swept the 

Briton's steel array ? 
How, side by side with sons of hers, the 

Massachusetts men 
Encountered Tarlcton's charge of fire, and 

stout Cornwallis, then ? 

Forgets she how the Bay State, in answer 

to the call 
Of her old House of Burgesses, spoke out 

from Faneuil Hall ? 
When, echoing back her Henry's cry, came 

pulsing on each breath 
Of Northern winds the thrilling sounds of 

' Liberty or Death ! ' 

What asks the Old Dominion ? If now 

her sons have proved 
False to their fathers' memory, false to the 

faith they loved; 30 



If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great 

charter spurn, 
Must we of Massachusetts from truth and 

duty turn ? 

We hunt your bondmen, flying from Sla- 
very's hateful hell ; 

Our voices, at your bidding, take up the 
bloodhound's yell; 

We gather, at your summons, above our 
fathers' graves, 

From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear 
your wretched slaves ! 

Thank God ! not yet so vilely can Massa- 
chusetts bow; 

The spirit of her early time is with her even 
now; 

Dream not because her Pilgrim blood moves 
slow and calm and cool, 

She thus can stoop herchainless neck, a sis- 
ter's slave and tool ! 40 

All that a sister State should do, all that a 
free State may, 

Heart, hand, and purse we proffer, as in our 
early day; 

But that one dark loathsome burden ye 
must stagger with alone, 

And reap the bitter harvest which ye your- 
selves have sown ! 

Hold, while ye may, your struggling slaves, 

and burden God's free air 
With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and 

manhood's wild despair; 
Cling closer to the ' cleaving curse ' that 

writes upon your plains 
The blasting of Almighty wrath against a 

land of chains. 

Still shame your gallant ancestry, the cava- 
liers of old, 

By watching round the shambles where hu- 
man flesh is sold; 50 

Gloat o'er the new-bom child, and count 
his market value, when 

The maddened mother's cry of woe shall 
pierce the slaver's den ! 

Lower than plummet soundeth, sink the 

Virginia name; 
Plant, if ye will, your fathers' graves with 

rankest weeds of shame; 



272 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Be, if ye will, the scandal of God's fair uni- 
verse ; 

We wash our hands forever of your sin and 
shame and curse. 

A voice from lips whereon the coal from 
Freedom's shrine hath been, 

Thrilled, as but yesterday, the hearts of 
Berkshire's mountain men: 

The echoes of that solemn voice are sadly 
lingering still 

In all our sunny valleys, on every wind- 
swept hill. 60 

And when the prowling man-thief came 

hunting for his prey 
Beneath the very shadow of Bunker's shaft 

of gray, 
How, through the free lips of the son, the 

father's warning spoke ; 
How, from its bonds of trade and sect, the 

Pilgrim city broke ! 

A hundred thousand right arms were lifted 

up on high, 
A hundred thousand voices sent back their 

loud reply; 
Through the thronged towns of Essex the 

startling summons rang, 
And up from bench and loom and wheel 

her young mechanics sprang ! 

The voice of free, broad Middlesex, of thou- 
sands as of one, 

The shaft of Bunker calling to that of Lex- 
ington; 70 

From Norfolk's ancient villages, from Ply- 
mouth's rocky bound 

To where Nantucket feels the arms of ocean 
close her round; 

From rich and rural Worcester, where 

through the calm repose 
Of cultured vales and fringing woods the 

gentle Nashua flows, 
To where Wachuset's wintry blasts the 

mountain larches stir, 
Swelled up to Heaven the thrilling cry of 

' God save Latimer ! ' 

And sandy Barnstable rose up, wet with the 

salt sea spray; 
And Bristol sent her answering shout down 

Narragansett Bay ! 



Along the broad Connecticut old Hampden 

felt the thrill, 
And the cheer of Hampshire's woodmen 

swept down from Holyoke Hill. 80 

The voice of Massachusetts ! Of her free 
sons and daughters, 

Deep calling unto deep aloud, the sound of 
many waters ! 

Against the burden of that voice what ty- 
rant power shall stand ? 

No fetters in the Bay State ! No slave 
upon her land ! 

Look to it well, Virginians ! In calmness we 

have borne, 
In answer to our faith and trust, your insult 

and your scorn; 
You 've spurned our kindest counsels; 

you 've hunted for our lives ; 
And shaken round our hearths and homes 

your manacles and gyves ! 

We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling 

no torch within 
The fire-damps of the quaking mine beneath 

your soil of sin; go 

We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, 

while ye can, 
With the strong upward tendencies and 

godlike soul of man ! 

But for us and for our children, the vow 

which we have given 
For freedom and humanity is registered in 

heaven; 
No slave-hunt in our borders, — no pirate 

on our strand ! 
No fetters in the Bay State, — no slave 

upon our land ! 
December, 1842. January, 1843. 

THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE 1 

A Christian ! going, gone ! 
Who bids for God's own image ? for his 

grace, 
Which that poor victim of the market-place 

Hath in her suffering won ? 

1 In a publication of L. F. Tasistro, Random Shots 
and Southern Breezes, is a description of a slave auc- 
tion at New Orleans, at which the auctioneer recom- 
mended the woman on the stand as 'a good Christian ! ' 
It was not uncommon to see advertisements of slaves 
for sale, in which they were described as pious or as 
members of the church. In one advertisement a slave 
was noted as ' a Baptist preacher.' (Whtttieb.) 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



273 



My God ! can such things be ? 
Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is done 
Unto thy weakest and thy humblest one 

Is even done to Thee ? 

In that sad victim, then, 
Child of thy pitying love, I see Thee 
stand ; 10 

Once more the jest-word of a mocking 
band, 
Bound, sold, and scourged again ! 

A Christian up for sale ! 
Wet with her blood your whips, o'ertask 

her frame, 
Make her life loathsome with your wrong 
and shame, 
Her patience shall not fail ! 

A heathen hand might deal 
Back on your heads the gathered wrong of 

years 
But her low, broken prayer and nightly 
tears 
Ye neither heed nor feel. 20 

Con well thy lesson o'er, 
Thou prudent teacher, tell the toiling slave 
No dangerous tale of Him who came to 
save 

The outcast and the poor. 

But wisely shut the ray 
Of God's free Gospel from her simple 

heart, 
And to her darkened mind alone impart 

One stern command, Obey ! 

So shalt thou deftly raise 
The market price of human flesh; 1 and 
while 30 

On thee, their pampered guest, the planters 
smile, 
Thy church shall praise. 

Grave, reverend men shall tell 
From Northern pulpits how thy work was 
blest, 

1 There was at the time when this poem was written 
an Association in Liberty County, Georgia, for the 
religious instruction of negroes. One of their annual 
reports contains an address by the Kev. Josiah Spry 
Law, in which the following passage occurs : ' There is a 
growing interest in this community in the religious in- 
struction of negroes. There is a conviction that religious 
instruction promotes the quiet and order of the people, 
and the pecuniary interest of the owners.' (Whittieb.) 



While in that vile South Sodom first and 
best, 
Thy poor disciples sell. 

Oh, shame ! the Moslem thrall, 
Who, with his master, to the Prophet 

kneels, 
While turning to the sacred Kebla feels 

His fetters break and fall. 4 o 

Cheers for the turbaned Bey 
Of robber-peopled Tunis ! he hath torn 
The dark slave-dungeons open, and hath 
borne 

Their inmates into day: 

But our poor slave in vain 
Turns to the Christian shrine his aching 

eyes; 
Its rites will only swell his market price, 

And rivet on his chain. 

God of all right ! how long 
Shall priestly robbers at thine altar 
stand, 50 

Lifting in prayer to Thee the bloody hand 

And haughty brow of wrong ? 

Oh, from the fields of cane, 
From the low rice-swamp, from the trader's 

cell; 
From the black slave-ship's foul and loath- 
some hell, 
And coffle's weary chain; 

Hoarse, horrible, and strong, 
Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry, 
Filling the arches of the hollow sky, 

How long, O God, how long ? 60 

1843. 1843. 



THE SHOEMAKERS 1 

Ho ! workers of the old time styled 
The Gentle Craft of Leather ! 



1 In his Songs of Labor, though Whittier wrote with 
most sympathy of the two trades at which he had 
himself worked, shoemaking (cf. Carpenter's Whittier, 
pp. 39-41) and farming (see ' The Huskers,' p. 278), 
there are lines in others of the Songs which cannot be 
spared from any selection of his poetry. Such are these 
from ' The Lumbermen : ' — 

Keep who will the city's allevs, 

Take the smooth-6horn plain ; 
Give to ue the eedarn valleys, 

Rocks and hills of Maine ! 



274 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Young brothers of the ancient guild, 
Stand forth once more together ! 

Call out again your long array, 
In the olden merry manner ! 

Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day, 
Fling out your blazoned banner ! 

Rap, rap ! upon the well-worn stone 

How falls the polished hammer ! i 

Rap, rap ! the measured sound has grown 

A quick and merry clamor. 
Now shape the sole ! now deftly curl 

The glossy vamp around it, 
And bless the while the bright-eyed girl 

Whose gentle fingers bound it ! 

For you, along the Spanish main 

A hundred keels are ploughing ; 
For you, the Indian on the plain 

His lasso-coil is throwing ; 20 

For you, deep glens with hemlock dark 

The woodman's fire is lighting ; 
For you, upon the oak's gray bark, 

The woodman's axe is smiting. 

For you, from Carolina's pine 

The rosin-gum is stealing ; 
For you, the dark-eyed Florentine 

Her silken skein is reeling ; 
For you, the dizzy goatherd roams 

His rugged Alpine ledges ; 30 

For you, roxmd all her shepherd homes, 

Bloom England's thorny hedges. 

The foremost still, by day or night, 

On moated mound or heather, 
Where'er the need of trampled right 

Brought toiling men together ; 
Where the free burghers from the wall 

Defied the mail-clad master, 
Than yours, at Freedom's trumpet-call, 

No craftsmen rallied faster. 40 

Let foplings sneer, let fools deride, 

Ye heed no idle scorner ; 
Free hands and hearts are still your pride, 

In our North-land, wild and woody, 

Let uk still have part : 
Bugged nurse and mother sturdy, 

Hold us to thy heart 1 

or the beginning of ' The Drovers : ' — 

Through heat and eold, and shower and sun, 

Still onward cheerly driving 1 
There 's life alone in duty done, 

And rest alone in striving. 

See also the beautiful ' Dedication ' of the Songs of 
Labor, p. 2S2. 



And duty done your honor. 
Ye dare to trust, for honest fame, 

The jury Time empanels, 
And leave to truth each noble name 

Which glorifies your annals. 

Thy songs, Hans Sachs, are living yet, 

In strong and hearty German; 50 

And Bloomfield's lay, and Gifford's wit, 

And patriot fame of Sherman; 
Still from his book, a mystic seer, 

The soul of Behmen teaches, 
And England's priestcraft shakes to hear 

Of Fox's leathern breeches. 

The foot is yours ; where'er it falls, 

It treads your well-wrought leather, 
On earthern floor, in marble halls 

On carpet, or on heather. 60 

Still there the sweetest charm is found 

Of matron grace or vestal's, 
As Hebe's foot bore nectar round 

Among the old celestials ! 

Rap, rap ! — your stout and bluff bro- 
gan, 

With footsteps slow and weary, 
May wander where the sky's blue span 

Shuts down upon the prairie. 
On Beauty's foot your slippers glance, 

By Saratoga's fountains, 70 

Or twinkle down the summer dance 

Beneath the Crystal Mountains ! 

The red brick to the mason's hand, 

The brown earth to the tiller's, 
The shoe in yours shall wealth com- 
mand, 

Like fairy Cinderella's ! 
As they who shunned the household 
maid 

Beheld the crown upon her, 
So all shall see your toil repaid 

With hearth and home and honor. 80 

Then let the toast be freely quaffed, 

In water cool and brimming, — 
' All honor to the good old Craft, 

Its merry men and women ! ' 
Call out again your long array, 

In the old time's pleasant manner: 
Once more, on gay St. Crispin's day, 

Fling out his blazoned banner ! 

1845. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



275 



THJE PINE TREE 1 

Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay 

State's rusted shield, 
Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on 

our banner's tattered field. 
Sons of men who sat in council with their 

Bibles round the board, 
Answering England's royal missive with a 

firm, ' Thus saith the Lord ! ' 
Rise again for home and freedom ! set the 

battle in array ! . 
What the fathers did of old time we their 

sons must do to-day. 



Tell us not of banks and tariffs, cease your 

paltry pedler cries; 
Shall the good State sink her honor that 

your gambling stocks may rise ? 
Would ye barter man for cotton ? That 

your gains may sum up higher, 
Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass our 

children through the fire ? 
Is the dollar only real ? God and truth and 

right a dream ? 
Weighed against your lying ledgers must 

our manhood kick the beam ? 

my God ! for that free spirit, which of 

old in Boston town 
Smote the Province House with terror, 

struck the crest of Andros down ! 
For another strong-voiced Adams in the 

city's streets to cry, 
' Up for God and Massachusetts ! Set your 

feet on Mammon's lie ! 
Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your 

cotton's latest pound, 
But in Heaven's name keep your honor, keep 

the heart o' the Bay State sound ! ' 

Where 's the man for Massachusetts ? 

Where 's the voice to speak her free ? 
Where 's the hand to light up bonfires from 

her mountains to the sea ? 

1 Written on hearing that the Anti-Slavery Resolves 
of Stephen C. Phillips had heen rejected by the Whig 
Convention in Faneuil Hall, in 1840. (Whittier.) 

Whittier sent the poem to Sumner in a letter in which 
he said : ' I have just read the proceedings of your Whig 
convention, and the lines enclosed are a feeble expres- 
sion of my feelings. I look upon the rejection of Stephen 
C. Phillips's resolutions as an evidence that the end and 
aim of the managers of the convention was to go just 
far enough to scare the party and no farther. All thanks 
for the free voices of thyself, Phillips, Allen, and Adams. 
Notwithstanding the result you have not spoken in 
vain.' (Quoted in Pickard's Life, vol. i, p. 31G.) 



Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer ? Sits 

she dumb in her despair ? 
Has she none to break the silence ? Has 

she none to do and dare ? 
O my God ! for one right worthy to lift up 

her rusted shield, 
And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her 

banner's tattered field ! 
1840. 184(i. 



FORGIVENESS 

My heart was heavy, for its trust had been 
Abused, its kindness answered with foul 

wrong; 
So, turning gloomily from my fellow-men, 
One summer Sabbath day I strolled among 
f The green mounds of the village burial- 
place ; 
Where, pondering how all human love and 

hate 
Find one sad level ; and how, soon or late, 
Wronged and wrongdoer, each with meek- 

ened face, 
And cold hands folded over a still heart, 
Pass the green threshold of our common 

grave, 
Whither all footsteps tend, whence none 

depart, 
Awed for myself, and pitying my race, 
Our common sorrow, like a mighty wave, 
Swept all my pride away, and trembling I 

forgave ! 

1846 ? 



BARCLAY OF URY 2 

Up the streets of Aberdeen, 
By the kirk and college green, 
Rode the Laird of Ury; 

2 Among the earliest converts to the doctrines of 
Friends in Scotland was Barclay of Ury, an old and dis- 
tinguished soldier, who had fought under Gustavus 
Adolphus, in Germany. As a Quaker, he became the 
object of persecution and abuse at the hands of the 
magistrates and the populace. None bore the indigni- 
ties of the mob with greater patience and nobleness of 
soul than this once proud gentleman and soldier. One 
of his friends, on an occasion of uncommon rudeness, 
lamented that he should be treated so harshly in his 
old age who had bpen so honored before. ' I find more 
satisfaction,' said Barclay, ' as well as honor, in being 
thus insulted for my religious principles, than when, 
a few years ago, it was usual for the magistrates, as 
I passed the city of Aberdeen, to meet me on the 
road and conduct me to public entertainment in their 
hall, and then escort me out again, to gain my favor.' 
(Whittier.) 



••; h 



I'll IKK AMKRICWN POETS 



Close behind l\im, close beside, 

Foul of mouth and evil-eyed, 
Pressod the mob in fury. 

Flouted him the drunken I'luirl, 

Jeered at him the serving»girl, 

Prompt to please her master; 
And the begging oarlin, Late 
Fed and clothed al Urj *s gate, 

Cursed him :is ho passed her. 

Vt'i, with oalm and stately mien) 
Up the streets of Aberdeen 
Came he slowly riding; 

And, to all ho saw and hoard, 

Answering not with bitter word, 
Turning not for ohidingi 

Came s troop with broadswords swinging 
Hits and bridles sharply ringingi 

Loose and tree and f reward; 

Quoth the foremost] ' Elide him down I 
Push him I prioli him ! through the town 
Drive the Quaker ooward 1 ' 

But from out, the thiokoiiino- crowd 
Cried a sudden voiee and loud: 

' Bart day I Ho I ii Haii lay ! ' 
And the old man at his side 

Saw a comrade, battle tried, 

Sea iced and sunburned darkly, 

\\ ho with ready weapon bare, 

Fronting to I hi* troopers there. 
Cried aloud : ' Cod save us. 

Call \e coward him who stood 

Ankle deep in LiiCen's blood. 
With the brave Ciislavus ? ' 

' Nay, I do not need thy sword. 
Comrade mine,' said Cry's lord' 

' Put it up, I pray thee: 
Passive tO his holy will, 

Trust I in my Master still, 
Even though l [e slay me. 

' Pledges of thy love and faith, 

Proved on many a field of death. 
Not by me are needed.' 

Marvelled much that henohman bold, 

Thai MS laird, so stout of old, 
Now so meekly pleaded. 

' Woe 's (lie da\ ! ' he sadly said. 
With a slow 1\ shaking head. 



And a look of pity ; 
' Cry's honest, lord reviled, 
Mock of knave and sport, of child, 

In his own good city ! 

'Speak the word, and, master mine. 
As we pharged on Tilly's line, ' 

And his Walloon lancers, 
Smiting through their midst we Ml teach 
Civil look and decent, speech 

To these boyish praucers ! ' 60 

' Marvel not, mine ancient, friend. 

Like beginning, like the end,' 

Quoth the Laird of Cry; 
' Is (ho sinful servant more 
Than his gracious Cord who bore 

Bonds and stripes in Jewry ? 

' (live me joy that in his 11:11111' 
1 1:111 bear, with patient, frame. 

All these vain ones oiler; 
While for them lie sull'erclh Long, 70 

shall I answer wrong with wrong, 

Scol'iing with the seofl'er ? 

4 Happier l, with loss of all. 

Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall. 
With few friends to erect mo, 

Than when reeve and sipiiro wore .soon, 

Eliding out. from Aberdeen, 

Willi bared heads to moot me, 

' When each gOOdwife, O'er and o'er, 
Blessed me as I passed her door; So 

And the snooded daughter, 
Through heroasement glanoing down. 

Smiled on him who bore renown 

From red fields of slaughter. 
' Hard to feel the stranger's scoff, 

Hard the old friend's fill linn oil, 

I lard to learn forgiving] 
But the Cord his own rewards, 
And his love with theirs accords. 

Warm and fresh and Living, go 

'Through this dark and stormy night 
Faith beholds a feeble Lighl 

Cp the blackness streakinj;-; 

1 Tin' Imt'lmril inn of Count l>o Tilly nl'tor t lie llsMOf 

Magdeburg made nuolt an Impression upon our for* 
fathers ti..it the phrase ' like old Tillj ' Ii »iiii heard 
sometimes In New England 01 any piece of speolal tero 

oitv. (WHITTIBE.) 



JOHN GREENLKAK WlflTTIKR 



277 



Knowing God's own time Lb best, 
In ;i patient hope I rest 

For the roll day-breaking ! ' 

So the Laird of [Jry said, 
Turning slow liis horse's head 

Towards the Tolbooth prison, 
Where, through iron gates, he heard 100 
Poor disciples <>f the Word 

Preach <>i' (Jtirmt arisen ! 

Not, in vain, ( 'onfessor old, 
[Jnto us the tale is told 

Of thy day of trial; 
Every age on him who strays 
From it,H broad and beaten ways 

Pours its seven-fold vial. 

Happy be whose inward car 
Angel comfortings can hear, no 

O'er the rabble's laughter; 

And wliili: Hatred's fagotS burn, 

Glimpses through the smoke discern 
Of the good hereafter. 

Knowing this, that never yet 
Share of Truth was vainly set 

In the world's wide tallow j 
After hands shall sow the seed, 
After bands from hill and mead 

Reap the harvests yellow. 120 

Thus, witli somewhat of the Seer, 
Must the mora] pioneer 

from the Future borrow; 
Clothe the waste wit.li dreams of grain, 
And, on midnight's sky of rain, 

Paint the golden morrow ! 

IH-17. 



THE ANOKLS OK IJUKNA VISTA' 
Si'KAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking 

northward far away, 
O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the 
Mexican array, 

1 A letter-writer from Mexico during the Mexican 
War, when detailing lomc ol the tnctdenti at the terri- 
ble tight of Buena Vint.*, mentioned that Mexican tro- 
men wuri! teen hovering near the field of death) for the 
purpose of giving aid and succor to the wounded, One 
poor woman irai found rarrounded by the maimed ;ni'i 
■offering ol both anniee ( ministering to thewantioi 
Amerlcani at well at Mexlcane with Impartial tender 

IieHM. C WlllT'J IKH. J 



Wlio is losing? who is winning? are they 

far or come they near ? 
Look abroad, and tell as, sister, whither 

rolls the storm we hear. 

' Down the hills of Angostura still the storm 

of battle rolls; 

Mood is flowing, men are dying; God ha «■ 
mercy on their souls ! ' 

Who is losing? wlio is winning? 'Over 

dill and over plain, 
1 sec lint, smoke of eannon clouding through 

the mountain rain.' 

Holy Mother I keep our brothers I Look, 

Ximena, look once more,. 
'Still I see, the fearful whirlwind rolling 

darkly as before, ,„ 

Bearing on, in strange confusion, friend and 

foeman, foot, and horse, 

Like some, wild and troubled torrent sweep- 
ing down its mountain course.' 

Look forth once more, Ximena ! ' Ah 1 the 

smoke has rolled away; 
And I see the Northern rifles gleaming 

down the ranks of gray. 

Hark ! that sudden blast of bugles! there 
the troop of JVIinon wheels; 

There the Northern horses thunder, with 
the cannon at their heels. 

'.iesu, pity ! how it fhiekens ! now retreat 

and now advance I 

Right against the blazing eannon shivers 

ruebla's charging lance I 

Down they go, the brave young rider, ; 

horse and foot together fall; 
Like ft ploughshare in the fallow, through 

them ploughs the Northern ball.' 20 

Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling 

fast and frightful on ! 
Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us, who bag 

lost, and who has won ? 
'Alas! alas! I know not; friend and foe 

together fall, 

O'er the dying rush the living: pray, my 
sisters, for them all ! 

' Lo ! the wind the smoke is lifting. 

Blessed Mother, save my brain ! 
I can see the wounded crawling slowly out, 

from heaps of slain. 



278 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Now they stagger, blind and bleeding; now 
they fall, and strive to rise; 

Hasten, sisters, haste and save them, lest 
they die before our eyes ! 

• O my heart's love ! O my dear one ! lay 
thy poor head on my knee; 

Dost thou know the lips that kiss thee ? 
Canst thou hear me ? canst thou 
see ? 30 

O my husband, brave and gentle ! O my 
Bernal, look once more 

On the blessed cross before thee ! Mercy ! 
mercy ! all is o'er ! ' 

Dry thy tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy 

dear one down to rest; 
Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the 

cross upon his breast; 
Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his 

funeral masses said ; 
To-day, thou poor bereaved one, the living 

ask thy aid. 

Close beside her, faintly moaning, fair and 

young, a soldier lay, 
Torn with shot and pierced with lances, 

bleeding slow his life away; 
But, as tenderly before him the lorn Ximena 

knelt, 
She saw the Northern eagle shining on his 

pistol-belt. 40 

With a stifled cry of horror straight she 

turned away her head; 
With a sad and bitter feeling looked she 

back upon her dead; 
But she heard the youth's low moaning, and 

his struggling breath of pain, 
And she raised the cooling water to his 

parching lips again. 

Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed 

her hand and faintly smiled ; 
Was that pitying face his mother's ? did 

she watch beside her child ? 
All his stranger words with meaning her 

woman's heart supplied; 
With her kiss upon his forehead, ' Mother! ' 

murmured he, and died ! 

' A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who 
led thee forth, 

From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weep- 
ing, lonely, in the North ! ' 50 



Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she 

laid him with her dead, 
And turned to soothe the living, and bind 

the wounds which bled. 

Look forth once more, Ximena ! ' Like a 
cloud before the wind 

Rolls the battle down the mountains, 
leaving blood and death be- 
hind ; 

Ah ! they plead in vain for mercy; in the 
dust the wounded strive; 

Hide your faces, holy angels ! O thou 
Christ of God, forgive ! ' 

Sink, O Night, among thy mountains ! let 
the cool, gray shadows fall; 

Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy 
curtain over all ! 

Through the thickening winter twilight, 
wide apart the battle rolled, 

In the sheath the sabre rested, and the can- 
non's lips grew cold. 60 

But the noble Mexic women still their holy 
task pursued, 

Through that long, dark night of sor- 
row, worn and faint and lacking 
food. 

Over weak and suffering brothers, with a 
tender care they hung, 

And the dying foeman blessed them in a 
strange and Northern tongue. 

Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil 

world of ours; 
Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring 

afresh the Eden flowers; 
From its smoking hell of battle, Love and 

Pity send their prayer, 
And still thy white-winged angels hover 

dimly in our air ! 

1847. 



THE HUSKERS 

It was late in mild October, and the long 

autumnal rain 
Had left the summer harvest-fields all 

green with grass again ; 
The first sharp frosts had fallen, leaving all 

the woodlands gay 
With the hues of summer's rainbow, or the 

meadow-flowers of May. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



279 



Through a thin, dry mist, that morning, the 

sun rose broad and red, 
At first a rayless disk of tire, he brightened 

as he sped ; 
Yet even his noontide glory fell chastened 

and subdued, 
On the cornfields and the orchards and 

softly pictured wood. 

And all that quiet afternoon, slow sloping 

to the night, 
He wove with golden shuttle the haze with 

yellow light ; 10 

Slanting through the painted beeches, he 

glorified the hill ; 
And, beneath it, pond and meadow lay 

brighter, greener still. 

And shouting boys in woodland haunts 
caught glimpses of that sky, 

Flecked by the many-tinted leaves, and 
laughed, they knew not why ; 

And school-girls, gay with aster-flowers, 
beside the meadow brooks, 

Mingled the glow of autumn with the sun- 
shine of sweet looks. 

From spire and barn looked westerly the 
patient weathercocks ; 

But even the birches on the hill stood mo- 
tionless as rocks. 

No sound was in the woodlands, save the 
squirrel's dropping shell, 

And the yellow leaves among the boughs, 
low rustling as they fell. 20 

The summer grains were harvested ; the 

stubble-fields lay dry, 
Where June winds rolled, hi light and 

shade, the pale green waves of 

rye; 
But still, on gentle hill-slopes, in valleys 

fringed with wood, 
Ungathered/bleaching in the sun, the heavy 

corn crop stood. 

Bent low, by autumn's wind and rain, 

through husks that, dry and sere, 
Unfolded from their ripened charge, shone 

out the yellow ear ; 
Beneath, the turnip lay concealed, in many 

a verdant fold, 
And glistened in the slanting light the 

pumpkin's sphere of gold. 



There wrought the busy harvesters ; and 

many a creaking wain 
Bore slowly to the long barn-door its load 

of husk and grain ; 30 

Till broad and red, as when he rose, the 

sun sank down, at last, 
And like a merry guest's farewell, the day 

in brightness passed. 

And lo ! as through the western pines, on 

meadow, stream, and pond, 
Flamed the red radiance of a sky, set all 

afire beyond, 
Slowly o'er the eastern sea-bluff's a milder 

glory shone, 
And the sunset and the moonrise were 

mingled into one ! 

As thus into the quiet night the twilight 

lapsed away, 
And deeper in the brightening moon the 

tranquil shadows lay; 
From many a brown old farm-house, and 

hamlet without name, 
Their milking and their home-tasks done, 

the merry huskers came. 40 . 

Swung o'er the heaped-up harvest, from 

pitchforks in the mow, 
Shone dimly down the lanterns on the 

pleasant scene below; 
The growing pile of husks behind, the 

golden ears before, 
And laughing eyes and busy hands 

and brown cheeks glimmering 



Half hidden, in a quiet nook, serene of look 

and heart, 
Talking their old times over, the old men 

sat apart ; 
While up and down the unhusked pile, or 

nestling in its shade, 
At hide-and-seek, with laugh and shout, 

the happy children played. 

Urged by the good host's daughter, a 

maiden young and fair, 
Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and 

pride of soft brown hair, 50 

The master of the village school, sleek of 

hair and smooth of tongue, 
To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a 

husking-ballad sung. 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



THE CORN SONG 
Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard ! 

Heap high the golden corn ! 
No richer gift has Autumn poured 

From out her lavish horn ! 

Let other lands, exulting, glean 

The apple from the pine, 
The orange from its glossy green, 

The cluster from the vine ; 60 

We better love the hardy gift 

Our rugged vales bestow, 
To cheer us when the storm shall drift 

Our harvest-fields with snow. 

Through vales of grass and meads of flowers 
Our ploughs their furrows made, 

While on the hills the sun and showers 
Of changeful April played. 

We dropped the seed o'er hill and plain 
Beneath the sun of May, 70 

And frightened from our sprouting grain 
The robber crows away. 

All through the long, bright days of June 
Its leaves grew green and fair, 

And waved in hot midsummer's noon 
Its soft and yellow hair. 

And now, with autumn's moonlit eves, 

Its harvest-time has come, 
We pluck away the frosted leaves, 

And bear the treasure home. 80 

There, when the snows about us drift, 

And winter winds are cold, 
Fair hands the broken grain shall sift, 

And knead its meal of gold. 

Let vapid idlers loll in silk 

Around their costly board; 
Give us the bowl of samp and milk, 

By homespun beauty poured ! 

Where'er the wide old kitchen hearth 
Sends up its smoky curls, 90 

Who will not thank the kindly earth, 
And bless our farmer girls ! 

Then shame on all the proud and vain, 

Whose folly laughs to scorn 
The blessing of our hardy grain, 

Our wealth of golden corn ! 



Let earth withhold her goodly root, 

Let mildew blight the rye, 
Give to the worm the orchard's fruit, 

The wheat-field to the fly : 100 

But let the good old crop adorn 

The hills our fathers trod ; 
Still let us, for his golden corn, 

Send up our thanks to God ! 

1847. 



PROEM 1 

I love the old melodious lays 
Which softly melt the ages through, 

The songs of Spenser's golden days, 
Arcadian Sidney's silvery phrase, 
Sprinkling our noon of time with freshest 
morning dew. 

Yet, vainly in my quiet hours 
To breathe their marvellous notes I try; 
I feel them, as the leaves and flowers 
In silence feel the dewy showers, 
And drink with glad, still lips the blessing 
of the sky. 10 

The rigor of a frozen clime, 
The harshness of an untaught ear, 

The jarring words of one whose rhyme 
Beat often Labor's hurried time, 
Or Duty's rugged march through storm 
and strife, are here. 

Of mystic beauty, dreamy grace, 
No rounded art the lack supplies; 

Unskilled the subtle lines to trace, 
Or softer shades of Nature's face, 
I view her common forms with unanointed 
eyes. 20 

Nor mine the seer-like power to show 
The secrets of the heart and mind; 
To drop the plummet-line below 
Our common world of joy and woe, 
A more intense despair or brighter hope to 
find. 

Yet here at least an earnest sense 
Of human right and weal is shown; 



1 The first important collected edition of Whittier's 
poems was a large and beautiful volume published in 
1848 (dated 1849). This ' Proem ' was written to intro- 
duce it. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



281 



A hate of tyranny intense, 
And hearty in its vehemence, 
As if my brother's pain and sorrow were 
my own. 30 

O Freedom ! if to me belong 
Nor mighty Milton's gift divine, 

Nor Marvell's wit and graceful song, 
Still with a love as deep and strong 
As theirs, I lay, like them, my best gifts on 

thy shrine I 
1847. 1848. 



THE LAKESIDE 

The shadows round the inland sea 

Are deepening into night; 
Slow up the slopes of Ossipee 

They chase the lessening light. 
Tired of the long day's blinding heat, 

I rest my languid eye, 
Lake of the Hills ! where, cool and sweet, 

Thy sunset waters lie ! x 

Along the sky, in wavy lines, 

O'er isle and reach and bay, 10 

Green-belted with eternal pines, 

The mountains stretch away. 
Below, the maple masses sleep 

Where shore with water blends, 
Wbile midway on the tranquil deep 

The evening light descends. 

So seemed it when yon hill's red crown, 2 

Of old, the Indian trod, 
And, through the sunset air, looked down 

Upon the Smile of God. 8 20 

To him of light and shade the laws 

No forest skeptic taught; 

1 The 'Lake of the Hills' is Lake Winnipesaukee. 
One of Whittier's favorite resorts was West Osaipee, 
at the foot of the Ossipee Mountains, just northeast of 
the lake. See Pickard's WhUHer-Lcmd, pp. 109-1 15 ; 
his Life of WhUHer, vol. ii, p. 009 ; and Whittier's 
'Among the Hills' and ' Summer by the Lakeside.' 

2 Mt. Chocorua, north of West Ossipee, the most 
picturesque, though by no means the highest, of the 
mountains of New England. Its cone is formed of a 
peculiar reddish stone known as 'Chocorua granite.' 
For the legend of the Indian chief from whom it was 
named, see Thomas Starr King's The White Hills, or 
Sweetser's While Mountains, p. 341. See also Whit- 
tier's ' How They Climbed Chocorua' in Whittier-Land, 
pp. 111-114. One of Longfellow's early poems, 'Jec- 
koyva,' had the Indian chief Chocorua for its hero. 

3 The name Winnipesaukee is popularly thought to 
mean ' The Smile of the Great Spirit.' Students of the 
Indian languages, however, agree that its real meaning 
is ' Beautiful Water in a High Place.' 



Their living and eternal Cause 
His truer instinct sought. 

He saw these mountains in the light 

Which now across them shines ; 
This lake, in summer sunset bright, 

Walled round with sombering pines. 
God near him seemed; from earth and skies 

His loving voice he heard, 30 

As, face to face, in Paradise, 

Man stood before the Lord. 

Thanks, O our Father ! that, like him, 

Thy tender love I see, 
In radiant hill and woodland dim, 

And tinted sunset sea. 
For not in mockery dost Thou fill 

Our earth with light and grace; 
Thou hid'st no dark and cruel will 

Behind Thy smiling face ! 40 

1849. 



OUR STATE » 

The South-Land boasts its teeming cane, 
The prairied West its heavy grain, 
And sunset's radiant gates unfold 
On rising marts and sands of gold ! 

Rough, bleak, and hard, our little State 
Is scant of soil, of limits strait; 
Her yellow sands are sands alone, 
Her only mines are ice and stone ! 

From Autumn frost to April rain, 
Too long her winter woods complain; 
From budding flower to falling leaf, 
Her summer time is all too brief. 

Yet, on her rocks, and on her sands, 
And wintry hills, the school-house stands, 
And what her rugged soil denies, 
The harvest of the mind supplies. 

The riches of the Commonwealth 
Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health; 
And more to her than gold or grain, 
The cunning hand and cultured brain. 

For well she keeps her ancient stock, 
The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock; 
And still maintains, with milder laws, 
And clearer light, the Good Old Cause ! 
1 Originally called ' Dedication of a School-house.' 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Nor heeds the skeptic's puny hands, 
While near her school the church-spire 

stands ; 
Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule, 
While near her church-spire stands the 

school. 

1849. 

ICHABOD 1 

So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn 

Which once he wore ! 
The glory from his gray hairs gone 

Forevermore ! 

Revile him not, the Tempter hath 
A snare for all ; 

1 This poem was the outcome of the surprise and 
grief and forecast of evil consequences which I felt on 
reading the Seventh of March speech of Daniel Webster 
in support of the ' Compromise,' and the Fugitive Slave 
Law. No partisan or personal enmity dictated it. On 
the contrary my admiration of the splendid personality 
and intellectual power of the great senator was never 
stronger than when I laid down his speech, and, in one 
of the saddest moments of my life, penned my pro- 
test. . . . 

But death softens all resentments, and the conscious- 
ness of a common inheritance of frailty and weakness 
modifies the severity of judgment. Years after, in 
' The Lost Occasion,' I gave utterance to an almost 
universal regret that the great statesman did not live 
to see the flag which he loved trampled under the feet 
of Slavery, and, in view of this desecration, make his 
last days glorious in defence of ' Liberty and Union, 
one and inseparable.' (Whittiee.) 

' Ichabod ' and ' The Lost Occasion ' (p. 348) should 
necessarily be read together. The best possible com- 
ment on the two poems, from the point of view of 
to-day, is that of Professor Carpenter : ' Those whom 
Whittier knew best in later life relate that he came 
eventually to feel that Webster was perhaps right and 
he wrong; that compromise meant weary years of 
waiting, but that the further and consistent pursuit of 
such a policy might have successfully avoided the evils 
of war and of reconstruction. However that may be, 
the verses [of ' Ichabod '] are, in their awful scorn, the 
most powerful that he ever wrote. Right or wrong, he 
spoke for a great part of the North and West, nay, for 
the world. For the poem, in much the same fashion as 
Browning's ' Lost Leader,' is becoming disassociated 
with any special name, ,and may thus remain a most 
remarkable expression — the most terrible in our litera- 
ture — of the aversion which any mass of people may 
feel, especially in a democracy, for the once- worshipped 
leader whose acts and words, in matters of the greatest 
public weal, seem to retrograde.' (Carpenter's Whittier, 
pp. 221-222.) 

Compare Emerson's 'Webster,' p. 61, and the note 
on it; and Holmes's 'The Statesman's Secret,' and 
'The Birthday of Daniel Webster.' See also Pickard's 
Life of Whittier, vol. i, pp. 327-328. 

For the meaning of the title, see 1 Samuel iv, 19-22 : 
J And she named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory 
is departed from Israel.' It may have been sug- 
gested by an anonymous article of Lowell's on Daniel 
Webster, in the Anti-Slavery Standard (June, 1846), 
in which he says : ' Shall not the Recording Angel write 
Ichabod after the name of this man in the great book 
of Doom ? ' (Scudder's Life of Lowell, vol. i, p. 201.) 



And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, 
Befit his fall ! 

Oh, dumb be passion's stormy rage, 

When he who might io 

Have lighted up and led his age, 
Falls back in night. 

Scorn ! would the angels laugh, to mark 

A bright soul driven, 
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark, 

From hope and heaven ! 

Let not the land once proud of him 

Insult him now, 
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim, 

Dishonored brow. 20 

But let its humbled sons, instead, 

From sea to lake, 
A long lament, as for the dead, 

In sadness make. 

Of all we loved and honored, naught 

Save power remains ; 
A fallen angel's pride of thought, 

Still strong in chains. 

All else is gone ; from those great eyes 

• The soul has fled : 30 

When faith is lost, when honor dies, 
The man is dead ! 

Then pay the reverence of old days 

To his dead fame ; 
Walk backward, with averted gaze, 

And hide the shame ! 

1850. 1850. 

SONGS OF LABOR, DEDICATION 

I would the gift I offer here 

Might graces from thy favor take, 
And, seen through Friendship's atmo- 
sphere, 
On softened lines and coloring, wear 
The unaccustomed light of beauty, for thy 
sake. 

Few leaves of Fancy's spring remain : 

But what I have I give to thee, 
The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's plain, 
And paler flowers, the latter rain 
Calls from the westering slope of life's 
autumnal lea. 10 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



283 



Above the fallen groves of green, 

Where youth's enchanted forest stood 
Dry root and mossed trunk between, 
A sober after-growth is seen, 
As springs the pine where falls the gay- 
leafed maple wood ! 

Yet birds will sing, and breezes play 

Their leaf -harps in the sombre tree; 
And through the bleak and wintry 

day 
It keeps its steady green alway, — 
So, even my after-thoughts may have a 
charm for thee. 20 

Art's perfect forms no moral need, 

And beauty is its own excuse; x 
But for the dull and flowerless weed 
Some healing virtue still must plead, 
And the rough ore must find its honors in 
its use. 

So haply these, my simple lays 

Of homely toil, may serve to show 
The orchard bloom and tasselled maize 
That skirt and gladden duty's ways, 
The unsung beauty hid life's common 
things below. 30 

Haply from them the toiler, bent 

Above his forge or plough, may gain 
A manlier spirit of content, 
And feel that life is wisest spent 
Where the strong working hand makes 
strong the working brain. 

The doom which to the guilty pair 
Without the walls of Eden came, 
Transforming sinless ease to care 
And rugged toil, no more shall bear 
The burden of old crime, or mark of pri- 
mal shame. 40 

A blessing now, a curse no more ; 

Since He, whose name we breathe with 
awe, 
The coarse mechanic vesture wore, 
A poor man toiling with the poor, 
In labor, as hi prayer, fulfilling the same 
law. 

1850. 

1 For the idea of this line, I am indebted to Emer- 
son, in his inimitable sonnet to the Rhodora, — 

If eyes were made for seeing, 
Then Beauty is its own excuse for beine. 

(Whittier.) 



WORDSWORTH 

WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF OF HIS 
MEMOIRS 

Dear friends, who read the world aright, 
And in its common forms discern 

A beauty and a harmony 
The many never learn ! 

Kindred in soul of him who found 
In simple flower and leaf and stone 

The impulse of the sweetest lays 
Our Saxon tongue has known, — 

Accept this record of a life 

As sweet and pure, as calm and good, 
As a long day of blandest June 

In green field and in wood. 

How welcome to our ears, long pained 
By strife of sect and party noise, 

The brook-like murmur of his song 
Of nature's simple joys ! 

The violet by its mossy stone, 

The primrose by the rivers brim, 

And chance-sown daffodil, have found 
Immortal life through him. 

The sunrise on his breezy lake, 
The rosy tints his sunset brought, 

World-seen, are gladdening all the vales 
And mountain-peaks of thought. 

Art builds on sand; the works of pride 
And human passion change and fall; 

But that which shares the life of God 
With Him surviveth all. 

1851. 



BENEDICITE 

God's love and peace be with thee, where 
Soe'er this soft autumnal air 
Lifts the dark tresses of tby hair ! 

Whether through city casements comes 
Its kiss to thee, in crowded rooms, 
Or, out among the woodland blooms, 

It freshens o'er thy thoughtful face, 
Imparting, in its glad embrace, 
Beauty to beauty, grace to grace ! 



284 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Fair Nature's book together read, 10 

The old wood-paths that knew our tread, 
The maple shadows overhead, — 

The hills we climbed, the river seen 
By gleams along its deep ravine, — • 
All keep thy memory fresh and green. 

Where'er I look, where'er I stray, 
Thy thought goes with me on my way, 
And hence the prayer I breathe to-day; 

O'er lapse of time and change of scene, 
The weary waste which lies between 20 
Thyself and me, my heart I lean. 

Thou lack'st not Friendship's spell-word, nor 
The half-unconscious power to draw 
All hearts to thine by Love's sweet law. 

With these good gifts of God is cast 
Thy lot, and many a charm thou hast 
To hold the blessed angels fast. 

If, then, a fervent wish for thee 

The gracious heavens will heed from me, 

What shoidd, dear heart, its burden be ? 30 

The sighing of a shaken reed, — 
What can I more than meekly plead 
The greatness of our common need ? 

God's love, — unchanging, pure, and true, — 
The Paraclete white-shining through 
His peace, — the fall of Hermon's dew ! 

With such a prayer, on this sweet day, 
As thou mayst hear and I may say, 
I greet thee dearest, far away ! 

1851. 

APRIL 

The spring comes slowly up this way. — Christabel. 

'T IS the noon of the spring-time, yet never 

a bird 
In the wind-shaken elm or the maple is 

heard; 
For green meadow-grasses wide levels of 

snow, 
And blowing of drifts where the crocus 

should blow; 
Where wind-flower and violet, amber and 

white, 



On south-sloping brooksides should smile 

in the light, 
O'er the cold winter-beds of their late- 
waking roots 
The frosty flake eddies, the ice-crystal 

shoots ; 
And, longing for light, under wind-driven 

heaps, 
Round the boles of the pine-wood the 

ground-laurel creeps, 10 

Unkissed of the sunshine, unbaptized of 

showers, 
With buds scarcely swelled, which shoidd 

burst into flowers ! 
We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the 

south ! 
For the touch of thy light wings, the kiss 

of thy mouth; 
For the yearly evangel thou bearest from 

God, 
Resurrection and life to the graves of the 

sod ! 
Up our long river-valley, for days, have not 

ceased 
The wail and the shriek of the bitter north- 
east, 
Raw and chill, as if winnowed through ices 

and snow, 
All the way from the land of the wild Es- 
quimau, 20 
Until all our dreams of the land of the 

blest, 
Like that red hunter's, turn to the sunny 

southwest. 
O soul of the spring-time, its light and its 

breath, 
Bring warmth to this coldness, bring life 

to this death; 
Renew the great miracle ; let us behold 
The stone from the mouth of the sepulchre 

rolled, 
And Nature, like Lazarus, rise, as of old ! 
Let our faith, which in darkness and cold- 
ness has lain, 
Revive with the warmth and the brightness 

again, 
And in blooming of flower and budding of 

tree 3° 

The symbols and types of our destiny 

see; 
The life of the spring-time, the life of the 

whole, 
And, as sun to the sleeping earth, love to 

the soul ! 

1852. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



285 



ASTR^A 

Jove means to settle 
Astraea in her seat again, 
And let down from his golden chain 

An age of better metal. 

Ben Jonson, 161D. 

O poet rare and old ! 

Thy words are prophecies; 
Forward the age of gold, 

The new Saturnian lies. 

The universal prayer 

And hope are not in vain; 
Rise, brothers ! and prepare 

The way for Saturn's reign. 

Perish shall all which takes 
From labor's board and can; 

Perish shall all which makes 
A spaniel of the man ! 

Free from its bonds the mind, 

The body from the rod; 
Broken all chains that bhid 

The image of our God. 

Just men no longer pme 

Behind their prison-bars; 
Through the rent dungeon shine 

The free sun and the stars. 

Earth own, at last, untrod 

By sect, or caste, or clan, 
The fatherhood of God, 

The brotherhood of man ! 

Fraud fail, craft perish, forth 
The money-changers driven, 

And God's will done on earth, 
As now in heaven ! 

1852. 



FIRST-DAY THOUGHTS 

In calm and cool and silence, once again 
I find my old accustomed place among 
My brethren, where, perchance, no hu- 
man tongue 
Shall utter words ; where never hymn is 

sung, 
Nor deep-toned organ blown, nor censer 
swung, 
Nor dim light falling through the pictured 
pane ! 



There, syllabled by silence, let me hear 
The still small voice which reached the 

prophet's ear; . 
Read hi my heart a still diviner law 
Than Israel's leader on his tables saw ! 
There let me strive with each besetting 
sin, 
Recall my wandering fancies, and re- 
strain 
The sore disquiet of a restless brain; 
And, as the path of duty is made plain, 
May grace be given that I may walk 
therein, 
Not like the hireling, for his selfish 
gam, 
With backward glances and reluctant tread, 
Making a merit of his coward dread, 

But, cheerful, in the light around me 

thrown, 
Walking as one to pleasant service led; 
Doing God's will as if it were my own, 
Yet trusting not in mine, but in his strength 
alone ! 

1852. 



THE POOR VOTER ON ELECTION 
DAY 

The proudest now is but my peer, 

The highest not more high ; 
To-day, of all the weary year, 

A king of men am I. 
To-day alike are great and small, 

The nameless and the known; 
My palace is the people's hall, 

The ballot-box my throne ! 

Who serves to-day upon the list 

Beside the served shall stand; :o 

Alike the brown and wrinkled fist, 

The gloved and dainty hand ! 
The rich is level with the poor, 

The weak is strong to-day; 
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more 

Than homespun frock of gray. 

To-day let pomp and vain pretence 

My stubborn right abide ; 
I set a plain man's common sense 

Against the pedant's pride. 20 

To-day shall simple manhood try 

The strength of gold and land ; 
The wide world has not wealth to buy 

The power in my right hand ! 



2 86 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



While there 's a grief to seek redress, 

Or balance to adjust, 
Where weighs our living manhood less 

Than Mammon's vilest dust, — 
While there 's a right to need my vote, 

A wrong to sweep away, 3 o 

Up ! clouted knee and ragged coat ! 

A man 's a man to-day ! 

1852. 



SUMMER BY THE LAKESIDE 1 



LAKE WINNIPESAUKEE 



White clouds, whose shadows haunt the 

deep, 
Light mists, whose soft embraces keep 
The sunshine on the hills asleep ! 

O isles of calm ! O dark, still wood ! 
And stiller skies that overbrood 
Your rest with deeper quietude ! 

shapes and hues, dim beckoning, through 
Yon mountain gaps, my longing view 
Beyond the purple and the blue, 

To stiller sea and greener land, I0 

And softer lights and airs more bland, 
And skies, — the hollow of God's hand ! 

Transfused through you, O mountain 

friends ! 
With mine your solemn spirit blends, 
And life no more hath separate ends. 

1 read each misty mountain sign, 

I know the voice of wave and pine, 
And I am yours, and ye are mine. 

Life's burdens fall, its discords cease, 

I lapse into the glad release 20 

Of Nature's own exceeding peace. 

O welcome calm of heart and mind ! 
As falls yon fir-tree's loosened rind 
To leave a tenderer growth behind, 

So fall the weary years away; 
A child again, my head I lay 
Upon the lap of this sweet day. 

1 See the note on ' The Lakeside,' p. 281. 



This western wind hath Lethean powers, 
Yon noonday cloud nepenthe showers, 
The lake is white with lotus-flowers ! 3c 

Even Duty's voice is faint and low, 

And slumberous Conscience, waking slow, 

Forgets her blotted scroll to show. 

The Shadow which pursues us all, 
Whose ever-nearing steps appall, 
Whose voice we hear behind us call, — 

That Shadow blends with mountain gray, 
It speaks but what the light waves say, — 
Death walks apart from Fear to-day ! 

Rocked on her breast, these pines and I 4c 
Alike on Nature's love rely; 
And equal seems to live or die. 

Assured that He whose presence fills 
With light the spaces of these hills 
No evil to His creatures wills, 

The simple faith remains, that He 
Will do, whatever that may be, 
The best alike for man and tree, 



What mosses over one shall grow, 
What light and life the other know, 
Unanxious, leaving Him to show. 



5° 



II. EVENING 

Yon mountain's side is black with night, 
While, broad-orbed, o'er its gleaming 
crown 

The moon, slow-rounding into sight, 
On the hushed inland sea looks down. 

How start to light the clustering isles, 1 
Each silver - hemmed ! How sharply 
show 

The shadows of their rocky piles, 
And tree-tops in the wave below ! 

How far and strange the mountains seem, 60 
Dim - looming through the pale, still 
light ! 

The vague, vast grouping of a dream, 
They stretch into the solemn night. 

Beneath, lake, wood, and peopled vale, 
Hushed by that presence grand and grave, 

1 There are some three hundred islands in Lake Win- 
nipesaukee. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



287 



Are silent, save the cricket's wail, 
And low response of leaf and wave. 

Fair scenes ! whereto the Day and Night 
Make rival love, I leave ye soon, 

What time before the eastern light 70 

The pale ghost of the setting moon 

Shall hide behind yon rocky spines, 

And the young archer, Morn, shall 
break 

His arrows on the mountain pines, 

And, golden-sandalled, walk the lake ! 

Farewell ! around this smiling bay 

Gay-hearted Health, and Life hi bloom, 

With lighter steps than mine, may stray 
In radiant summers yet to come. 

But none shall more regretful leave 80 

These waters and these hills than I: 

Or, distant, fonder dream how eve 
Or dawn is painting wave and sky; 

How rising moons shine sad and mild 
On wooded isle and silvering bay; 

Or setting suns beyond the piled 
And purple mountains lead the day; 

Nor laughing girl, or bearding boy, 

Nor full -pulsed manhood, lingering 
here, 

Shall add, to life's abounding joy, 90 

The charmed repose to suffering dear. 

Still waits kind Nature to impart 
Her choicest gifts to such as gain 

An entrance to her loving heart 

Through the sharp discipline of pain. 

Forever from the Hand that takes 
One blessing from us others fall ; 

And, soon or late, our Father makes 
His perfect recompense to all ! 

Oh, watched by Silence and the Night, 100 
And folded in the strong embrace 

Of the great mountains, with the light 
Of the sweet heavens upon thy face, 

Lake of the Northland ! keep thy dower 
Of beauty still, and while above 

Thy solemn mountains speak of power, 
Be thou the mirror of God's love. 

1853. 



BURNS 1 

ON RECEIVING A SPRIG OF HEATHER IN 
BLOSSOM 

No more these simple flowers belong 

To Scottish maid and lover; 
Sown hi the common soil of song, 

They bloom the wide world over. 

In smiles and tears, hi sun and showers, 

The minstrel and the heather, 
The deathless singer and the flowers 

He sang of live together. 

Wild heather-bells and Robert Burns ! 

The moorland flower and peasant ! 10 
How, at their mention, memory turns 

Her pages old and pleasant ! 

The gray sky wears again its gold 

And purple of adorning, 
And manhood's noonday shadows hold 

The dews of boyhood's morning. 

The dews that washed the dust and soil 
From off the wings of pleasure, 

The sky, that flecked the ground of toil 
With golden threads of leisure. 20 

I call to mind the summer day, 

The early harvest mowing, 
The sky with sun and clouds at play, 

And flowers with breezes blowing. 

1 When I was fourteen years old my first school- 
master, Joshua Coffin, the able, eccentric historian of 
Newbury, brought with him to our house a volume of 
Burns's poems, from which he read, greatly to my de- 
light. I begged him to leave the book with me, and 
set myself at once to the task of mastering the glossary 
of the Scottish dialect at its close. This was about the 
first poetry I had ever read (with the exception of that 
of the Bible, of which I had been a close student), and 
it had a lasting influence upon me. I began to make 
rhymes myself, and to imagine stories and adventures. 
(Whittier, in his Autobiographical Letter ; Carpenter's 
Whittier, pp. 298-299.) 

One day we had a call from a ' pawky auld carle ' of 
a wandering Scotchman. To him I owe my first intro- 
duction to the songs of Burns. After eating his bread 
and cheese and drinking his mug of cider he gave us 
' Bonny B*oon,' ' Highland Mary' and 'Auld Lang Syne.' 
He had a rich, full voice, and entered heartily into the 
spirit of his lyrics. I have since listened to the same 
melodies from the lips of Dempster, than whom the 
Scottish bard has had no sweeter or truer interpreter ; 
but the skilful performance of the artist lacked the 
novel charm of the gaberlunzie's singing in the old 
farmhouse kitchen. (Whittier, ' Yankee Gypsies.' in 
his Prose Works, vol. i, pp. 33G-337 ; also quoted in 
Carpenter's Whittier, p. 30.) 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



I hear the blackbird in the corn, 

The locust in the haying; 
And, like the fabled hunter's horn, 

Old tunes niy heart is playing. 

How oft that day, with fond delay, 

I sought the maple's shadow, 3 o 

And sang with Burns the hours away, 
Forgetful of the meadow ! 

Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead 

I heard the squirrels leaping, 
The good dog listened while I read, 

And wagged his tail in keeping. 

I watched him while in sportive mood 
I read ' The Twa Dogs' ' story, 

And half believed he understood 

The poet's allegory. 40 

Sweet day, sweet songs ! The golden 
hours 

Grew brighter for that singing, 
From brook and bird and meadow flowers 

A dearer welcome bringing. 

New light on home-seen Nature beamed, 

New glory over Woman; 
And daily life and duty seemed 

No longer poor and common. 

I woke to find the simple truth 

Of fact and feeling better so 

Than all the dreams that held my youth 

A still repining debtor: 

That Nature gives her handmaid, Art, 
The themes of sweet discoursing; 

The tender idyls of the heart 
In every tongue rehearsing. 

Why dream of lands of gold and pearl, 

Of loving knight and lady, 
When farmer boy and barefoot girl 

Were wandering there already ? 60 

I saw through all familiar things 

The romance underlying; 
The joys and griefs that plume the wings 

Of Fancy skyward flying. 

I saw the same blithe day return, 

The same sweet fall of even, 
That rose on wooded Craigie-burn, 

And sank on crystal Devon. 



I matched with Scotland's heathery hills 
The sweetbrier and the clover; 7 o 

With Ayr and Doon, my native rills, 
Their wood hymns chanting over. 

O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, 

I saw the Man uprising; 
No longer common or unclean, 

The child of God's baptizing ! 

With clearer eyes I saw the worth 

Of life among the lowly; 
The Bible at his Cotter's hearth 

Had made my own more holy. So 

And if at times an evil strain, 

To lawless love appealing, 
Broke hi upon the sweet refrain 

Of pure and healthful feeling, 

It died upon the eye and ear, 

No inward answer gaming; 
No heart had I to see or hear 

The discord and the staining. 

Let those who never erred forget 

His worth, hi vain bewailings ; go 

Sweet Soul of Song ! I own my debt 
Uncancelled by his failings ! 

Lament who will the ribald line 
Which tells his lapse from duty, 

How kissed the maddening lips. of wine 
Or wanton ones of beauty; 

But think, while falls that shade be- 
tween 

The erring one and Heaven, 
That he who loved like Magdalen, 

Like her may be forgiven. i o 

Not his the song whose thunderous chime 

Eternal echoes render; 
The mournful Tuscan's haunted rhyme, 

And Milton's starry splendor ! 

But who his human heart has laid 

To Nature's bosom nearer ? 
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid 

To love a tribute dearer? 

Through all his tuneful art, how strong 
The human feeling gushes ! no 

The very moonlight of his song 
Is warm with smiles and blushes ! 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



289 



Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, 

So ' Bonnie Doon ' but tarry; 
Blot out the Epic's stately rhyme, 
But spare his ' Highland Mary ' ! 
1854. 1854. 



MAUD MULLER* 

Maud Muller on a summer's day 
Raked the meadow sweet with hay. 

Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth 
Of simple beauty and rustic health. < 1 

Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee 
The mock-bird echoed from his tree. 

But when she glanced to the far-off town, 
White from its hill-slope looking down, 

The sweet song died, and a vague un- 
rest 

And a nameless longing filled her 
breast, — 10 

A wish that she hardly dared to own, 
For something better than she had known. 

The Judge rode slowly down the lane, 
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane. 

He drew his bridle in the shade 

Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid, 

And asked a draught from the spring that 

flowed 
Through the meadow across the road. 

She stooped where the cool spring bubbled 

up, 
And filled for him her small tin cup, 20 

And blushed as she gave it, looking down 
On her feet so bare, and her tattered 
gown. 

1 The poem had no real foundation in fact, though a 
hint of it may have been found in recalling an incident, 
trivial in itself, of a journey on the picturesque Maine 
seaboard with my sister some years before it was writ- 
ten. We had stopped to rest our tired horse under the 
shade of an apple-tree, and refresh him with water from 
a little brook which rippled through the stone wall 
across the road. A very beautiful young girl in scantest 
summer attire was at work in the hay-field, and as we 
talked with her we noticed that she strove to hide her 
bare feet by raking hay over them, blushing as she did 
so, through the tan of her cheek and neck. (Whitteeb.) 



' Thanks ! ' said the Judge ; ' a sweeter 

draught 
From a fairer hand was never quaffed.' 

He spoke of the grass and flowers and 

trees, 
Of the singing birds and the humming 

bees; 

Then talked of the haying, and wondered 

whether 
The cloud in the west would bring foul 

weather. 

And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown, 
And her graceful ankles bare and brown; 30 

And listened, while a pleased surprise 
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes. 

At last, like one who for delay 
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away. 

Maud Muller looked and sighed: ' Ah me ! 
That I the Judge's bride might be ! 

' He would dress me up in silks so fine, 
And praise and toast me at his wine. 

' My father should wear a broadcloth coat; 
My brother should sail a painted boat. 4 o 

' I 'd dress my mother so grand and gay, 
And the baby should have a new toy each 
day. 

' And I 'd feed the hungry and clothe the 

poor, 
And all should bless me who left our door.' 

The Judge looked back as he climbed the 

hill, 
And saw Maud Muller standing still. 

' A form more fair, a face more sweet, 
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet. 

' And her modest answer and graceful air 
Show her wise and good as she is fair. 50 

' Would she were mine, and I to-day, 
Like her, a harvester of hay ; 

' No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs, 
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues, 



JT 



290 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



' But low of cattle and song of birds, 
And health and quiet and loving words.' 

But he thought of his sisters, proud and 

cold, 
And his mother, vain of her rank and gold. 

So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on, 
And Maud was left in the field alone. 60 

O^Sut the lawyers smiled that afternoon, 

When he hummed in court an old love- 



tune ; 







And the young girl mused beside the well 
Till the ram on the unraked clover fell. 

LHe wedded a wife of richest dower, 
Who lived for fashion, as he for power, 

^\ Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow, 
He watched a picture come and go; 

And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes 
Looked out in their innocent surprise. 70 



Oft, when the wine in his glass was red, 
He longed for the wayside well instead; 

And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms 
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms. 

And the proud man sighed, with a secret 

pain, 
' Ah, that I were free again ! 

' Free as when I rode that day, 
Where the barefoot maiden raked her 
hay.' 

She wedded a man unlearned and poor, 79 
And many children played round her door. 

But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain, 
Left their traces on heart and brain. 

And oft, when the summer sun shone hot 
On the new-mown hay in the meadow 
lot, 



And she heard the little spring brook fall 
Over the roadside, through the wall, 

In the shade of the apple-tree again 
She saw a rider draw his rein; 



And, gazing down with timid grace, 

She felt his pleased eyes read her face. 90 

Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls 
Stretched away into stately halls; 

The weary wheel to a spinnet turned, 
The tallow candle an astral burned, 

And for him who sat by the chimney lug, 
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug, 

A manly form at her side she saw, 
And joy was duty and love was law. 

Then she took up her burden of life again, 
Saying only, ' It might have been.' 100 

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge, 

For rich repiner and household drudge ! 

God pity them both ! and pity us all, 
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall. 

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, 
The saddest are these : • It might have 
been ! ' 

Ah, well ! for us all some sweet hope 

lies 
Deeply buried from human eyes; 



And, in the hereafter, angels may 
Boll the stone from its grave away ! 



no 
1854. 



THE RENDITION 1 

I heard the train's shrill whistle call, 
I saw an earnest look beseech, 
And rather by that look than speech 

My neighbor told me all. 

And, as I thought of Liberty 

Marched handcuffed down that sworded 
street, 

The solid earth beneath my feet 

Reeled fluid as the sea. 

1 On the 2d of June, 1854, Anthony Burns, a fugi- 
tive slave from Virginia, after being under arrest for 
ten days in the Boston Court House, was remanded to 
slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act, and taken down 
State Street to a steamer chartered by the United 
States Government, under guard of United States 
troops and artillery, Massachusetts militia and Boston 
police. (Whittibr.) 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



291 



I felt a sense of bitter loss, — 
Shame, tearless grief, and 

wrath , 
And loathing fear, as if my path 

A serpent stretched across. 



stifling 



All love of home, all pride of place, 
All generous confidence and trust, 
Sank smothering in that deep dis- 
gust 

And anguish of disgrace. 

Down on my native hills of June, 
And home's green quiet, hiding all, 
Fell sudden darkness like the fall 

Of midnight upon noon ! 20 

And Law, an unloosed maniac, strong, 
Blood-drunken, through the blackness 

trod, 
Hoarse-shouting in the ear of God 

The blasphemy of wrong. 

1 O Mother, from thy memories proud, 
Thy old renown, dear Commonwealth, 
Lend this dead air a breeze of health, 

And smite with stars this cloud. 

' Mother of Freedom, wise and brave, 
Rise awful hi thy strength,' I said; 30 
Ah me ! I spake but to the dead ; 

I stood upon her grave ! 

1854. 1854. 



ARISEN AT LAST 1 

I said I stood upon thy grave, 

My Mother State, when last the moon 
Of blossoms clomb the skies of June. 

And, scattering ashes on my head, 
I wore, undreaming of relief, 
The sackcloth of thy shame and grief. 

Again that moon of blossoms shines 
On leaf and flower and folded wing, 
And thou hast risen with the spring ! 

Once more thy strong maternal arms 10 
Are round about thy children flung, — 
A lioness that guards her young ! 

1 On the passage of the bill to protect the rights and 
liberties of the people of the State against the Fugitive 
Slave Act. (Whitteek.) 



No threat is on thy closed lips, 
But in thine eye a power to smite 
The mad wolf backward from its light. 

Southward the baffled robber's track 
Henceforth runs only ; hereaway, 
The fell lycanthrope finds no prey. 

Henceforth, within thy sacred gates, 

His first low howl shall downward draw 
The thunder of thy righteous law. 21 

Not mindless of thy trade and gain, 
But, acting on the wiser plan, 
Thou 'rt grown conservative of man. 

So shalt thou clothe with life the hope, 
Dream-painted on the sightless eyes 
Of him who sang of Paradise, — 

The vision of a Christian man, 
In virtue, as in stature great 
Embodied hi a Christian State. 30 

And thou, amidst thy sisterhood 
Forbearing long, yet standing fast, 
Shalt win their grateful thanks at last; 

When North and South shall strive no 
more, 

And all their feuds and fears be lost 

In Freedom's holy Pentecost. 
1855. 1855? 



THE BAREFOOT BOY 

Blessings on thee, little man, 
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan ! 
With thy turned-up pantaloons, 
And thy merry whistled tunes; 
With thy red lip, redder still 
Kissed by strawberries on the hill; 
With the sunshine on thy face, 
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace; 
From my heart I give thee joy, — 
I was once a barefoot boy ! 
Prince thou art, — the grown-up man 
Only is republican. 
Let the million-dollared ride ! 
Barefoot, trudging at his side, 
Thou hast more than he can buy 
In the reach of ear and eye, — 
Outward sunshine, inward joy: 
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy ! 



292 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Oil for boyhood's painless play, 
Sleep that wakes in laughing day, 20 

Health that mocks the doctor's rules, 
Knowledge never learned of schools, 
Of the wild bee's morning chase, 
Of the wild-flower's time and place, 
Flight of fowl and habitude 
Of the tenants of the wood; 
How the tortoise bears his shell, 
How the woodchuck digs his cell, 
And the ground-mole sinks his well; 
How the robin feeds her young, 30 

How tbe oriole's nest is hung; 
Where the whitest lilies blow, 
Where the freshest berries grow, 
Where the ground-nut trails its vine, 
Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; 
Of the black wasp's cunning way, 
Mason of his walls of clay, 
And the architectural plans 
Of gray hornet artisans ! 
For, eschewing books and tasks, 40 

Nature answers all he asks; 
Hand in hand with her he walks, 
Face to face with her be talks, 
Part and parcel of her joy, — 
Blessings on the barefoot boy ! 

Oh for boyhood's time of June, 
Crowding years in one brief moon, 
When all things I heard or saw, 
Me, their master, waited for. 
I was rich in flowers and trees, 50 

Humming-birds and honey-bees; 
For my sport the squirrel played, 
Plied the snouted mole his spade; 
For my taste the blackberry cone 
Purpled over hedge and stone; 
Laughed the brook for my delight 
Through the day and through the night, 
Whispering at the garden wall, 
Talked with me from fall to fall; 
Mine the sand-rirhmed pickerel pond, 60 
Mine the walnut slopes beyond, 
Mine, on bending orchard trees, 
Apples of Hesperides ! 
Still as my horizon grew, 
Larger grew my riches too; 
All the world I saw or knew 
Seemed a complex Chinese toy, 
Fashioned for a barefoot boy ! 

Oh for festal dainties spread, 

Like my bowl of milk and bread; 70 

Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, 



On the door-stone, gray and rude ! 
O'er me, like a regal tent, 
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, 
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, 
Looped in many a wind-swung fold; 
While for music came the play 
Of the pied frogs' orchestra; 
And, to light the noisy choir, 
Lit the fly his lamp of fire. 80 

I was monarch: pomp and joy 
Waited on the barefoot boy ! 

Cheerily, then, my little man, 

Live and laugh, as boyhood can ! 

Though the flinty slopes be hard, 

Stubble-speared the new-mown sward, 

Every morn shall lead thee through 

Fresh baptisms of the dew; 

Every evening from thy feet 

Shall the cool wind kiss the heat: 90 

All too soon these feet must hide 

In the prison cells of pride, 

Lose the freedom of the sod, 

Like a colt's for work be shod, 

Made to tread the mills of toil, 

Up and down hi ceaseless moil: 

Happy if their track be found 

Never on forbidden ground; 

Happy if they sink not in 

Quick and treacherous sands of sin. 100 

Ah ! that thou couldst know thy joy, 

Ere it passes, barefoot boy ! 

1855? 



THE LAST WALK IN AUTUMN 



O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched 
hands 
Plead with the leaden heavens in vain, 
I see, beyond the valley lands, 

The sea's long level dim with rain. 
Around me all things, stark and dumb, 
Seem praying for the snows to come, 
And, for the summer bloom and greenness 

gone, 
With winter's sunset lights and dazzling 
morn atone. 



Along the river's summer walk, 
The withered tufts of asters nod; 

And trembles on its arid stalk 

The hoar plume of the golden-rod. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



293 



And on a ground of sombre fir, 

And azure-studded juniper, 
The silver birch its buds of purple shows, 
And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the 
sweet wild-rose ! 



With mingled sound of horns and bells, 
A far-heard clang, the wild geese fly, 

Storm-sent, from Arctic moors and fells, 
Like a great arrow through the sky, 20 

Two dusky lines converged in one, 

Chasing the southward-flying sun; 
While the brave snow-bird and the hardy 

Call to them from the pines, as if to bid 
them stay. 

IV 

I passed this way a year ago: 

The wind blew south; the noon of day 
Was warm as June's; and save that snow 

Flecked the low mountains far away, 
And that the vernal-seeming breeze 
Mocked faded grass and leafless trees, 30 
I might have dreamed of summer as I lay, 
Watching the fallen leaves with the soft 
wind at play. 



Since then, the winter blasts have piled 

The white pagodas of the snow 
On these rough slopes, and, strong and 
wild, 
Yon river, in its overflow 
Of spring-time rain and sun, set free, 
Crashed with its ices to the sea; 
And over these gray fields, then green and 

gold, 
The summer corn has waved, the thunder's 
organ rolled. 40 



Rich gift of God ! A year of time ! 

What pomp of rise and shut of day, 
What hues wherewith our Northern 
clime 

Makes autumn's dropping woodlands 

gay. 

What airs outblown from ferny dells, 
And clover-bloom and sweetbrier smells, 
What songs of brooks and birds, what 

fruits and flowers, 
Green woods and moonlit snows, have in 
its round been ours ! 



I know not how, in other lands, 

The changing seasons come and go; 50 
What splendors fall on Syrian sands, 

What purple lights on Alpine snow ! 
Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits 
On Venice at her watery gates; 
A dream alone to me is Arno's vale, 
And the Alhambra's halls are but a travel- 
ler's tale. 



Yet, on life's current, he who drifts 

Is one with him who rows or sails; 
And he who wanders widest lifts 

No more of beauty's jealous veils 60 
Than he who from his doorway sees 
The miracle of flowers and trees, . 
Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air, 
And from cloud minarets hears the sunset 
call to prayer ! 



The eye may well be glad that looks 

Where Pharpar's f ountains rise and fall ; 
But he who sees his native brooks 

Laugh in the sun, has seen them all. 
The marble palaces of Ind 
Rise round him in the snow and wind; 70 
From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz 

smiles, 
And Rome's cathedral awe is in his wood- 
land aisles. 



And thus it is my fancy blends 

The near at hand and far and rare ; 

1 With this and the following stanzas, compare Em- 
erson's ' Written in Naples,' and the note on it ; Lowell's 
' An Invitation ; ' Holmes's ' After a Lecture on Words- 
worth ; ' and Whittier's ' To ' : 

No sweeter bowers the bee delayed, 
In wild Ilymettus' scented shade, 
Than those you dwell among ; 
Snow-flowered azaleas, intertwined 
With roses, over banks inclined 
With trembling harebells hung! 

A charmed life unknown to death, 
Immortal freshness Nature hath ; 
Her fabled fount and (.den 
Are now and here : Dodona's shrine 
Still murmurs in the wind-swept pine, — 
All is that e'er hath been. 

The Beauty which old Greece or Rome 

Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home ; 

We need but eye and ear 

In all our daily walks to trace 

The outlines of incarnate grace, 

The hymns of gods to hear ! 

See also Whittier'B Introduction to the Poems of 
J. G. C. Brainard, quoted in Carpenter's Whitlier, pp. 
86-87 ; and further, in Whittier's own poems, ' Our 
River,' and the Prelude to ' Among the Hills.' 



294 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And while the same horizon bends 
Above the silver-sprinkled hair 
Which flashed the light of morning skies 
On childhood's wonder-lifted eyes, 
Within its round of sea and sky and field, 
Earth wheels with all her zones, the Kosmos 
stands revealed. So 



And thus the sick man on his bed, 

The toiler to his task-work bound, 
Behold their prison-walls outspread, 

Their clipped horizon widen round ! 
While freedom-giving fancy waits, 
Like Peter's angel at the gates, 
The power is theirs to baffle care and pain, 
To bring the lost world back, and make it 
theirs again ! 



What lack of goodly company, 

When masters of the ancient lyre 90 
Obey my call, and trace for me 

Their words of mingled tears and fire ! 
I talk with Bacon, grave and wise, 
I read the world with Pascal's eyes ; 
And priest and sage, with solemn brows 

austere, 
And poets, garland-bound, the Lords of 
Thought, draw near. 



Methinks, O friend, I hear thee say, 

' In vain the human heart we mock; 
Bring living guests who love the day, 

Not ghosts who fly at crow of cock ! 100 
The herbs we share with flesh and blood 
Are better than ambrosial food 
With laurelled shades.' I grant it, nothmg 

loath, 
But doubly blest is he who can partake of 
both. 



He who might Plato's banquet grace, 

Have I not seen before me sit, 
And watched his puritanic face, 

With more than Eastern wisdom lit ? 
Shrewd mystic ! who, upon the back 
Of his Poor Richard's Almanac no 

Writhig the Sufi's song, the Gen too 's 

dream, 
Links Manu's age of thought to Fulton's 
age of steam ! 
1 Stanzas xiv-xvi, Emerson, Bayard Taylor, Sumner. 



XV 
Here too, of answering love secure, 

Have I not welcomed to my hearth 
The gentle pilgrim troubadour, 

Whose songs have girdled half the 
earth; 
Whose pages, like the magic mat 
Whereon the Eastern lover sat, 
Have borne me over Rhine-land's purple 

vines, 
And Nubia's tawny sands, and Phrygia's 
mountain pines ! 120 

XVI 

And he, who to the lettered wealth 

Of ages adds the lore unpriced, 
The wisdom and the moral health, 

The ethics of the school of Christ ; 
The statesman to his holy trust, 
As the Athenian arcbon, just, 
Struck down, exiled like him for truth 

alone, 
Has he not graced my home with beauty all 
his own ? 



What greetings smile, what farewells 
wave, 
What loved ones enter and depart ! 130 
The good, the beautiful, the brave, 
The Heaven-lent treasures of the 
heart ! 
How conscious seems the frozen sod 
And beechen slope whereon they trod ! 
The oak-leaves rustle, and the dry grass 

bends 
Beneath the shadowy feet of lost or absent 
friends. 



Then ask not why to these bleak hills 

I cling, as clings the tufted moss, 
To bear the winter's lingering chills, 139 

The mocking spring's perpetual loss. 
I dream of lands where summer smiles, 
And soft winds blow from spicy isles, 
But scarce would Ceylon's breath of flow- 
ers be sweet, 
Could I not feel thy soil, New England, at 
my feet ! 



At times I long for gentler skies, 

And bathe in dreams of softer air, 
But homesick tears would fill the eyes 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



2 95 



That saw the Cross without the Bear. 

The pine must whisper to the palm, 

The north-wind break the tropic 

calm; 150 

And with the dreamy languor of the 

Line, 
The North's keen virtue blend, and strength 
to beauty join. 

xx 

Better to stem with heart and hand 
The roaring tide of life, than He, 
Unmindful, on its flowery strand, 
Of God's occasions drifting by ! 
Better with naked nerve to bear 
The needles of this goading air, 
Than, in the lap of sensual ease, forego 
The godlike power to do, the godlike aim 
to know. 160 



Home of my heart ! to me more fair 

Than gay Versailles or Windsor's halls, 
The painted, shingly town-house where 

The freeman's vote for Freedom falls ! 
The simple roof where prayer is made, 
Than Gothic groin and colonnade; 
The living temple of the heart of man, 
Than Rome's sky-mocking vault, or many- 
spired Milan ! 



More dear thy equal village schools, 
Where rich and poor the Bible 
read, 1JQ 

Than classic halls where Priestcraft rules, 
And Learning wears the chains of 
Creed; 
Thy glad Thanksgiving, gathering in 
The scattered sheaves of home and kin, 
Than the mad license ushering Lenten 

pains, 
Or holidays of slaves who laugh and dance 
in chains. 

XXIII 

And sweet homes nestle in these dales, 

And perch along these wooded swells; 
And, blest beyond Arcadian vales, 

They hear the sound of Sabbath bells ! 

Here dwells no perfect man sublime, 181 

Nor woman winged before her time, 

But with the faults and follies of the race, 

Old home-bred virtues hold their not un- 

honored place. 



Here manhood struggles for the sake 

Of mother, sister, daughter, wife, 
The graces and the loves which make 

The music of the march of life; 
And woman, in her daily round 
Of duty, walks on holy ground. 190 

No unpaid menial tills the soil, nor here 
Is the bad lesson learned at human rights 
to sneer. 



Then let the icy north-wind blow 

The trumpets of the coming storm, 
To arrowy sleet and blinding snow 

Yon slanting lines of rain transform. 
Young hearts shall hail the drifted cold, 
As gayly as I did of old; 
And I, who watch them through the frosty 

pane, 
Unenvious, live in them my boyhood o'er 
again. 200 



And I will trust that He who heeds 

The life that hides in mead and wold, 
Who hangs yon alder's crimson beads, 
And stains these mosses green and 
gold, 
Will still, as He hath done, incline 
His gracious care to me and mine; 
Grant what we ask aright, from wrong de- 
bar, 
And, as the earth grows dark, make brighter 
every star ! 



I have not seen, I may not see, 

My hopes for man take form in fact, 
But God will give the victory 211 

In due time; in that faith I act. 
And he who sees the future sure, 
The baffling present may endure, 
And bless, meanwhile, the unseen Hand 

that leads 
The heart's desires beyond the halting step 
of deeds. 



And thou, my song, I send thee forth, 
Where harsher songs of mine have 
flown; 
Go, find a place at home and hearth 
Where'er thy singer's name is 
known; 220 



296 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Revive for him the kindly thought 
Of friends ; and they who love him not, 
Touched by some strain of thine, perchance 

may take 
• The hand he proffers all, and thank him for 

thy sake. 
1856. 1857. 



SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE 1 

Of all the rides since the birth of time, 
Told in story or sung in rhyme, — 
On Apuleius's Golden Ass, 
Or one-eyed Calender's horse of brass, 
Witch astride of a human back, 
Islam's prophet on Al-Borak, — 
The strangest ride that ever was sped 
Was Ireson's, out from Marblehead ! 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 
cart 10 

By the women of Marblehead ! 

Body of turkey, head of owl, 
Wings a-droop like a rained-on fowl, 
Feathered and ruffled in every part, 
Skipper Ireson stood in the cart. 
Scores of women; old and young, 
Strong of muscle, and glib of tongue, 
Pushed and pulled up the rocky lane, 
Shouting and singing the shrill refrain: 

'Here 's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd 
horrt, - 20 

Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd hi a corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead ! ' 

1 The story of Skipper Ireson was told to Whittier by 
a schoolmate from Marblehead, when he was a student 
in Haverhill Academy (see Pickard's Life, vol. ii, p. 
409, and the poem ' A Sea Dream '), and he began to 
write the ballad at that time, in 1828. It was finished, 
and published in the second number of the Atlantic 
Monthly, in 1857. Lowell, then editor of the Atlantic, 
suggested the use of dialect in the refrain (see Scud- 
der's Life of Lowell, vol. i, pp. 417-418, and Lowell's 
Letters, the'letter to Whittier of Nov. 4, 1857). 

Mr. Samuel Roads, Jr., in his History of Marblehead, 
published in 1879, tried to show that Captain Ireson 
was not responsible for the abandonment of the dis- 
abled ship. Whittier characteristically wrote to Mr. 
Roads : — 

' . . . I have now no doubt that thy version of Skip- 
per Ireson's ride is the correct one. My verse was 
founded solely on a fragment of rhyme which I heard 
from one of my early schoolmates, a native of Marble- 
head. I supposed the story to which it referred dated 
back at least a century. I knew nothing of the partici- 
pators, and the narrative of the ballad was pure fancy. 
I am glad for the sake of truth and justice that the 
real facts are given in thy book. I certainly would not 
knowingly do injustice to any one, dead or living. 

' I am very truly thy friend, John G. Whittiee.' 



Wrinkled scolds with hands on hips, 
Girls in bloom of cheek and lips, 
Wild-eyed, free-limbed, such as chase 
Bacchus round some antique vase, 
Brief of skirt, with ankles bare, 
Loose of kerchief and loose of hair, 
With conch-shells blowing and fish-horns' 

twang, 
Over and over the Msenads sang: 30 

' Here 's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd 

horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead ! ' 

Small pity for him ! — He sailed away 
From a leaking ship in Chaleur Bay, — 
Sailed away from a sinking wreck, 
With his own town's-people on her deck ! 
' Lay by ! lay by ! ' they called to him. 
Back he answered, ' Sink or swim ! 
Brag of your catch of fish, again ! ' 40 

And off he sailed through the fog and 
rain ! 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 
cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 

Fathoms deep in dark Chaleur 
That wreck shall lie forevermore. 
Mother and sister, wife and maid, 
Looked from the rocks of Marblehead 
Over the moaning and rainy sea, — 
Looked for the coming that might not 
be ! 50 

What did the winds and the sea-birds 

say 
Of the cruel captain who sailed away ? — 
Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 
cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 

Through the street, on either side, 
Up flew windows, doors swung wide; 
Sharp-tongued spinsters, old wives gray, 
Treble lent the fish-horn's bray. 
Sea- worn grandsires, cripple-bound, 60 

Hulks of old sailors run aground, 
Shook head, and fist, and hat, and cane, 
And cracked with curses the hoarse re- 
frain : 
' Here 's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead ! ' 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



297 



Sweetly along the Salem road 
Bloom of orchard and lilac showed. 
Little the wicked skipper knew 
Of the fields so green and the sky so blue. 
Riding there in his sorry trim, 71 

Like an Indian idol glum and grim, 
Scarcely he seemed the sound to hear 
Of voices shouting, far and near : 

' Here 's Flud Oirson, fur his horrd horrt, 
Torr'd an' futherr'd an' corr'd in a corrt 
By the women o' Morble'ead ! ' 

1 Hear me, neighbors ! ' at last he cried, — 
' What to me is this noisy ride ? 
What is the shame that clothes the skin 80 
To the nameless horror that lives within ? 
Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck, 
And hear a cry from a reeling deck ! 
Hate me and curse me, — I only dread 
The hand of God and the face of the dead ! ' 
Said old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a 
cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 

Then the wife of the skipper lost at sea 
Said, 'God has touched him! why should 
we ! ' 90 

Said an old wife mourning her only son, 
• Cut the rogue's tether and let him run ! ' 
So with soft relentings and rude excuse, 
Half scorn, half pity, they cut him loose, 
And gave him a cloak to bide him in, 
And left him alone with his shame and sin. 
Poor Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart, 
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart 
By the women of Marblehead ! 
1828, 1857. 1857. 

THE GARRISON OF CAPE 

ANN 

From the hills of home forth looking, far 

beneath the tent-like span 
Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the 

headland of Cape Ann. 
Well I know its coves and beaches to the 

ebb-tide glimmering down, 
And the white-walled hamlet children of 

its ancient fishing-town. 

Long has passed the summer morning, and 

its memory waxes old, 
When along yon breezy headlands with a 

pleasant friend I strolled. 



Ah ! the autumn sun is shining, and the 

ocean wind blows cool, 
And the golden-rod and aster bloom around 

thy grave, Rantoul ! 

With the memory of that morning by the 

summer sea I blend 
A wild and wondrous story, by the younger 

Mather penned, 10 

In that quaint Magnolia Christi, with all 

strange and marvellous things, 
Heaped up huge and undigested, like the 

chaos Ovid sings. 

Dear to me these far, faint glimpses of the 

dual life of old, 
Inward, grand with awe and reverence; 

outward, mean and coarse and cold; 
Gleams of mystic beauty playing over dull 

and vulgar clay, 
Golden-threaded fancies weaving in a web 

of hodden gray. 

The great eventful Present hides the Past; 

but through the din 
Of its loud life hints and echoes from the 

life behind steal in; 
And the lore of home and fireside, and the 

legendary rhyme, 
Make the task of duty lighter which the 

true man owes his time. 20 

So, with something of the f eeling which the 
Covenanter knew, 

When with pious chisel wandering Scot- 
land's moorland graveyards through, 

From the graves of old traditions I part 
the blackberry-vines, 

Wipe the moss from off the headstones, 
and retouch the faded lines. 



Where the sea-waves back and forward, 

hoarse with rolling pebbles, ran, 
The garrison-house stood watching on the 

gray rocks of Cape Ann; 
On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and 

palisade, 
And rough walls of unhewn timber with 

the moonlight overlaid. 

On his slow round walked the sentry, south 
and eastward looking forth 

O'er a rude and broken coast-line, white 
with breakers stretching north, — 30 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Wood and rock and .gleaming sand-drift, 
jagged capes, with bush and tree, 

Leaning inland from the smiting of the 
wild and gusty sea. 

Before the deep-mouthed chimney, dimly 

lit by dying brands, 
Twenty soldiers sat and waited, with their 

muskets in their hands; 
On the rough-hewn oaken table the venison 

haunch was shared, 
And the pewter tankard circled slowly 

round from beard to beard. 

Long they sat and talked together, — 

talked of wizards Satan-sold; 
Of all ghostly sights and noises, — signs 

and wonders manifold; 
Of the spectre-ship of Salem, with the dead 

men in her shrouds, 
Sailing sheer above the water, in the loom 

of morning clouds; 4 o 

Of the marvellous valley hidden in the 

depths of Gloucester woods, 
Full of plants that love the summer, — 

blooms of warmer latitudes; 
Where the Arctic birch is braided by the 

tropic's flowery vines, 
And the white magnolia-blossoms star the 

twilight of the pines ! 

But their voices sank yet lower, sank to 

husky tones of fear, 
As they spake of present tokens of the 

powers of evil near ; — 
Of a spectral host, defying stroke of steel 

and aim of gun; 
Never yet was ball to slay them in the 

mould of mortals run ! 

Thrice, with plumes and flowing scalp-locks, 

from the ' midnight wood they 

came, — 
Thrice around the block-house marching, 

met, unharmed, its volleyed flame ; 50 
Then, with mocking laugh and gesture, 

sunk in earth or lost in air, 
All the ghostly wonder vanished, and the 

moonlit sands lay bare. 

Midnight came; from out the forest moved 

a dusky mass that soon 
Grew to warriors, plumed and painted, 

grimly marching in the moon. 



' Ghosts or witches,' said the captain, ' thus 

I foil the Evil One ! ' 
And he rammed a silver button, from his 

doublet, down his gun. 

Once again the spectral horror moved the 

guarded wall about; 
Once again the levelled muskets through 

the palisades flashed out, 
With that deadly aim the squirrel on his 

tree-top might not shun, 
Nor the beach-bird seaward flying with his 

slant wing to the sun. 60 

Like the idle rain of summer sped the harm- 
less shower of lead. 

With a laugh of fierce derision, once again 
the phantoms fled; 

Once again, without a shadow on the sands 
the moonlight lay, 

And the white smoke curling through it 
drifted slowly down the bay ! 

' God preserve us ! ' said the captain ; ' never 

mortal foes were there ; 
They have vanished with their leader, 

Prince and Power of the air ! 
Lay aside your useless weapons; skill and 

prowess naught avail; 
They who do the Devil's service wear their 

master's coat of mail ! ' 

So the night grew near to cock-crow, when 
again a warning call 

Roused the score of weary soldiers watch- 
ing round the dusky hall: 7° 

And they looked to flint and priming, 
and they longed for break of 
day; 

But the captain closed his Bible: 'Let us 
cease from man, and pray ! ' 

To the men who went before us, all the 

unseen powers seemed near, 
And their steadfast strength of courage 

struck its roots in holy fear. 
Every hand forsook the musket, every head 

was bowed and bare, 
Every stout knee pressed the flag-stones, 

as the captain led in prayer. 

Ceased thereat the mystic marching of the 

spectres round the wall, 
But a sound abhorred, unearthly, smote the 

ears and hearts of all, — 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



299 



Howls of rage and shrieks of anguish ! 

Never after mortal man 
Saw the ghostly leaguers marching round 

the block-house of Cape Ann. 80 

So to us who walk in summer through the 

cool and sea-blown town, 
From the childhood of its people comes the 

solemn legend down. 
Not in vain the ancient fiction, in whose 

moral lives the youth 
And the fitness and the freshness of an 

undecaying truth. 

Soon or late to all our dwellings come the 

spectres of the mind, 
Doubts and fears and dread forebodings, 

in the darkness undefined; 
Round us throng the grim projections of 

the heart and of the brain, 
And our pride of strength is weakness, and 

the cunning hand is vain. 

In the dark we cry like children; and no 

answer from on high 
Breaks the crystal spheres of silence, and 

no white wings downward fly ; 9 o 
But the heavenly help we pray for comes 

to faith, and not to sight, 
And our prayers themselves drive backward 

all the spirits of the night ! 

1857. 

THE PIPES AT LUCKNOW 1 

Pipes of the misty moorlands, 

Voice of the glens and hills; 
The droning of the torrents, 

The treble of the rills ! 
Not the braes of bloom and heather, 

Nor the mountains dark with rain, 
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower, 

Have heard your sweetest strain ! 

Dear to the Lowland reaper, 

And plaided mountaineer, — 10 

To the cottage and the castle 

The Scottish pipes are dear; — 
Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch 

O'er mountain, loch, and glade; 
But the sweetest of all music 

The pipes at Lucknow played. 

1 An incident of the Siege of Lucknow, during the 
mutiny of the native troops in India, 1857. See Ten- 
nyson's superb ballad, ' The Relief of Lucknow.' 



Day by day the Indian tiger 

Louder yelled, and nearer crept; 
Round and round the jungle-serpent 

Near and nearer circles swept. 20 

' Pray for rescue, wives and mothers, — 

Pray to-day ! ' tbe soldier said; 
' To-morrow, death 's between us 

And the wrong and shame we dread.' 

Oh, they listened, looked, and waited, 

Till their hope became despair; 
And tbe sobs of low bewailing 

Filled the pauses of their prayer. 
Then up spake a Scottish maiden, 

With her ear unto the ground: 30 

' Duma ye hear it ? — dhma ye hear it ? 

The pipes o' Havelock sound ! ' 

Hushed the wounded man his groaning; 

Hushed the wife her little ones; 
Alone they heard the drum-roll 

And the roar of Sepoy guns. 
But to sounds of home and childhood 

The Highland ear was true ; — 
As her mother's cradle-crooning 

The mountain pipes she knew. 40 

Like the march of soundless music 

Through the vision of the seer, 
More of feeling than of hearing, 

Of the heart than of the ear, 
She knew the droning pibroch, 

She knew the Campbell's call: 
' Hark ! hear ye no MacGregor's, 

The grandest o' them all ! ' 

Oh, they listened, dumb and breath- 
less, 

And they caught the sound at last; 50 
Faint and far beyond the Goomtee 

Rose and fell the piper's blast ! 
Then a burst of wild thanksgiving 

Mingled woman's voice and man's; 
' God be praised ! — the march of Have- 
lock ! 

The piping of the clans ! ' 

Louder, nearer, fierce as vengeance, 

Sharp and shrill as swords at strife, 
Came the wild MacGregor's clan-call, 

Stinging all the air to life. 60 

But when the far-off dust-cloud 

To plaided legions grew, 
Full tenderly and blithesomely 

The pipes of rescue blew ! 



u 






3°° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Round the silver domes of Lucknow, 

Moslern mosque and Pagan shrine, 
Breathed the air to Britons dearest, 

The air of Auld Lang Syne. x 
O'er the cruel roll of war-drums 

Rose that sweet and homelike strain; 
And the tartan clove the turban, 71 

As the Goomtee cleaves the plain. 

Dear to the corn-land reaper 

And plaided mountaineer, — 
To the cottage and the castle 

The piper's song is dear. . 
Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch 

O'er mountain, glen, and glade; 
But the sweetest of all music 80 

The Pipes at Lucknow played ! 
1857-1858. 1858. 



TELLING THE BEES 2 

Here is the place; right over the hill 

Runs the path I took; 
You can see the gap in the old wall still, 

And the stepping-stones in the shallow 
brook. 

There is the house, with the gate red- 
barred, 
And the poplars tall; 

1 It is in strict accordance with the facts of the 
reBcue. In the distance the beleaguered garrison heard 
the stern and vengeful slogan of the MacGregors, but 
when the troops of Havelock came in view of the Eng- 
lish flag still floating from the Residency, the pipers 
struck up the immortal air of Burns, ' Should Auld 
Acquaintance be Forgot.' (Whittier, in a letter to 
Lowell, April 10, 1858.) 

2 A remarkable custom, brought from the Old Coun- 
try, formerly prevailed in the rural districts of New 
England. On the death of a member of the family, the 
bees were at once informed of the event, and their 
hives dressed in mourning. This ceremonial was sup- 
posed to be necessary to prevent the swarms from leav- 
ing their hives and seeking a new home. (Whittiek.) 

The place Whittier had in mind in writing ' Telling 
the Bees ' was his birthplace. There were bee-hives on 
the garden terrace near the well-sweep, occupied per- 
haps by the descendants of Thomas Whittier's bees. 
The approach to the house from over the northern 
shoulder of Job's Hill by a path that was in constant 
use in his boyhood and is still in existence, is accurately 
described in the poem. The ' gap in the old wall ' is 
still to be seen, and ' the stepping-stones in the shallow 
brook ' are still in use. His sister's garden was down 
by the brook-side in front of the house, and her daffo- 
dils are perpetuated and may now be found in their 
season each year in that place. The red-barred gate, 
the poplars, the cattle yard with ' the white horns toss- 
ing above the wall,' these were all part of Whittier's 
boy life on the old farm. (Kckard's Life of Whittier, 
vol. ii, pp. 414-415.) 

See also Pickard's Whiltier-Land, pp. 17-18. 



And the barn's brown length, and the cattle- 
yard, 
And the white horns tossing above the 
wall. 

There are the beehives ranged in the sun; 

And down by the brink 10 

Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed- 
o'errun, 

Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. 

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, 

Heavy and slow; 
And the same rose blows, and the same smi^^i 
glows, 

And the same brook sings of a year ago. 

There 's the same sweet clover-smell in the 
breeze; 

And the June sun warm 
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees, 

Setting, as then, over Fernside farm. 20 

I mind me how with a lover's care 

From my Sunday coat 
I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my ~> 
hair, 

And cooled at the brookside my brow 

and throat. 

t 

Since we parted, a month had passed, — 

To love, a year; 
Down through the beeches I looked at 
last 
On the little red gate and the well-sweep 
near. 

I can see it all now, — the slantwise rain 
Of light through the leaves, 30 

The sundown's blaze on her window-pane, 
The bloom of her roses under the eaves. 

Just the same as a month before, — 

The house and the trees, 
The barn's brown gable, the vine by the 
door, — 

Nothing changed but the hives of bees. 

Before them, under the garden wall, 

Forward and back, 
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, 

Draping each hive with a shred of black. 

Trembling, I listened: the summer sun 41 
Had the chill of snow; 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



301 



For I knew she was telling the bees of one 
Gone on the journey we all must go ! 

Then I said to myself, ' My Mary weeps 

For the dead to-day: 
Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps 

The fret and the pain of his age away.' 

But her dog whined low; on the doorway 
sill, 

With his cane to his chin, 50 

The old man sat ; and the chore-girl still 

Sung to the bees stealing out and in. 

And the song she was singing ever since 

In my ear sounds on : — 
' Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence ! 

Mistress Mary is dead and gone ! ' 

1858. 



THE CABLE HYMN 

O lonely bay of Trinity, 

O dreary shores, give ear ! 
Lean down unto the white-lipped sea 

The voice of God to hear ! 

From world to world his couriers fly, 
Thought-winged and shod with fire; 

The angel of his stormy sky 
Rides down the sunken wire. 

What saith the herald of the Lord ? 

' The world's long strife is done ; 10 

Close wedded by that mystic cord, 

Its continents are one. 

' And one in heart, as one in blood, 

Shall all her peoples be; 
The hands of human brotherhood 

Are clasped beneath the sea. 

' Through Orient seas, o'er Afric's plain 

And Asian mountains borne, 
The vigor of the Northern brain 

Shall nerve the world outworn. 20 

' From clime to clime, from shore to shore, 

Shall thrill the magic thread; 
The new Prometheus steals once more 

The fire that wakes the dead.' 

Throb on, strong pidse of thunder! beat 
From answering beach to beach; 



Fuse nations in thy kindly heat, 
And melt the chains of each ! 

Wild terror of the sky above, 

Glide tamed and dumb below ! 30 

Bear gently, Ocean's carrier-dove, 

Thy errands to and fro. 

Weave on, swift shuttle of the Lord, 

Beneath the deep so far, 
The bridal robe of earth's accord, 

The funeral shroud of war ! 

For lo ! the fall of Ocean's wall 
Space mocked and time outrun; 

And round the world the thought of all 
Is as the thought of one ! 40 

The poles unite, the zones agree, 
The tongues of striving cease; 

As on the Sea of Galilee 

The Christ is whispering, Peace ! 

1858. 1858. 



MY PSALM 

I mourn no more my vanished years: 

Beneath a tender rain, 
An April rain of smiles and tears, 

My heart is young again. 

The west-winds blow, and, singing low, 
I hear the glad streams run; 

The windows of my soul I throw 
Wide open to the sun. 

No longer forward nor behind 

I look in hope or fear; 1 

But, grateful, take the good I find, 
The best of now and here. 

I plough no more a desert land, 
To harvest weed and tare; 

The manna dropping from God's hand 
Rebukes my painful care. 

I break my pilgrim staff, I lay 

Aside the toiling oar; 
The angel sought so far away 

I welcome at my door. 2 

The airs of spring may never play 
Among the ripening corn, 

Nor freshness of the flowers of May 
Blow through the autumn morn; 



302 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look 
Through fringed lids to heaven, 

And the pale aster in the brook 
Shall see its image given ; — 

The woods shall wear their robes of praise, 
The south-wind softly sigh, 30 

And sweet, calm days in golden haze 
Melt down the amber sky. 

Not less shall manly deed and word 

Rebuke an age of wrong; 
The graven flowers that wreathe the sword 

Make not the blade less strong. 

But smiting hands shall learn to heal, — 

To build as to destroy; 
Nor less my heart for others feel 

That I the more enjoy. 40 

All as God wills, who wisely heeds 

To give or to withhold, 
And knoweth more of all my needs 

Than all my prayers have told ! 

Enough that blessings undeserved 
Have marked my erring track; 

That whereso'er my feet have swerved, 
His chastening turned me back; 

That more and more a Providence 

Of love is understood, 50 

Making the springs of time and sense 
Sweet with eternal good; — 

That death seems but a covered way 

Which opens into light, 
Wherein no blinded child can stray 

Beyond the Father's sight; 

That care and trial seem at last, 
Through Memory's sunset air, 

Like mountain-ranges overpast, 

In purple distance fair; 60 

That all the jarring notes of life 

Seem blending in a psalm, 
And all the angles of its strife 

Slow rounding into calm. 

And so the shadows fall apart, 
And so the west-winds play; 

And all the windows of my heart 
I open to the day. 

1859. 



BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE 

John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his 

dying day: 
' I will not have to shrive my soul a priest 

in Slavery's pay. 
But let some poor slave-mother whom I 

have striven to free, 
With her children, from the gallows-stair 

put up a prayer for me ! ' 

John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led him 

out to die; 
And lo ! a poor slave-mother with her little 

child pressed nigh. 
Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, and 

the old harsh face grew mild, 
As he stooped between the jeering ranks 

and kissed the negro's child ! 

The shadows of his stormy life that moment 
fell apart; 

And they who blamed the bloody hand for- 
gave the loving heart. 

That kiss from all its guilty means re- 
deemed the good intent, 

And round the grisly fighter's hair the mar- 
tyr's aureole bent ! 

Perish with him the folly that seeks through 

evil good ! 
Long live the generous purpose unstained 

with human blood ! 
Not the raid of midnight terror, but the 

thought which underlies; 
Not the borderer's pride of daring, but the 

Christian's sacrifice. 

Nevermore may yon Blue Ridges the North- 
ern rifle hear, 

Nor see the light of blazing homes flash on 
the negro's spear. 

But let the free-winged angel Truth their 
guarded passes scale, 

To teach that right is more than might, and 
justice more than mail ! 

So vainly shall Virginia set her battle in 

array; 
In vain her trampling squadrons knead the 

winter snow with clay. 
She may strike the pouncing eagle, but she 

dares not harm the dove; 
And every gate she bars to Hate shall open 

wide to Love ! 1859. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



3°3 



MY PLAYMATE i 

The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 

Their song was soft and low; 
The blossoms hi the sweet May wind 

Were falling like the snow. 

The blossoms drifted at our feet, 

The orchard birds sang clear; 
The sweetest and the saddest day 

It seemed of all the year. 

For, more to me than birds or flowers, 
My playmate left her home, 10 

And took with her the laughing spring, 
The music and the bloom. 

She kissed the lips of kith and kin, 

She laid her hand in mine: 
What more could ask the bashful boy 

Who fed her father's kine ? 

She left us in the bloom of May: 

The constant years told o'er 
Their seasons with as sweet May morns, 

But she came back no more. 20 

I walk, with noiseless feet, the round 

Of uneventful years; 
Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring 

And reap the autumn ears. 

She lives where all. the golden year 

Her summer roses blow; 
The dusky children of the sun 

Before her come and go. 

There haply with her jewelled hands 

She smooths her silken gown, — 30 

No more the homespun lap wherein 
I shook the walnuts down. 

The wild grapes wait us by the brook, 

The brown nuts on the hill, 
And still the May -day flowers make 
sweet 

The woods of Follymill. 

The lilies blossom in the pond, 
The bird buflds in the tree, 

1 Compare the poem ' Memories,' and see Pickard's 
Life of Whittier, vol. i, p. 27G, vol. ii, pp. 426-428, and 
Whiltier-Land, pp. GG-67. 

Tennyson said of this poem and of Whittier, ' It is a 
perfect poem ; in some of his descriptions of scenery 
and wild-flowers, he would rank with Wordsworth.' 



The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill 
The slow song of the sea. 40 

I wonder if she thinks of them, 
And how the old time seems, — 

If ever the pines of Ramoth wood 
Are sounding in her dreams. 

I see her face, I hear her voice; 

Does she remember mine ? 
And what to her is now the boy 

Who fed her father's kine ? 

What cares she that the orioles build 
For other eyes than ours, — 50 

That other hands with nuts are filled, 
And other laps with flowers ? 

O playmate in the golden time ! 

Our mossy seat is green, 
Its fringing violets blossom yet, 

The old trees o'er it lean. 

The winds so sweet with birch and fern 

A sweeter memory blow; 
And there in spring the veeries sing 

The song of long ago. 60 

And still the pines of Ramoth wood 
Are moaning like the sea, — 

The moaning of the sea of change 
Between myself and thee ! 

1859-1860. I860. 



TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD 2 

Statesman, I thank thee ! and, if yet dis- 
sent 
Mingles, reluctant, with my large content, 
I cannot censure what was nobly meant. 
But, while constrained to hold even Union 

less 
Than Liberty and Truth and Righteousness, 
I thank thee in the sweet and holy name 
Of peace, for wise calm words that put to 

shame 
Passion and party. Courage may be shown 
Not in defiance of the wrong alone; 
He may be bravest who, unweaponed, bears 

2 On the 12th of January, 18G1, Mr. Seward delivered 
in the Senate chamber a speech on ' The State of the 
Union,' in which he urged the paramount duty of pre- 
serving the Union, and went as far as it was possible to 
go, without surrender of principles, in concessions to 
the Southern party. (Whittier.) 



3°4 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



The olive branch, and, strong in justice, 

spares 
The rash wrong-doer, giving widest scope 
To Christian charity and generous hope. 
If, without damage to the sacred cause 
Of Freedom and the safeguard of its laws — 
If, without yielding that for which alone 
We prize the Union, thou canst save it now 
From a baptism of blood, upon thy brow 
A wreath whose flowers no earthly soil 

have known, 
Woven of the beatitudes, shall rest, 
And the peacemaker be forever blest ! 
1861. 1861. 

OUR RIVER 

FOR A SUMMER FESTIVAL AT ' THE 
LAURELS ' ON THE MERRIMAC 

Once more on yonder laurelled height 

The summer flowers have budded; 
Once more with summer's golden light 

The vales of home are flooded; 
And once more, by the grace of Him 

Of every good the Giver, 
We sing upon its wooded rim 

The praises of our river: 

Its pines above, its waves below, 

The west-wind down it blowing, 10 

As fair as when the young Brissot 

Beheld it seaward flowing, — 
And bore its memory o'er the deep, 

To soothe the martyr's sadness, 
And fresco, in his troubled sleep, 

His prison-walls with gladness. 

We know the world is rich with streams 

Renowned in song and story, 
Whose music murmurs through our dreams 

Of human love and glory: 20 

We know that Arno's banks are fair, 

And Rhine has castled shadows, 
And, poet-tuned, the Doon and Ayr 

Go singing down their meadows. 

But while, unpictured and unsung 

By painter or by poet, 
Our river waits the tuneful tongue 

And cunning hand to show it, — 
We only know the fond skies lean 

Above it, warm with blessing, 30 

And the sweet soul of our Undine 

Awakes to our caressing. 



No fickle sun-god holds the flocks 

That graze its shores in keeping; 
No icy kiss of Dian mocks 

The youth beside it sleeping : 
Our Christian river loveth most 

The beautiful and human ; 
The heathen streams of Naiads boast, 

But ours of man and woman. 40 

The miner in his cabin hears 

The ripple we are hearing; 
It whispers soft to homesick ears 

Around the settler's clearing: 
In Sacramento's vales of corn, 

Or Santee's bloom of cotton, 
Our river by its valley-born 

Was never yet forgotten. 

The drum rolls loud, the bugle fills 

The summer air with clangor; 50 

The war-storm shakes the solid hills 

Beneath its tread of anger ; 
Young eyes that last year smiled in ours 

Now point the rifle's barrel, 
And hands then stained with fruit and 
flowers 

Bear redder stains of quarrel. 

But blue skies smile, and flowers bloom 
on, 

And rivers still keep flowing, 
The dear God still his rain and sun 

On good and ill bestowing. 60 

His pine-trees whisper, ' Trust and wait ! ' 

His flowers are prophesying 
That all we dread of change or fate 

His love is underlying. 

And thou, O Mountain-born ! — no more 

We ask the wise Allotter 
Than for the firmness of thy shore, 

The calmness of thy water, 
The cheerful lights that overlay 

Thy rugged slopes with beauty, 70 

To match our spirits to our day 

And make a joy of duty. 
1861. 1861. 



AMY WENTWORTH 

Her fingers shame the ivory keys 
They dance so light along; 

The bloom upon her parted lips 
Is sweeter than the song. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



305 



O perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles ! 

Her thoughts are uot of thee; 
She better loves the salted wind, 

The voices of the sea. 

Her heart is like an outbound ship 

That at its anchor swings; 10 

The murmur of the stranded shell 
Is in the song she sings. 

She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise, 

But dreams the while of one 
Who watches from his sea-blown deck 

The icebergs in the sun. 

She questions all the winds that blow, 

And every fog- wreath dim, 
And bids the sea-birds flying north 

Bear messages to him. 20 

She speeds them with the thanks of 
men 

He perilled life to save, 
And grateful prayers like holy oil 

To smooth for him the wave. 

Brown Viking of the fishing-smack 

Fair toast of all the town ! — 
The skipper's jerkin ill beseems 

The lady's silken gown ! 

But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear 
For him the blush of shame 30 

Who dares to set his manly gifts 
Against her ancient name. 

The stream is brightest at its spring, 

And blood is not like wine; 
Nor honored less than he who heirs 

Is he who founds a line. 

Full lightly shall the prize be won, 

If love be Fortune's spur; 
And never maiden stoops to him 

Who lifts himself to her. 40 

Her home is brave in Jaffrey Street, 

With stately stairways worn 
By feet of old Colonial knights 

And ladies gentle-born. 

Still green about its ample porch 

The English ivy twines, 
Trained back to show in English oak 

The herald's carven sigTis. 



And on her, from the wainscot old, 
Ancestral faces frown, — 50 

And this has worn the soldier's sword, 
And that the judge's gown. 

But, strong of will and proud as they, 

She walks the gallery floor 
As if she trod her sailor's deck 

By stormy Labrador ! 

The sweetbrier blooms on Kittery-side, 
And green are Elliot's bowers; 

Her garden is the pebbled beach, 
The mosses are her flowers. 60 

She looks across the harbor-bar 

To see the white gulls fly; 
His greeting from the Northern sea 

Is in their clanging cry. 

She hums a song, and dreams that he, 

As in its romance old, 
Shall homeward ride with silken sails 

And masts of beaten gold ! 

Oh, rank is good, and gold is fair, 

And high and low mate ill; 70 

But love has never known a law 
Beyond its own sweet will ! 

1862. 



THE WAITING 

I wait and watch: before my eyes 

Methinks the night grows thin and gray; 

I wait and watch the eastern skies 

To see the golden spears uprise 
Beneath the oriflamme of day ! 

Like one whose limbs are bound in 
trance 

I hear the day-sounds swell and grow, 
And see across the twilight glance, 
Troop after troop, in swift advance, 

The shining ones with plumes of snow ! 10 

I know the errand of their feet, 

I know what mighty work is theirs; 
I can but lift up hands unmeet 
The threshing-floors of God to beat, 

And speed them with unworthy prayers. 

I will not dream in vain despair 
The steps of progress wait for me : 



3°6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



The puny leverage of a hair 
The planet's impulse well may spare, 
A drop of dew the tided sea. 20 

The loss, if loss there be, is mine, 
And yet not mine if understood; 
For one shall grasp and one resign, 
One drink life's rue, and one its wine, 
And God shall make the balance good. 

Oh power to do ! Oh baffled will ! 

Oh prayer and action ! ye are one. 
Who may not strive, may yet fulfil 
The harder task of standing still, 29 

And good but wished with God is done ! 

1862.1 

THE WATCHERS 

Beside a stricken field I stood ; 
On the torn turf, on grass and wood, 
Hung heavily the dew of blood. 

Still in their fresh mounds lay the slain, 
But all the air was quick with pain 
And gusty sighs and tearful rain. 

Two angels, each with drooping head 
And folded wings and noiseless tread, 
Watched by that valley of the dead. 

The one, with forehead saintly bland 10 
And lips of blessing, not command, 
Leaned, weeping, on her olive wand. 

The other's brows were scarred and knit, 
His restless eyes were watch-fires lit, 
His hands for battle-gauntlets fit. 

' How long ! ' — I knew the voice of 
Peace, — 

• Is there no respite, ? no release ? 
When shall the hopeless quarrel cease ? 

• O Lord, how long ! One human soul 

Is more than any parchment scroll, 20 

Or any flag thy winds unroll. 

• What price was Ellsworth's, young and 

brave ? 
How weigh the gift that Lyon gave, 
Or count the cost of Winthrop's grave ? 

1 The physical limitations which made it impossible 
for Whitticr to take an active part in public affairs 
were especially hard for him to bear during these 
years. Compare Milton's Sonnet ' On his Blinduoss.' 



' O brother ! if thine eye can see, 
Tell how and when the end shall be, 
What hope remains for thee and me.' 

Then Freedom sternly said : * I shun 
No strife nor pang beneath the sun, 
When human rights are staked and won. 30 

' I knelt with Ziska's hunted flock, 
I watched in Toussaint's cell of rock, 
I walked with Sidney to the block. 

' The moor of Marston felt my tread, 
Through Jersey snows the march I led, 
My voice Magenta's charges sped. 

' But now, through weary day and night, 
I watch a vague and aimless fight 
For leave to strike one blow aright. 

' On either side my foe they own : 40 

One guards through love his ghastly throne, 
And one through fear to reverence grown. 

' Why wait we longer, mocked, betrayed, 

By open foes, or those afraid 

To speed thy coming through my aid ? 

' Why watch to see who win or fall ? 

I shake the dust against them all, 

I leave them to their senseless brawl.' 

' Nay,' Peace implored : • yet longer wait ; 
The doom is near, the stake is great: 50 
God knoweth if it be too late. 

' Still wait and watch ; the way prepare 
Where I with folded wings of prayer 
May follow, weaponless and bare.' 

' Too late ! ' the stern, sad voice replied, 
' Too late ! ' its mournful echo sighed. 
In low lament the answer died. 

A rustling as of wings in flight, 

An upward gleam of lessening white, 

So passed the vision, sound and sight. 60 

But round me, like a silver bell 
Rung down the listening sky to tell 
Of holy help, a sweet voice fell. 

'Still hope and trust,' it snng; 'the rod 
Must fall, the wine-press must be trod, 
But all is possible with God ! ' 18G2. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



307 



ANDREW RYKMAN'S PRAYER 1 

Andrew Rykman 's dead and gone; 

You can see his leaning slate 
In the graveyard, and thereon 

Read his name and date. 

' Trust is truer than our fears,' 

Runs the legend through the moss, 

' Gain is not in added years, 
Nor in death is loss.' 

Still the feet that thither trod, 

All the friendly eyes are dim; i< 

Only Nature, now, and God 
Have a care for him. 

There the dews of quiet fall, 

Singing hirds and soft winds stray: 

Shall the tender Heart of all 
Be less kind than they ? 

What he was and what he is 
They who ask may haply find, 

If they read this prayer of his 

Which he left behind. z<. 



Pardon, Lord, the lips that dare 

Shape in words a mortal's prayer ! 

Prayer, that, when my day is done, 

And I see its setting sun, 

Shorn and beamless, cold and dim, 

Sink beneath the horizon's rim, — 

When this ball of rock and clay 

Crumbles from my feet away, 

And the solid shores of sense 

Melt into the vague immense, 30 

Father ! I may come to Thee 

Even with the beggar's plea, 

As the poorest of thy poor, 

With my needs, and nothing more. 

Not as one who seeks his home 

With a step assured I come; 

Still behind the tread I hear 

Of my life-companion, Fear; 

Still a shadow deep and vast 

From my westering feet is cast, 40 

1 In June, 1802, Whittier wrote to Fields, then edi- 
tor of the Atlantic : ' I have hy me a poem upon which 
I have bestowed much thought, and which I think is in 
some reBpects the best thing I have overwritten. I will 
bring it or send it soon.' This poem was ' Andrew Ryk- 
man's Prayer.' 



Wavering, doubtful, undefined, 

Never shapen nor outlined: 

From myself the fear has grown, 

And the shadow is my own. 

Yet, O Lord, through all a sense 

Of thy tender providence 

Stays my failing heart on Thee, 

And confirms the feeble knee; 

And, at times, my worn feet press 

Spaces of cool quietness, 50 

Lilied whiteness shone upon 

Not by light of moon or sun. 

Hours there be of inmost calm, 

Broken but by grateful psalm, 

When I love Thee more than fear Thee, 

And thy blessed Christ seems near me, 

With forgiving look, as when 

He beheld the Magdalen. 

Well I know that all things move 

To the spheral rhythm of love, — 60 

That to Thee, O Lord of all ! 

Nothing can of chance befall : 

Child and seraph, mote and star, 

Well Thou knowest what we are ! 

Through thy vast creative plan 

Looking, from the worm to man, 

There is pity in thine eyes, 

But no hatred nor surprise. 

Not in blind caprice of will, 

Not in cunning sleight of skill, 7 o 

Not for show of power, was wrought 

Nature's marvel in thy thought. 

Never careless hand and vain 

Smites these chords of joy and pain; 

No immortal selfishness 

Plays the game of curse and bless : 

Heaven and earth are witnesses 

That thy glory goodness is. 

Not for sport of mind and force 

Hast Thou made thy universe, 80 

But as atmosphere and zone 

Of thy loving heart alone. 

Man, who walketh in a show, 

Sees before him, to and fro, 

Shadow and illusion go; 

All things flow and fluctuate, 

Now contract and now dilate. 

In the welter of this sea, 

Nothing stable is but Thee; 

In this whirl of swooning trance, 90 

Thou alone art permanence; 

All without Thee only seems, 

All beside is choice of dreams. 

Never yet in darkest mood 

Doubted I that Thou wast good, 



3 o8 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Nor mistook niy will for fate, 
Pain of sin for heavenly hate, — 
Never dreamed the gates of pearl 
Rise from out the burning marl, 
Or that good can only live ioo 

Of the bad conservative, 
And through counterpoise of hell 
Heaven alone be possible. 

For myself alone I doubt; 

All is well, I know, without; 

I alone the beauty mar, 

I alone the music jar. 

Yet, with hands by evil stained, 

And an ear by discord pained, 

I am groping for the keys 1 10 

Of the heavenly harmonies; 

Still within my heart I bear 

Love for all things good and fair. 

Hands of want or souls in pain 

Have not sought my door in vain; 

I have kept my fealty good 

To the human brotherhood; 

Scarcely have I asked in prayer 

That which others might not share. 

I, who hear with secret shame 120 

Praise that paineth more than blame, 

Rich alone in favors lent, 

Virtuous by accident, 

Doubtful where I fain would rest, 

Frailest where I seem the best, 

Only strong for lack of test, — 

What am I, that I should press 

Special pleas of selfishness, 

Coolly mounting into heaven 

On my neighbor unforgiven ? 130 

Ne'er to me, howe'er disguised, 

Comes a saint unrecognized; 

Never fails my heart to greet 

Noble deed with warmer beat; 

Halt and maimed, I own not less 

All the grace of holiness; 

Nor, through shame or self-distrust, 

Less I love the pure and just. 

Lord, forgive these words of mine: 

What have I that is not Thine ? 140 

Whatsoe'er I fain would boast 

Needs thy pitying pardon most. 

Thou, O Elder Brother ! who 

In thy flesh our trial knew, 

Thou, who hast been touched by these 

Our most sad infirmities, 

Thou alone the gulf canst span 

In the dual heart of man, 

And between the soul and sense 



Reconcile all difference, 150 

Change the dream of me and mine 
For the truth of Thee and thine, 
And, through chaos, doubt, and strife, 
Interfuse thy calm of life. 
Haply, thus by Thee renewed, 
In thy borrowed goodness good, 
Some sweet morning yet in God's 
Dim, seonian periods, 
Joyful I shall wake to see 
Those I love who rest in Thee 160 

And to them in Thee allied, 
Shall my soul be satisfied. 

Scarcely Hope hath shaped for me 

What the future life may be. 

Other lips may well be bold; 

Like the publican of old, 

I can only urge the plea, 

' Lord, be merciful to me ! ' 

Nothing of desert I claim, 

Unto me belongeth shame. 170 

Not for me the crowns of gold, 

Palms, and harpings manifold; 

Not for erring eye and feet 

Jasper wall and golden street. 

What Thou wilt, O Father, give ! 

All is gain that I receive. 

If my voice I may not raise 

In the elders' song of praise, 

If I may not, sin-defiled, 

Claim my birthright as a child, 180 

Suffer it that I to Thee 

As an hired servant be; 

Let the lowliest task be mine, 

Grateful, so the work be thine; 

Let me find the humblest place 

In the shadow of thy grace: 

Blest to me were any spot 

Where temptation whispers not. 

If there be some weaker one, 

Give me strength to help him on; 190 

If a blinder soul there be, 

Let me guide him nearer Thee. 

Make my mortal dreams come true 

With the work I fain would do; 

Clothe with life the weak intent, 

Let me be the thing I meant; 

Let me find in thy employ 

Peace that dearer is than joy; 

Out of self to love be led 

And to heaven acclimated, 200 

Until all things sweet and good 

Seem my natural habitude. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



3°9 



So we read the prayer of him 
Who, with John of Labadie, 

Trod, of old, the oozy rim 
Of the Zuyder Zee. 

Thus did Andrew Rykman pray. 

Are we wiser, better grown, 
That we may not, in our day, 

Make his prayer our own ? 210 

1862. 1863. 



BARBARA FRIETCHIE 1 

Up from the meadows rich with corn, 
Clear in the cool September morn, 

The clustered spires of Frederick stand 
Green-walled by the hills of Maryland. 

Round about them orchards sweep, 
Apple and peach tree fruited deep, 

Fair as the garden of the Lord 

To the eyes of the famished rebel horde, 

On that pleasant morn of the early fall 
When Lee marched over the mountain- 
wall ; 10 

Over the mountains winding down, 
Horse and foot, into Frederick town. 

Forty flags with their silver stars, 
Forty flags with their crimson bars, 

Flapped in the morning wind: the sun 
Of noon looked down, and saw not one. 

Up rose old Barbara Frietchie then, 
Bowed with her fourscore years and ten; 

Bravest of all in Frederick town, 

She took up the flag the men hauled down; 20 

In her attic window the staff she set, 
To show that one heart was loyal yet. 

Up the street came the rebel tread, 
Stonewall Jackson riding ahead. 

Under his slouched hat left and right 
He glanced; the old flag met his sight. 

1 On the authenticity of the story see Pickard's Life 
of Whittier, vol. ii, pp. 454-459. 



' Halt ! ' — the dust-brown ranks stood 

fast. 
' Fire ! ' — out blazed the rifle-blast. 

It shivered the window, pane and sash ; 

It rent the banner with seam and gash. 30 

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff 
Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf. 

She leaned far out on the window-sill, 
And shook it forth with a royal will. 

' Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, 
But spare your country's flag,' she 
said. 

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame, 
Over the face of the leader came; 

The nobler nature within him stirred 
To life at that woman's deed and 

word ; 40 

' Who touches a hair of yon gray head 
Dies like a dog ! March on ! ' he said. 

All day long through Frederick street 
Sounded the tread of marching feet: 

All day long that free flag tost 
Over the heads of the rebel host. 

Ever its torn folds rose and fell 

On the loyal winds that loved it well; 

And through the hill-gaps sunset light 
Shone over it with a warm good-night. 50 

Barbara Frietchie's work is o'er, 
And the Rebel rides on his raids no 
more. 

Honor to her ! and let a tear 

Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall's bier. 

Over Barbara Frietchie's grave, 
Flag of Freedom and Union, wave ! 

Peace and order and beauty draw 
Round thy symbol of light and law; 

And ever the stars above look down 

On thy stars below in Frederick town ! 60 

1863. 1863. 



3io 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



THE WRECK OF RIVERMOUTH 1 

Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see, 

By dawn or sunset shone across, 
When the ebb of the sea has left them 
free 
To dry their fringes of gold-green moss: 
For there the river comes winding down, 
From salt sea-meadows and uplands brown, 
And waves on the outer rocks afoam 
Shout to its waters, ' Welcome home ! ' 

And fair are the sunny isles in view 

East of the grisly Head of the Boar, 10 

And Agamenticus lifts its blue 

Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er; 

And southerly, when the tide is down, 

'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills 
brown, 

The beach-birds dance and the gray gulls 
wheel 

Over a floor of burnished steel. 

Once, in the old Colonial days, 

Two hundred years ago and more, 
A boat sailed down through the winding 
ways 
Of Hampton River to that low shore, 20 
Full of a goodly company 
Sailing out on the summer sea, 
Veering to catch the land-breeze light, 
With the Boar to left and the Rocks to 
right. 

In Hampton meadows, where mowers laid 
Their scythes to the swaths of salted 
grass, 
' Ah, well-a-day ! our hay must be made ! ' 
A young man sighed, who saw them pass. 
Loud laughed his fellows to see him stand 
W betting his scythe with a listless hand, 30 
Hearing a voice in a, far-off song, 
Watching a white hand beckoning long. 

1 The Goody Cole who figures in this poem and ' The 
Changeling ' was Eunice Cole, who for a quarter of a 
century or more was feared, persecuted, and hated as 
the witch of Hampton. She lived alone in a hovel a 
little distant from the spot where the Hampton Acad- 
emy now stands, and there she died, unattended. When 
her death was discovered, she was hastily covered up in 
the earth near by, and a stake driven through her body, 
to exorcise the evil spirit. Rev. Stephen Bachiler or 
Batchelder was one of the ablest of the early New Eng- 
land preachers. His marriage late in life to a woman 
regarded by his church as disreputable induced hiin 
to return to England, where he enjoyed the esteem 
and favor of Oliver Cromwell during the Protectorate. 
(Whittier/) 

See also Pickard's Whitlier-Land, pp. 8S-S9. 



' Fie on the witch ! ' cried a merry girl, 
As they rounded the point where Goody 
Cole • 
Sat by her door with her wheel atwirl, 
A bent and blear-eyed poor old soul. 
' Oho ! ' she muttered, ' ye 're brave to- 
day ! 
But I hear the little waves laugh and say, 
" The broth will be cold that waits at 

home; 
For it 's one to go, but another to come ! ' " 

' She 's cursed,' said the skipper ; ' speak 
her fair: 41 

I 'm scary always to see her shake 
Her wicked head, with its wild gray hair, 
And nose like a hawk, and eyes like a 
snake.' 
But merrily still, with laugh and shout, 
From Hampton River the boat sailed out, 
Till the huts and the flakes on Star seemed 

nigh, 
And they lost the scent of the pines of Rye. 

They dropped their lines in the lazy tide, 
Drawing up haddock and mottled cod; 50 

They saw not the shadow that walked be- 
side, 
They heard not the feet with silence shod. 

But thicker and thicker a hot mist grew, 

Shot by the lightnings through and through; 

And nmffled growls, like the growl of a 
beast, 

Ran along the sky from west to east. 

Then the skipper looked from the darken- 
ing sea 

Up to the dimmed and wading sun; 
But he spake like a brave, man cheerily, 

'Yet there is time for our homeward 
run.' 60 

Veering and tacking, they backward wore; 
And just as a breath from the woods ashore 
Blew out to whisper of danger past, 
The wrath of the storm came down at last ! 

The skipper hauled at the heavy sail: 

' God be our help ! ' he only cried, 
As the roaring gale, like the stroke of a 
flail, 
Smote the boat on the starboard side. 
The Shoalsmen looked, but saw alone 
Dark films of rain-cloud slantwise blown, 70 
Wild rocks lit up by the lightning's glare, 
The strife and torment of sea and air. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



3" 



Goody Cole looked out from her door: 
The Isles of Shoals were drowned and 
gone, 
Scarcely she saw the Head of the Boar 

Toss the foam from tusks of stone. 
She clasped her hands with a grip of pain, 
The tear on her cheek was not of rain: 
' They are lost,' she muttered, ' boat and 

crew ! 
Lord, forgive me ! my words were true ! ' 80 

Suddenly seaward swept the squall; 

The low sun smote through cloudy rack; 
The Shoals stood clear in the light, and all 

The trend of the coast lay hard and black. 
But far and wide as eye could reach, 
No life was seen upon wave or beach; 
The boat that went out at morning never 
Sailed back again into Hampton River. 

O mower, lean on thy bended snath, 

Look from the meadows green and low : 90 
The wind of the sea is a waft of death, 

The waves are singing a song of woe ! 
By silent river, by moaning sea, 
Long and vain shall thy watching be: 
Never again shall the sweet voice call, 
Never the white hand rise and fall ! 

O Rivermouth Rocks, how sad a sight 

Ye saw in the light of breaking day ! 
Dead faces looking up cold and white 

From sand and seaweed where they lay. 
The mad old witch- wife wailed and wept, 10 1 
And cursed the tide as it backward crept: 
' Crawl back, crawl back, blue water-snake ! 
Leave your dead for the hearts that break ! ' 

Solemn it was in that old day 

In Hampton town and its log-built church, 
Where side by side the coffins lay 

And the mourners stood in aisle and 
porch. 
In the singing-seats young eyes were dim, 
The voices faltered that raised the hymn, no 
And Father Dalton, grave and stern, 
Sobbed through his prayer and wept in turn. 

But his ancient colleague did not pray; 

Under the weight of his fourscore years 
He stood apart with the iron-gray 

Of his strong brows knitted to hide his 
tears; 
And a fair-faced woman of doubtful fame, 
Linking her own with his honored name, 



Subtle as sin, at his side withstood 

The felt reproach of her neighborhood. 120 

Apart with them, like them forbid, 

Old Goody Cole looked drearily round, 
As, two by two, with their faces hid, 

The mourners walked to the burying- 

ground. 
She let the staff from her clasped hands 

fall: 
' Lord, forgive us ! we 're sinners all ! ' 
And the voice of the old man answered 

her: 
1 Amen ! ' said Father Bachiler. 

So, as I sat upon Appledore 

In the calm of a closing summer day, 130 
And the broken lines of Hampton shore 

In purple mist of cloudland lay, 
The Rivermouth Rocks their story told; 
And waves aglow with sunset gold, 
Rising and breaking in steady chime, 
Beat the rhythm and kept the time. 

And the sunset paled, and warmed once 
more 
With a softer, tenderer after-glow; 
In the east was moon-rise, with boats off- 
shore 
And sails in the distance drifting slow. 140 
The beacon glimmered from Portsmouth 

bar, 
The White Isle kindled its great red star; 
And life and death hi my old-time lay 
Mingled in peace like the night and day ! 

1864. 



THE VANISHERS 1 

Sweetest of all childlike dreams 

In the simple Indian lore 
Still to me the legend seems 

Of the shapes who flit before. 

Flitting, passing, seen and gone, 
Never reached nor found at rest, 

Baffling search, but beckoning on 
To the Sunset of the Blest. 

» Whittier wrote to Fields, September 27, 1864 : ' I 
take the liberty of inclosing a little poem of mine which 
has beguiled some weary hours. I hope thee will like 
it. How strange it seems not to read it to my sister ! 
If thee have read Schoolcraft thee will remember 
what he says of the Puck-wud-jinnies, or " Little Van- 
ishers." The legend is very beautiful, and I hope I 
have done it justice in some sort.' 



312 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



From the clefts of mountain rocks, 
Through the dark of lowland firs, 10 

Flash the eyes and flow the locks 
Of the mystic Vanishers ! 

And the fisher in his skiff, 
And the hunter on the moss, 

Hear their call from cape and cliff, 
See their hands the birch-leaves toss. 

Wistful, longing, through the green 
Twilight of the clustered pines, 

In their faces rarely seen 

Beauty more than mortal shines. 20 

Fringed with gold their mantles flow 
On the slopes of westering knolls; 

In the wind they whisper low 
Of the Sunset Land of Souls. 

Doubt who may, O friend of mine ! 

Thou and I have seen them too ; 
On before with beck and sign 

Still they glide, and we pursue. 

More than clouds of purple trail 

In the gold of setting day; 30 

More than gleams of wing or sail 
Beckon from the sea-mist gray. 

Glimpses of immortal youth, 

Gleams and glories seen and flown, 

Far-heard voices sweet with truth, 
Airs from viewless Eden blown; 

Beauty that eludes our grasp, 

Sweetness that transcends our taste, 

Loving hands we may not clasp, 

Shining feet that mock our haste; 40 

Gentle eyes we closed below, 
Tender voices heard once more, 

Smile and call us, as they go 
On and onward, still before. 

Guided thus, O friend of mine ! 

Let us walk our little way, 
Knowing by each beckoning sign 

That we are not quite astray. 

Chase we still, with baffled feet, 

Smiling eye and waving hand, 50 

Sought and seeker soon shall meet, 
Lost and found, in Sunset Land ! 
1864. 1864. 



BRYANT ON HIS BIRTHDAY 1 

We praise not now the poet's art, 
The rounded beauty of his song; 

Who weighs him from his life apart 
Must do his nobler nature wrong. 

Not for the eye, familiar grown 

With charms to common sight denied, — 
The marvellous gift he shares alone 

With him who walked on Rydal-side ; 

Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay, 
Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears; 

We speak his praise who wears to-day 
The glory of his seventy years. 

When Peace brings Freedom in her train, 
Let happy lips his songs rehearse ; 

His life is now his noblest strain, 
His manhood better than his verse ! 

Thank God ! his hand on Nature's keys 
Its cunning keeps at life's full span; 

But, dimmed and dwarfed, in times like 
these, 
The poet seems beside the man ! 

So be it ! let the garlands die, 

The singer's wreath, the painter's meed, 
Let our names perish, if thereby 

Our country may be saved and freed ! 
1864. 1865. 



LAUS DEO! 2 

It is done ! 

Clang of bell and roar of gun 
Send the tidings up and down. 

How the belfries rock and reel ! 

How the great guns, peal on peal, 
Fling the joy from town to town ! 

1 Written for the celebration of Bryant's seventieth 
birthday at the Century Club in New York. 

2 On hearing the bells ring on the passage of the 
constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. The 
resolution was adopted by Congress, January 31, 1865. 
The ratification by the requisite number of States was 
announced December 18, 1865. (Whittier.) 

The suggestion came to the poet as he sat in the 
Friends' Meeting-house in Amesbury, where he was 
present at the regular Fifth-day meeting. All sat in 
silence, but on his return to his home, he recited a por- 
tion of the poem, not yet committed to paper, to his 
housemates in the garden room. ' It wrote itself, or 
rather sang itself, while the bells rang,' he wrote to 
Lucy Larcom. {Cambridge Edition of Whittier.) See 
also Pickard's Life of Whittier, vol. ii, pp. 488-489. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



3*3 



Ring, O bells ! 

Every stroke exulting tells 
Of the burial hour of crime. 

Loud and long, that all may hear, 10 

Ring for every listening ear 
Of Eternity and Time ! 

Let us kneel: 
God's own voice is in that peal, 

And this spot is holy ground. 

Lord, forgive us ! What are we, 
That our eyes this glory see, 

That our ears have heard the sound ! 

For the Lord 

On the whirlwind is abroad; 20 

In the earthquake He has spoken; 

He has smitten with his thunder 

The iron walls asunder, 
And the gates of brass are broken ! 

Loud and long 

Lift the old exulting song; 
Sing with Miriam by the sea, 

He has cast the mighty down; 

Horse and rider sink and drown; 
' He hath triumphed gloriously ! ' 30 

Did we dare, 

In our agony of prayer, 
Ask for more than He has done ? 

When was ever his right hand 

Over any time or land 
Stretched as now beneath the sun ? 

How they pale, 
Ancient myth and song and tale, 

In tins wonder of our days, 

When the cruel rod of war 4 o 

Blossoms white with righteous law, 

And the wrath, of man is praise ! 

Blotted out ! 

All within and all about 
Shall a fresher life begin; 

Freer breathe the universe 

As it rolls its heavy curse 
On the dead and buried sin ! 

It is done ! 
In the circuit of the sun 50 

Shall the sound thereof go forth. 
It shall bid the sad rejoice, 
It shall give the dumb a voice, 

It shall belt with joy the earth ! 



Ring and swing, 
Bells of joy ! On morning's wing 
Send the song of praise abroad ! 
With a sound of broken chains 
Tell the nations that He reigns, 
Who alone is Lord and God ! 60 

1865. 1865. 

HYMN 

FOR THE CELEBRATION OF EMANCIPA- 
TION AT NEWBURYPORT 

Not unto us who did but seek 

The word that burned within to speak, 

Not unto us this day belong 

The triumph and exultant song. 

Upon us fell in early youth 
The burden of unwelcome truth, 
And left us, weak and frail and few, 
The censor's painful work to do. 

Thenceforth our life a fight became, 
The air we breathed was hot with blame ; 10 
For not with gauged and softened tone 
We made the bondman's cause our own. 

We bore, as Freedom's hope forlorn, 
The private hate, the public scorn; 
Yet held through all the paths we trod 
Our faith in man and trust in God. 

We prayed and hoped ; but still, with awe, 
The coming of the sword we saw; 
We heard the nearing steps of doom, 
We saw the shade of things to come. 20 

In grief which they alone can feel 
Who from a mother's wrong appeal, 
With blended fines of fear and hope 
We cast our country's horoscope. 

For still within her house of life 
We marked the lurid sign of strife, 
And, poisoning and imbittering all, 
We saw the star of Wormwood fall. 

Deep as our love for her became 
Our hate of all that wrought her shame, 30 
And if, thereby, with tongue and pen 
We erred, — we were but mortal men. 

We hoped for peace ; our eyes survey 
The blood-red dawn of Freedom's day: 



3H 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



We prayed for love to loose the chain; 
'T is shorn by battle's axe in twain ! 

Nor skill nor strength nor zeal of ours 
Has mined and heaved the hostile towers ; 
Not by our hands is turned the key 
That sets the sighing captives free. 40 

A redder sea than Egypt's wave 
Is piled and parted for the slave; 
A darker cloud moves on in light; 
A fiercer fire is guide by night ! 

The praise, O Lord ! is thine alone, 

In thy own way thy work is done ! 

Our poor gifts at thy feet we cast, 

To whom be glory, first and last ! 

1865. 1865. 



THE ETERNAL GOODNESS 

Friends ! with whom my feet have trod 
The quiet aisles of prayer, 

Glad witness to your zeal for God 
And love of man I bear. 

1 trace your lines of argument; 
Your logic linked and strong 

I weigh as one who dreads dissent, 
And fears a doubt as wrong. 

But still my human hands are weak 

To hold your iron creeds: 10 

Against the words ye bid me speak 
My heart within me pleads. 

Who fathoms the Eternal Thought ? 

Who talks of scheme and plan ? 
The Lord is God ! He needeth not 

The poor device of man. 

I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground 

Ye tread with boldness shod; 
I dare not fix with mete and bound 

The love and power of God. 20 

Ye praise his justice ; even such 

His pitying love I deem: 
Ye seek a king ; I fain would touch 

The robe that hath no seam. 

Ye see the curse which overbroods 

A world of pain and loss ; 
I hear our Lord's beatitudes 

And prayer upon the cross. 



More than your schoolmen teach, with- 
in 

Myself, alas ! I know: 
Too dark ye cannot paint the sin, 

Too small the merit show. 

I bow my forehead to the dust, 

I veil mine eyes for shame, 
And urge, in trembling self-distrust, 

A prayer without a claim. 

I see the wrong that round me lies, 

I feel the guilt within; 
I hear, with groan and travail-cries, 

The world confess its sin. 

Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 
And tossed by storm and flood, 

To one fixed trust my spirit clings; 
I know that God is good ! 

Not mine to look where cherubim 

And seraphs may not see, 
But nothing can be good in Him 

Which evil is in me. 

The wrong that pains my soul below 

I dare not throne above, 
I know not of his hate, — I know 

His goodness and his love. 

I dimly guess from blessings known 

Of greater out of sight, 
And, with the chastened Psalmist, own 

His judgments too are right. 

I long for household voices gone, 

For vanished smiles I long, 
But God hath led my dear ones on, 

And He can do no wrong. 

I know not what the future hath 

Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 

His mercy underlies. 

And if my heart and flesh are weak 

To bear an untried pain, 
The bruised reed He will not break, 

But strengthen and sustain. 

No offering of my own I have, 
Nor works my faith to prove ; 

I can but give the gifts He gave, 
And plead his love for love. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



315 



And so beside the Silent Sea 

I wait the muffled oar; 
No harm from Him can come to me 

On ocean or on shore. 

I know not where his islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air; 

I only know I cannot drift 

Beyond his love and care. 80 



O brothers ! if my faith is vain, 

If hopes like these betray, 
Pray for me that my feet may gain 

The sure and safer way. 

And Thou, O Lord ! by whom are seen 

Thy creatures as they be, 
Forgive me if too close I lean 

My human heart on Thee ! 

1865? 



SNOW-BOUND 1 

A WINTER IDYL 



TO THE MEMORY OF THE HOUSEHOLD IT DESCRIBES 



THIS POEM IS DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR 



As the Spirits of Darkness be stronger in the dark, 
so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are aug- 
mented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but 
also by our common Wood Fire: and as the Celestial 
Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our Fire of 
Wood doth the same. — Cok. Agrippa, Occult Philo- 
sophy, Book I. ch. v. 

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight : the whited air 
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, 
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 

Emerson. The Snow Storm. 

The sun that brief December day 
Rose cheerless over hills of gray, 
And, darkly circled, gave at noon 
A sadder light than waning moon. 

1 The inmates of the family at the Whittier home- 
stead who are referred to in the poem were my father, 
mother, my brother and two sisters, and my uncle and 
aunt, both unmarried. In addition, there was the dis- 
trict school-master, who boarded with us. The ' not 
unfeared, half-welcome guest ' was Harriet Livermore, 
daughter of Judge Livermore, of New Hampshire, a 
young woman of fine natural ability, enthusiastic, ec- 
centric, with slight control over her violent temper, 
which sometimes made her religious profession doubt- 
ful. She was equally ready to exhort in school-house 
prayer-meetings and dance in a Washington ball-room, 
while her father was a member of Congress. She early 
embraced the doctrine of the Second Advent, and felt 
it her duty to proclaim the Lord's speedy coming. 
With this message she crossed the Atlantic and spent 
the greater part of a long life in travelling over Europe 
and Asia. She lived some time with Lady Hester Stan- 
hope, a woman as fantastic and mentally strained as 
herself, on the slope of Mt. Lebanon, but finally quar- 
relled with her in regard to two white horses with red 
marks on their backs which suggested the idea of sad- 
dles, on which her titled hostess expected to ride into 



Slow tracing down the thickening sky 
Its mute and ominous prophecy, 
A portent seeming less than threat, 
It sank from sight before it set. 

Jerusalem with the Lord. A friend of mine found her, 
when quite an old woman, wandering in Syria with a 
tribe of Arabs, who with the Oriental notion that mad- 
ness is inspiration, accepted her as their prophetess 
and leader. At the time referred to in ' Snow-Bound ' 
she was boarding at the Rocks Village, about two miles 
from us. 

In my boyhood, in our lonely farm-house, we had 
scanty sources of information; few books and only a 
small weekly newspaper. Our only annual was the 
Almanac. Under such circumstances story-telling was 
a necessary resource in the long winter evenings. My 
father when a young man had traversed the wilderness 
to Canada, and could tell us of his adventures with In- 
dians and wild beasts, and of his sojourn in the French 
villages. My uncle was ready with his record of hunt- 
ing and fishing and, it must be confessed, with stories, 
which he at least half believed, of witchcraft and ap- 
paritions. My mother, who was born in the Indian- 
haunted region of Somersworth, New Hampshire, be- 
tween Dover and Portsmouth, told us of the inroads of 
the savages, and the narrow escape of her ancestors. 
She described strange people who lived on the Piscat- 
aqua and Cocheco, among whom was Bantam the sor- 
cerer. I have in my possession the wizard's ' conjuring 
book,' which he solemnly opened when consulted. It 
is a copy of Cornelius Agrippa's Magic, printed in 1651, 
dedicated to Dr. Robert Child, who, like Michael Scott, 
had learned 

the art of glammorie 
In Padua beyond the sea, 

and who is famous in the annals of Massachusetts, 
where he was at one time a resident, as the first man 
who dared petition the General Court for liberty of 
conscience. The full title of the book is Three Books 
of Occult Philosophy, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, 
Knight, Doctor of both Laws, Counsellor to Csesar's 
Sacred Majesty and Judge of Prerogative Court. 
(Whittier.) 

See also Pickard's Life of Whittier, vol. i, pp. 27-36, 
and vol. ii, pp. 494-500; and Whiltier-Land, pp. 12, 24, 
3D, 74. 



316 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



A chill no coat, however stout, 

Of homespun stuff could quite shut out, 10 

A hard, dull bitterness of cold, 

That checked, mid-vein, the circling race 

Of life-blood in the sharpened face, 

The corning of the snow-storm told. 

The wind blew east; we heard the roar 

Of Ocean on his wintry shore, 

And felt the strong pulse throbbing there 

Beat with low rhythm our inland air. 

Meanwhile we did our nightly chores, — 
Brought in the wood from out of doors, 20 
Littered the stalls, and from the mows 
Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows: 
Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; 
And, sharply clashing horn on horn, 
Impatient down the stanchion rows 
The cattle shake their walnut bows; 
While, peering from his early perch 
Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, 
The cock his crested helmet bent 
And down his querulous challenge sent. 30 

Unwarmed by any sunset light 
The "gray day darkened into night, 
A night made hoary with the swarm 
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm, 
As zigzag, wavering to and fro, 
Crossed and recrossed the winged snow: 
And ere the early bedtime came 
The white drift piled the window-frame, 
And through the glass the clothes-line posts 
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts. 40 

So all night long the storm roared on: 

The morning broke without a sun; 

In tiny spherule traced with lines 

Of Nature's geometric signs, 

In starry flake, and pellicle, 

All day the hoary meteor fell; 

And, when the second morning shone, 

We looked upon a world unknown, 

On nothing we could call our own. 

Around the glistening wonder bent 50 

The blue walls of the firmament, 

No cloud above, no earth below, — 

A universe of sky and snow ! 

The old familiar sights of ours 

Took marvellous shapes; strange domes 

and towers 
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood, 
Or garden-wall, or belt of wood; 
A smooth white mound the brush - pile 

showed, 



A fenceless drift what once was road; 
The bridle-post an old man sat 60 

With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat; 
The well-curb had a Chinese roof; 
And even the long sweep, high aloof, 
In its slant splendor, seemed to tell 
Of Pisa's leaning miracle. 

A-piom-pt, decisive man, no breath 
Our father wasted : ' Boys, a path ! ' 
Well pleased (for when did farmer boy 
Count such a summons less than joy ?) 
Our buskins on our feet we drew; 70 

With mittened hands, and caps drawn low, 
To guard our necks and ears from snow, 
We cut the solid whiteness through. 
And, where the drift was deepest, made 
A tunnel walled and overlaid 
With dazzling crystal: we had read 
Of rare Aladdin's wondrous cave, 
And to our own his name we gave, 
With many a wish the luck were ours 
To test his lamp's supernal powers. 80 

We reached the barn with merry din, 
And roused the prisoned brutes within. 
The old horse thrust his long head out, 
And grave with wonder gazed about; 
The cock his lusty greeting said, 
And forth his speckled harem led; 
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, 
And mild reproach of hunger looked; 
The horned patriarch of the sheep, 
Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, 90 
Shook his sage head with gesture mute, 
And emphasized with stamp of foot. 

All day the gusty north-wind bore 

The loosening drift its breath before; 

Low circling round its southern zone, 

The sun through dazzling snow-mist shone. 

No church-bell lent its Christian tone 

To the savage air, no social smoke 

Curled over woods of snow-hung oak. 

A solitude made more intense 100 

By dreary- voiced elements, 

The shrieking of the mindless wind, 

The moaning tree-boughs swaying blind, 

And on the glass the unmeaning beat 

Of ghostly finger-tips of sleet. 

Beyond the circle of our hearth 

No welcome sound of toil or mirth 

Unbound the spell, and testified 

Of human life and thought outside. 

We minded that the sharpest ear no 

The buried brooklet could not hear, 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



i J 7 



The music of whose liquid lip 
Had beeu to us companionship, 
And, in our lonely life, had grown 
To have an almost human tone. 

As night drew on, and, from the crest 
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank 
From sight beneath the smothering bank, 
We piled, with care, our nightly stack 120 
Of wood against the chimney-back, — 
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 
And on its top the stout back-stick; 
The knotty forestick laid apart, 
And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush; then, hovering near, 
We watched the first red blaze appear, 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
Until the old, rude-furnished room 130 

Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom; 
While radiant with a mimic flame 
Outside the sparkling drift became, 
And through the bare-boughed lilac-tree 
Our own warm hearth seemed blazing free. 
The crane and pendent trammels showed, 
The Turks' heads on the andirons glowed; 
While childish fancy, prompt to tell 
The meaning of the miracle, 
Whispered the old rhyme : ' Under the tree, 
Whenjire outdoors burns merrily, 141 

Inhere the witches are making tea.' 

The moon above the eastern wood 
Shone at its full; the hill-range stood 
Transfigured in the silver flood, 
Its blown snows flashing cold and keen, 
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 
Took shadow, or the sombre green 
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 
Against the whiteness at their back. 150 
For such a world and such a night 
Most fitting that un warming light, 
Which only seemed where'er it fell 
To make the coldness visible. 

Shut in from all the world without, 

We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 

Content to let the north- wind roar 

In baffled rage at pane and door, 

While the red logs before us beat 

The frost-line back with tropic heat; 160 

And ever, when a louder blast 

Shook beam and rafter as it passed, 

The merrier up its roaring draught 



The great throat of the chimney laughed; 
The house-dog on his paws outspread 
Laid to the fire his drowsy head, 
The cat's dark silhouette on the wall 
A couchant tiger's seemed to fall; 
And, for the winter fireside meet, 
Between the andirons' straddling feet, 170 
The mug of cider simmered slow, 
The apples sputtered in a row, 
And, close at hand, the basket stood 
With nuts from brown October's wood. 

What matter how the night behaved ? 
What matter how the north-wind raved ? 
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
Could quench our hearth-fire's ruddy glow. 
O Time and Change ! — with hair as gray 
As was my sire's that winter day, 180 

How strange it seems, with so much gone 
Of life and love, to still live on ! 
Ah, brother ! only I and thou 1 
Are left of all that circle now, — 
The dear home faces whereupon 
That fitful firelight paled and shone. 
Henceforward, listen as we will, 
The voices of that hearth are still; 
Look where we may, the wide earth o'er 
Those lighted faces smile no more. 190 

We tread the paths their feet have worn, 

We sit beneath their orchard trees, 

We hear, like them, the hum of bees 
And rustle of the bladed corn; 
We turn the pages that they read, 

Their written words we linger o'er, 
But in the sun they cast no shade, 
No voice is heard, no sign is made, 

No step is on the conscious floor ! 
Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust 200 
(Since He who knows our need is just) 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress-trees ! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play ! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 210 

And Love can never lose its own ! 

We sped the time with stories old, 
Wrought puzzles out, and riddles told, 

1 Whittier's only brother, Matthew, was born in 1812 
and died in 1883. See Pickard's Life of Whittier, vol. i, 
pp. 31-32. 



3i» 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Or stammered from our school-book lore 

' The Chief of Gambia's golden shore.' 1 

How often since, when all the land 

Was clay in Slavery's shaping hand, 

As if a far-blown trumpet stirred 

The languorous sin-sick air, I heard: 

' Does not the voice of reason cry, 220 

Claim the first right which Nature gave, 
From the red scourge of bondage fly, 

Nor deign to live a burdened slave ! ' 
Our father rode again his ride 
On Memphremagog's wooded side; 
Sat down again to moose and samp 
In trapper's hut and Indian camp; 
Lived o'er the old idyllic ease 
Beneath St. Francois' hemlock-trees; 
Again for him the moonlight shone 230 

On Norman cap and bodiced zone; 
Again he heard the violin play 
Which led the village dance away. 
And mingled in its merry whirl 
The grandam and the laughing girl. 
Or, nearer home, our steps he led 
Where Salisbury's level marshes spread 

Mile-wide as flies the laden bee; 
Where merry mowers, hale and strong, 
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths 
along 240 

The low green prairies of the sea. 
We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, 

And round the rocky Isles of Shoals 

The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals; 
The chowder on the sand-beach made, 
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot 
With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. 
We heard the tales of witchcraft old, 
And dream and sign and marvel told 
To sleepy listeners as they lay 250 

Stretched idly on the salted hay, 
Adrift along the winding shores, 
When favoring breezes deigned to blow 
The square sail of the gundelow 
And idle lay the useless oars. 

Our mother, while she turned her wheel 
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel, 
Told how the Indian hordes came down 
At midnight on Cocheco town, 
And how her own great-uncle bore 260 

His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore. 

1 ' The African Chief ' was the title of a poem by 
Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Morton, wife of the Hon. Perez 
Morton, a former attorney-general of Massachusetts. 
Mrs. Morton's norm, de plume was Philenia. The school- 
book in which ' The African Chief ' was printed was Ca- 
leb Bingham's The American Preceptor. (Whittieb.) 



Recalling, in her fitting phrase, 
So rich and picturesque and free 
(The common unrhymed poetry 
Of simple life and country ways), 
The story of her early days, — 
She made us welcome to her home; 
Old hearths grew wide to give us room; 
We stole with her a frightened look 
At the gray wizard's conjuring-book, 270 
The fame whereof went far and wide 
Through all the simple country-side ; 
We heard the hawks at twilight play, 
The boat-horn on Piscataqua, 
The loon's weird laughter far away; 
We fished her little tront-brook, knew 
What flowers in wood and meadow grew, 
What sunny hillsides autumn-brown 
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, 
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay 280 
The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, 
And heard the wild-geese calling loud 
Beneath the gray November cloud. 

Then, haply, with a look more grave, 
And soberer tone, some tale she gave 
From painful Sewel's ancient tome, 2 
Beloved in every Quaker home, 
Of faith fire-winged by martyrdom, 
Or Chalkley's Journal, old and quaint, 3 — 
Gentlest of skippers, rare sea-saint ! — 290 
Who, when the dreary calms prevailed, 
And water-butt and bread-cask failed, 

2 ' Painful Sewel's ancient tome ' ... is the His- 
tory of the Christian People called Quakers, by William 
Sewel, a Dutchman . . . He died about 1725. ... It 
was originally written in Low Dutch, and translated 
into English by Sewel himself. . . . It is devoted mostly 
to the persecutions of the Friends in Great Britain and 
in America. (Pickard's Life of Whittier.) 

8 Chalkley's own narrative of this incident, as given 
in his Journal, is as follows : ' To stop their murmuring, 
I told them they should not need to cast lots, which 
was usual in such cases, which of us should die first, 
for I would freely offer up my life to do them good. 
One said, "God bless you ! I will not eat any of you." 
Another said, " He would die before he would eat any 
of me," and so said several. I can truly say, on that 
occasion, at that time, my life was not dear to me, and 
that I was serious and ingenuous in my proposition : 
and as I was leaning over the side of the vessel, thought- 
fully considering my proposal to the company, and 
looking in my mind to Him that made me, a very large 
dolphin came up towards the top or surface of the 
water, and looked me in the face ; and 1 called the 
people to put a hook into the sea, and take him, for 
here is one come to redeem me (I said to them). And 
they put a hook into the sea, and the fish readily took 
it and they caught him. He was longer than myself. 
I think he was about six feet long, and the largest that 
ever I saw. This plainly showed us that we ought not 
to distrust the providence of the Mmighty. The people 
were quieted by this act of Providence, and murmured 
no more. We caught enough to eat plentifully of, till 
we got into the capes of Delaware.' (Whittier.) 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



3i9 



And cruel, hungry eyes pursued 

His portly presence mad for food, 

With dark hints muttered under breath 

Of casting lots for life or death, 

Offered, if Heaven withheld supplies, 

To be himself the sacrifice. 

Then, suddenly, as if to save 

The good man from his living grave, 300 

A ripple on the water grew, 

A school of porpoise flashed in view. 

'Take, eat,' he said, 'and be content; 

These fishes in my stead are sent 

By Him who gave the tangled ram 

To spare the child of Abraham.' 

Our uncle, innocent of books, 

Was rich in lore of fields and brooks, 1 

The ancient teachers never dumb 

Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. 310 

In moons and tides and weather wise, 

He read the clouds as prophecies, 

And foul or fair coidd well divine, 

By many an occult hint and sign, 

Holding the cunning-warded keys 

To all the woodcraft mysteries; 

Himself to Nature's heart so near 

That all her voices in his ear 

Of beast or bird had meanings clear, 

Like Apollonius of old, 320 

Who knew the tales the sparrows told, 

Or Hermes, who interpreted 

What the sage cranes of Nilus said; 

A simple, guileless, childlike man, 

Content to live where life began; 

Strong only on his native grounds, 

The little world of sights and sounds 

Whose girdle was the parish bounds, 

Whereof his fondly partial pride 

The common features magnified, 330 

As Surrey hills to mountains grew 

In White of Selborne's loving view, — 

He told how teal and loon he shot, 

And how the eagle's eggs he got, 

The feats on pond and river done, 

The prodigies of rod and gun; 

Till, warming with the tales he told, 

Forgotten was the outside cold, 

The bitter wind unheeded blew, 

From ripening corn the pigeons flew, 340 

The partridge drummed i' the wood, the 

mink 
Went fishing down the river-brink; 

1 Compare Emerson's ' Wood-Notes.' On Whittier's 
uncle, see Pickard's Life, of Whittier, vol. i, pp. 32-33, 
and Whittier's Prose Works, vol. i, pp. 323-325, ' The 
Fish I didn't Catch.' 



In fields with bean or clover gay, 
The woodchuck, like a hermit gray, 

Peered from the doorway of his cell; 
The muskrat plied the mason's trade, 
And tier by tier his mud-walls laid; 
And from the shagbark overhead 

The grizzled squirrel dropped his shell. 

Next, the dear aunt, whose smile of 
cheer 350 

And voice in dreams I see and hear — 
The sweetest woman ever Fate 
Perverse denied a household mate, 
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less 
Found peace in love's unselfishness, 
And welcome whereso'er she went, 
A calm and gracious element, 
Whose' presence seemed the sweet in- 
come 
And womanly atmosphere of home — 
Called up her girlhood memories, 360 

The hus kin gs and the apple-bees, 
The sleigh-rides and the summer sails, 
Weaving through all the poor details 
And homespun warp of circumstance 
A golden woof-thread of romance. 
For well she kept her genial mood 
And simple faith of maidenhood; 
Before her still a cloud-land lay, 
The mirage loomed across her way; 
The morning dew, that dries so soon 370 
With others, glistened at her noon; 
Through years of toil and soil and care, 
From glossy tress to thin gray hair, 
All unprofaned she held apart 
The virgin fancies of the heart. 
Be shame to him of woman born 
Who hath for such but thought of scorn. 

There, too, our elder sister 2 plied 

Her evening task the stand beside; 

A full, rich nature, free to trust, 380 

Truthful and almost sternly just, 

Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act, 

And make her generous thought a fact, 

Keeping with many a light disguise 

The secret of self-sacrifice. 

O heart sore-tried ! thou hast the best, 

That Heaven itself could give thee, — 

rest, 
Rest from all bitter thoughts and things ! 
How many a poor one's blessing went 
With thee beneath the low green tent 390 
Whose curtain never outward swings ! 
2 Mary Whittier, 1806-1860. Pickard's Life, i, 29. 



320 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



As one who held herself a part x 
Of all she saw, and let her heart 

Against the household bosom lean, 
Upon the motley-braided mat 
Our youngest and our dearest sat, 
Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes, 

Now bathed in the unfading green 
And holy peace of Paradise. 
Oh, looking from some heavenly hill, 400 

Or from the shade of saintly palms, 

Or silver reach of river cairns, 
Do those large eyes behold me still? 
With me one little year ago: — 
The chill weight of the winter snow 

For months upon her grave has lain; 
And now, when summer south-winds blow 

And brier and harebell bloom again, 
' I tread the pleasant paths we trod, 
I see the violet-sprinkled sod 410 

Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak 
The hillside flowers she loved to seek, 
Yet following me where'er I went 
With dark eyes full of love's content. 
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills 
I The air with sweetness ; all the hills 
Stretch green to June's unclouded sky; 
But still I wait with ear and eye 
For something gone which should be nigh, 
A loss hi all familiar things, 420 

In flower that blooms, and bird that sings. 
And yet, dear heart ! remembering thee, 

Am I not richer than of old? 
Safe in thy immortality, 

What change can reach the wealth I 
hold? 

What chance can mar the pearl and gold 
Thy love hath left in trust with me? 
And while in life's late afternoon, 

Where cool and long the shadows grow, 
I walk to meet the night that soon 430 

Shall shape and shadow overflow, 
I cannot feel that thou art far, 
Since near at need the angels are; 
And when the sunset gates unbar, 

Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
And, white against the evening star, 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand? 

Brisk wielder of the birch and rule, 
The master of the district school 

1 On Whittier's sister Elizabeth, his household com- 
panion and his closest friend until her death, in 1864, 
see Pickard's Life, vol. i, pp. 29-31 ; Whitller-Land, 
p. 74 ; Whittier's poems ' To My Sister,' and ' The Last 
Eve of Summer ;' and her own poems, in the Riverside 
and Cambridge Editions of Whittier's Works. 



Held at the fire his favored place, 440 

Its warm glow lit a laughing face 
Fresh-hued and fair, where scarce appeared 
The uncertain prophecy of beard. 
He teased the mitten-blinded cat, 
Played cross-pins on my uncle's hat, 
Sang songs, and told us what befalls 
In classic Dartmouth's college halls. 
Born the wild Northern hills among, 
From whence his yeoman father wrung 
By patient toil subsistence scant, 450 

Not competence and yet not want, 
He early gained the power to pay 
His cheerful, self-reliant way; 
Could doff at ease his scholar's gown 
To peddle wares from town to town ; 
Or through the long vacation's reach 
In lonely lowland districts teach, 
Where all the droll experience found 
At stranger hearths in boarding round, 
The moonlit skater's keen delight, 460 

The sleigh-drive through the frosty night, 
The rustic-party, with its rough 
Accompaniment of blind-man's-buff, 
And whirling-plate, and forfeits paid, 
His winter task a pastime made. 
Happy the snow-locked homes wherein 
He tuned his merry violin, 
Or played the athlete in the barn, 
Or held the good dame's winding-yarn, 
Or mirth-provoking versions told 470 

Of classic legends rare and old, 
Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome 
Had all the commonplace of home, 
And little seemed at best the odds 
'Twixt Yankee pedlers and old gods; 
Where Pindus-born Arachthus took 
The guise of any grist-mill brook, 
And dread Olympus at his will 
Became a huckleberry hill. 



A careless boy that night he seemed; 

But at his desk he had the look 
And air of one who wisely schemed, 
And hostage from the future took 
In trained thought and lore of book. 
Large-brained, clear-eyed, of such as he 
Shall Freedom's young apostles be, 
Who, following in War's bloody trail, 
Shall every lingering wrong assail; 
All chains from limb and spirit strike, 
Uplift the black and white alike; 
Scatter before their swift advance 
The darkness and the ignorance, 
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth, 



4S0 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



321 



Which nurtured Treason's monstrous 

growth, 
Made murder pastime, and the hell 
Of prison-torture possible; 
The cruel lie of caste refute, 
Old forms remould, and substitute 
For Slavery's lash the freeman's will, 
For blind routine, wise-handed skill; 500 
A school-house plant on every hill, 
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence 
The quick wires of intelligence ; 
Till North and South together brought 
Shall own the same electric thought, 
In peace a common flag salute, 
And, side by side in labor's free 
And unresentful rivalry, 
Harvest the fields wherein they fought. 

Another guest that winter night * 510 

Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. 

Unmarked by time, and yet not young, 

The honeyed music of her tongue 

And words of meekness scarcely told 

A nature passionate and bold, 

Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide, 

Its milder features dwarfed beside 

Her unbent will's majestic pride. 

She sat among us, at the best, 

A not unfeared, half -welcome guest, 520 

Rebuking with her cultured phrase 

Our homeliness of words and ways. 

A certain pard-like, treacherous grace 

Swayed the lithe limbs and dropped the 

lash, 
Lent the white teeth their dazzling flash; 
And under low brows, black with night, 
Rayed out at times a dangerous light; 
The sharp heat-lightnings of her face 
Presaging ill to him whom Fate 
Condemned to share her love or hate. 530 
A woman tropical, intense 
In thought and act, in soul and sense, 
She blended in a like degree 
The vixen and the devotee, 
Revealing with each freak or feint 
The temper of Petruchio's Kate, 
The raptures of Siena's saint. 
Her tapering hand and rounded wrist 
Had facile power to form a fist; 

1 See Whittier's introductory note to 'Snow-Bound.' 
He wrote to Fields in sending him the poem : ' The por- 
trait of that strange pilgrim, Harriet Livermore. . . 
who used to visit us, is as near the life as I can give 
it.' An amusing anecdote of how Miss Livermore 
found and read this characterization of herself is told 
in Pickard's Whiltier-Land, p. 30. 



The warm, dark languish of her eyes 540 
Was never safe from wrath's surprise. 
Brows saintly calm and lips devout 
Knew every change of scowl and pout; 
And the sweet voice had notes more high 
And shrill for social battle-cry. 

Since then what old cathedral town 
Has missed her pilgrim staff and gown, 
What convent-gate has held its lock 
Against the challenge of her knock ! 
Through Smyrna's plague-hushed thorough- 
fares, 550 
Up sea-set Malta's rocky stairs, 
Gray olive slopes of hills that hem 

Thy tombs and shrines, Jerusalem, 
Or startling on her desert throne 
The crazy Queen of Lebanon 2 
With claims fantastic as her own, 
Her tireless feet have held their way; 
And still, unrestful, bowed, and gray, 
She watches under Eastern skies, 

With hope each day renewed and fresh, 
The Lord's quick coming in the flesh, 561 
Whereof she dreams and prophesies ! 

Where'er her troubled path may be, 
The Lord's sweet pity with her go ! 

The outward- wayward life we see, 
The hidden springs we may not know. 

Nor is it given us to discern 

What threads the fatal sisters spun, 
Through what ancestral years has run 

The sorrow with the woman born, 570 

What forged her cruel chain of moods, 

What set her feet in solitudes, 

And held the love within her mute, 

What mingled madness in the blood, 
A life-long discord and annoy, 
Water of tears with oil of joy, 

And hid within the folded bud 
Perversities of flower and fruit. 

It is not ours to separate 

The tangled skein of will and fate, . 580 

To show what metes and bounds should 
stand 

Upon the soul's debatable land, 

And between choice and Providence 

Divide the circle of events ; 

But He who knows our frame is just, 

Merciful and compassionate, 

And full of sweet assurances 

2 An interesting account of Lady Hester Stanhope 
may be found in Kinglake's Eothen, chap. viii. 
(Whittier.) 



322 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And hope for all the language is, 
That He remembereth we are dust ! 

At last the great logs, crumbling low, 590 
Sent out a dull and duller glow, 
The bull's-eye watch that hung in view, 
Ticking its weary circuit through, 
Pointed with mutely warning sign 
Its black hand to the hour of nine. 
That sign the pleasant circle broke: 
My uncle ceased his pipe to smoke, 
Knocked from its bowl the refuse gray, 
And laid it tenderly away; 
Then roused himself to safely cover 600 
The dull red brands with ashes over. 
And while, with care, our mother laid 
The work aside, her steps she stayed 
One moment, seeking to express 
Her grateful sense of happiness 
For food and shelter, warmth and health, 
And love's contentment more than wealth, 
With simple wishes (not the weak, 
Vain prayers which no fulfilment seek, 
But such as warm the generous heart, 610 
O'er-prompt to do with Heaven its part) 
That none might lack, that bitter night, 
For bread and clothing, warmth and light. 

Within our beds awhile we heard 
The wind that round the gables roared, 
With now and then a ruder shock, 
Which made our very bedsteads rock. 
We heard the loosened clapboards tost, 
The board-nails snapping in the frost; 
And on us, through the unplastered wall, 
Felt the light sifted snow-flakes fall. 621 
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do 
When hearts are light and life is new; 
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, 
Till in the summer-land of dreams 
They softened to the sound of streams, 
Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, 
And lapsing waves on quiet shores. 

Next morn we wakened with the shout 
Of merry voices high and clear; 630 

And saw the teamsters drawing near 
To break the drifted highways out. 
Down the long hillside treading slow 
We saw the half-buried oxen go, 
Shaking the snow from heads uptost, 
Their straining nostrils white with frost. 
Before our door tbe straggling train 
Drew up, an added team to gain. 
The elders threshed their hands a-cold, 



Passed, with the cider-mug, their jokes 
From lip to lip; the younger folks 641 
Down the loose snow-banks, wrestling, 

rolled, 
Then toiled again the cavalcade 

O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, 
And woodland paths that wound between 
Low drooping pine-boughs winter- weighed. 
From every barn a team afoot, 
At every house a new recruit, 
Where, drawn by Nature's subtlest law, 
Haply the watchful young men saw 650 
Sweet doorway pictures of the curls 
And curious eyes of merry girls, 
Lifting their hands in mock defence 
Against the snow-ball's compliments, 
And reading in each missive tost 
The charm with Eden never lost. 

We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound ; 

And, following where the teamsters led, 
The wise old Doctor went his round, 
Just pausing at our door to say, 660 

In the brief autocratic way 
Of one who, prompt at Duty's call, 
Was free to urge her claim on all, 

That some poor neighbor sick abed 
At night our mother's aid would need. 
For, one in generous thought and deed, 

What mattered in the sufferer's sight 

The Quaker matron's inward light, 
The Doctor's mail of Calvin's creed ? 
All hearts confess the saints elect 670 

Who, twain in faith, hi love agree, 
And melt not in an acid sect 

The Christian pearl of charity ! 

So days went on: a week had passed 

Since the great world was heard from last. 

The Almanac we studied o'er, 

Read and reread our little store 

Of books and pamphlets, scarce a score; 

One harmless novel, mostly hid 

From younger eyes, a book forbid, 6S0 

And poetry (or good or bad, 

A single book was all we had), 

Where Ellwood's meek, drab-skirted Muse, 
A stranger to the heathen Nine,' 
Sang, with a somewhat nasal whine, 

The wars of David and the Jews. 1 

1 Thomas Ellwood, one of the Society of Friends, a 
contemporary and friend of Milton, and the suggester 
of Paradise Regained, wrote an epic poem in five 
books, called Davideis, the life of King David of Is- 
rael. He wrote the book, we are told, for his own diver- 
sion, so it was not necessary that others should be 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



323 



At last the floundering carrier bore 

The village paper to our door. 

Lo ! broadening outward as we read, 

To warmer zones the horizon spread; 690 

In panoramic length unrolled 

We saw the marvels tbat it told. 

Before us passed the painted Creeks, 

And daft McGregor on his raids 

In Costa Rica's everglades. 
And up Taygetos winding slow 
Rode Ypsilanti's Mainote Greeks, 
A Turk's head at each saddle-bow ! 
Welcome to us its week-old news, 
Its corner for the rustic Muse, 700 

Its monthly gauge of snow and ram, 
Its record, mingling in a breath 
The wedding bell and dirge of death: 
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, 
The latest culprit sent to jail; 
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, 
Its vendue sales and goods at cost, 

And traffic calling loud for gain. 
We felt the stir of hall and street, 
The pulse of life that round us beat; 710 
The chill embargo of the snow 
Was melted in the genial glow; 
Wide swung again our ice-locked door, 
And all the world was ours once more ! 

Clasp, Angel of the backward look 
And folded wings of ashen gray 
And voice of echoes far away, 
The brazen covers of thy book; 
The weird palimpsest old and vast, 
Wherein thou hid'st the spectral past; 720 
Where, closely mingling, pale and glow 
The characters of joy and woe; 
The monographs of outlived years, 
Or smile-illumed or dim with tears, 



' Green hills of life that slope to death, 
And haunts of home, whose vistaed trees 
j Shade off to mournful cypresses 

With the white amaranths underneath. 
Even while I look, I can but heed 

The restless sands' incessant fall, 7; 

Importunate hours that hours succeed, 
Each clamorous with its own sharp need, 

And duty keeping pace with all. 
Shut down and clasp the heavy lids; 
I hear again the voice that bids 
The dreamer leave his dream midway 
For larger hopes and graver fears; 
Life greatens in these later years, 
The century's aloe flowers to-day ! 

Yet, haply, in some lull of life, 740 

Some Truce of God which breaks its 

strife, 
The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, 

Dreaming in throngf ul city ways 
Of winter joys his boyhood knew ; 
And dear and early friends — the few 
Who yet remain — shall pause to view 

These Flemish pictures of old days; 
Sit with me by the homestead hearth, 
And stretch the hands of memory forth 749 

To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze ! 
And thanks untraced to lips unknown 
Shall greet me like the odors blown 
From unseen meadows newly mown, 
Or lilies floating in some pond, 
Wood - fringed, the wayside gaze be- 
yond; 
The traveller owns the grateful sense 
Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, 
And, pausing, takes with forehead bare 
The benediction of the air. 



1865. 



1866. 



ABRAHAM DAVENPORT 1 

In the old days (a custom laid aside 
With breeches and cocked hats) the people 
sent 

diverted by it. Ellwood's autobiography, a quaint and 
delightful book, may be found in Howells's series of 
Choice Autobiographies. (Riverside Literature Series. ) 
1 The famous Dark Day of New England, May 19, 
1780, was a physical puzzle for many years to our ances- 
tors, but its occurrence brought something more than 
philosophical speculation into the minds of those who 
passed through it. The incident of Colonel Abraham 
Davenport's sturdy protest is a matter of history. 
(Whittxee.) 



Their wisest men to make the public laws. 
And so, from a brown homestead, where 

the Sound 
Drinks the small tribute of the Mianas, 
Waved over by the woods of Rippowams, 
And hallowed by pure lives and tranquil 

deaths, 
Stamford sent up to the councils of the 

State 
Wisdom and grace hi Abraham Davenport. 

'T was on a May-day of the far old year 
Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell u 



324 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Over the bloom and sweet life of the 

Spring, 
Over the fresh earth and the heaven of 

noon, 
A horror of great darkness, like the night 
In day of which the Norland sagas tell, — 
The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung 

sky 
Was black with ominous clouds, save where 

its rim 
Was fringed with a dull glow, like that 

which climbs 
The crater's sides from the red hell below. 
Birds ceased to sing, and all the barn-yard 

fowls 20 

Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars 
Lowed, and looked homeward ; bats on 

leathern wings 
Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died; 
Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew 

sharp 
To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet 

shatter 
The black sky, that the dreadful face of 

Christ 
Might look from the rent clouds, not as He 

looked 
A loving guest at Bethany, but stern 
As Justice and inexorable Law. 

Meanwhile in the old State House, dim 
as ghosts, 30 

Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut, 
Trembling beneath their legislative robes. 
' It is the Lord's Great Day ! Let us ad- 
journ,' 
Some said ; and then, as if with one accord, 
All eyes were turned to Abraham Daven- 
port. 
He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice 
The intolerable hush. « This well may be 
The Day of Judgment which the world 

awaits; 
But be it so or not, I only know 
My present duty, and my Lord's command 
To occupy till He come. So at the post 41 
Where He hath set me in his providence, 
I choose, for one, to meet Him face to 

face, — 
No faithless servant frightened from my 

task, 
But ready when the Lord of the harvest 

calls ; 
And therefore, with all reverence, I would 
say, 



Let God do his work, we will see to 

ours. 
Bring in the candles.' And they brought 

them in. 

Then by the flaring lights the Speaker 
read, 
Albeit with husky voice and shaking hands, 
An act to amend an act to regulate 51 

The shad and alewive fisheries. Where- 
upon 
Wisely and well spake Abraham Daven- 
port, 
Straight to the question, with no figures of 

speech 
Save the ten Arab signs, yet not without 
The shrewd dry humor natural to the man: 
His awe-struck colleagues listening all the 

while, 
Between the pauses of his argument, 
To hear the thunder of the wrath of God 
Break from the hollow trumpet of the 
cloud. 60 

And there he stands in memory to this 
day, 
Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen 
Against the background of unnatural dark, 
A witness to the ages as they pass, 
That simple duty hath no place for fear. 

1866. 
f 

THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPS- 
WELL 

What flecks the outer gray beyond 

The sundown's golden trail ? 
The white flash of a sea-bird's wing, 

Or gleam of slanting sail ? 
Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point, 

And sea- worn elders pray, — 
The ghost of what was once a ship 

Is sailing up the bay ! 

From gray sea-fog, from icy drift, 

From peril and from pain, 10 

The home-bound fisher greets thy lights, 

O hundred-harbored Maine ! 
But many a keel shall seaward turn, 

And many a sail outstand, 
When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms 

Against the dusk of land. 

She rounds the headland's bristling pines; 
She threads the isle-set bay; 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



325 



No spur of breeze can speed her on, 

Nor ebb of tide delay. 20 

Old men still walk the Isle of Orr 
Who tell her date and name, 

Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards 
Who hewed her oaken frame. 

What weary doom of baffled quest, 

Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine ? 
What makes thee in the haunts of home 

A wonder and a sign ? 
No foot is on thy silent deck, 

Upon thy helm no hand; 30 

No ripple hath the soundless wind 

That smites thee from the land ! 

For never comes the ship to port, 

Howe'er the breeze may be; 
Just when she nears the waiting shore 

She drifts again to sea. 
No tack of sail, nor turn of helm, 

Nor sheer of veering side, 
Stern-fore she drives to sea and night, 

Against the wind and tide. 40 

In vain o'er Harpswell Neck the star 

Of evening guides her in; 
In vain for her the lamps are lit 

Within thy tower, Seguin ! 
In vain the harbor-boat shall hail, 

In vain the pilot call; 
No hand shall reef his spectral sail, 

Or let her anchor fall. 

Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy, 

Your gray-head hints of ill ; 50 

And, over sick-beds whispering low, 

Your prophecies fulfil. 
Some home amid yon birchen trees 

Shall drape its door with woe; 
And slowly where the Dead Ship sails, 

The burial boat shall row ! 

From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point, 

From island and from main, 
From sheltered cove and tided creek, 

Shall glide the funeral train. 60 

The dead-boat with the bearers four, 

The mourners at her stern, — 
And one shall go the silent way 

Who shall no more return ! 

And men shall sigh, and women weep, 

Whose dear ones pale and pine, 
And sadly over sunset seas 



Await the ghostly sign. 
They know not that its sails are filled 

By pity's tender breath, 70 

Nor see the Angel at the helm 

Who steers the Ship of Death ! 

I860. 



\/ OUR MASTER 1 

Immortal Love, forever full, 

Forever flowing free, 
Forever shared, forever whole, 

A never-ebbing sea ! 

Our outward lips confess the name 

All other names above; 
Love only knoweth whence it came 

And comprehendeth love. 

Blow, winds of God, awake and blow 
The mists of earth away ! i 

Shine out, O Light Divine, and show 
How wide and far we stray ! 

Hush every lip, close every book, 
The strife of tongues forbear ; 

Why forward reach, or backward look, 
For love that clasps like air ? 

We may not climb the heavenly steeps 
To bring the Lord Christ down: 

In vain we search the lowest deeps, 
For Him no depths can drown. 2 

Nor holy bread, nor blood of grape, 

The lineaments restore 
Of Him we know in outward shape 

And in the flesh no more. 



He cometh not a king to reign; V 
The world's long hope is dim; . 

The weary centuries watch in vain 
The clouds of heaven for Him. 






Death comes, life goes; the asking eye 
And ear are answerless; 30 

The grave is dumb, the hollow sky 
Is sad with silentness. 

The letter fails, and systems fall, 
And every symbol wanes; 

1 Five of the best-known hymns by Whittier are 
taken from this poem, beginning with the first, seventh, 
sixteenth, twenty-fourth, and thirty-fifth stanzas. 



326 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



The Spirit over-brooding all 
Eternal Love remains. 

And not for signs in heaven above 

Or earth below they look, 
Who know with John his smile of love, 

With Peter his rebuke. 40 

In joy of inward peace, or sense 

Of sorrow over sin, 
He is his own best evidence, 

His witness is within. 

No fable old, nor mythic lore, 
Nor dream of bards and seers, 

No dead fact stranded on the shore 
Of the oblivious years ; — 

But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 

A present help is He; 50 

And faith has still its Olivet, 
And love its Galilee. 

The healing of his seamless dress 

Is by our beds of pain; 
We touch Him in life's throng and press, 

And we are whole again. 

Through Him the first fond prayers are said 

Our lips of childhood frame, 
The last low whispers of our dead 

Are burdened with his name. 60 

Our Lord and Master of us all ! 

Whate'er our name or sign, 
We own thy sway, we hear thy call, 

We test our lives by thine. 

Thou judgest us; thy purity 

Doth all our lusts condemn; 
The love that draws us nearer Thee 

Is hot with wrath to them. 

Our thoughts lie open to thy sight, 

And, naked to thy glance, 70 

Our secret sins are in the light 
Of thy pure countenance. 

Thy healing pains, a keen distress 

Thy tender light shines in; 
Thy sweetness is the bitterness, 

Thy grace the pang of sin. 

Yet, weak and blinded though we be, 
Thou dost our service own; 



We bring our varying gifts to Thee, 

And Thou rejectest none. 80 

To Thee our full humanity, 

Its joys and pains, belong; 
The wrong of man to man on Thee 

Inflicts a deeper wrong. 

Who hates, hates Thee, who loves becomes 

Therein to Thee allied; 
All sweet accords of hearts and homes 

In Thee are multiplied. 

Deep strike thy roots, O heavenly Vine, 
Within our earthly sod, 90 

Most human and yet most divine, 
The flower of man and God ! 

Love ! O Life ! Our faith and sight 

Thy presence maketh one, 
As through transfigured clouds of white 

We trace the noon-day sun. 

So, to our mortal eyes subdued, 
Flesh-veiled, but not concealed, 

We know in Thee the fatherhood 

And heart of God revealed. 100 

We faintly hear, we dimly see, 

In differing phrase we pray; 
But, dim or clear, we own in Thee 

The Light, the Truth, the Way ! 

The homage that we render Thee 

Is still our Father's own; 
No jealous claim or rivalry 

Divides the Cross and Throne. 

To do thy will is more than praise, 

As words are less than deeds, no 

And simple trust can find thy ways 
We miss with chart of creeds. 

No pride of self thy service hath, 

No place for me and mine; 
Our human strength is weakness, death 

Our life, apart from thine. 

Apart from Thee all gain is loss, 

All labor vainly done; 
The solemn shadow of thy Cross 

Is better than the sun. I2 o 

Alone, O Love ineffable ! 
Thy saving name is given; 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



327 



To turn aside from Thee is hell, 
To walk with Thee is heaven ! 

How vain, secure in all Thou art, 

Our noisy championship ! 
The sighing of the contrite heart 

Is more than flattering lip. 

Not thine the bigot's partial plea, 

Nor thine the zealot's ban; 130 

Thou well canst spare a love of Thee 
Which ends in hate of man. 

Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, 
What may thy service be ? — 

Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, 
But simply following Thee. 

We bring no ghastly holocaust, 

We pile no graven stone; 
He serves Thee best who loveth most 

His brothers and thy own. 140 

Thy litanies, sweet offices 

Of love and gratitude; 
Thy sacramental liturgies 

The joy of doing good. 

In vain shall waves of incense drift 

The vaulted nave around, 
In vain the minster turret lift 

Its brazen weights of sound. 

The heart must ring thy Christmas bells, 
Thy inward altars raise; 150 

Its faith and hope thy canticles, 
And its obedience praise ! 

1866? 

THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 

The harp at Nature's advent strung 

Has never ceased to play; 
The song the stars of morning sung 

Has never died away. 

And prayer is made, and praise is given, 

By all things near and far; 
The ocean looketh up to heaven, 

And mirrors every star. 

Its waves are kneeling on the strand, 
As kneels the human knee, I0 

Their white locks bowing to the sand, 
The priesthood of the sea ! 



They pour their glittering treasures forth, 
Their gifts of pearl they bring, 

And all the listening hills of earth 
Take up the song they sing. 

The green earth sends her incense up 
From many a mountain shrine; 

From folded leaf and dewy cup 

She pours her sacred wine. 20 

The mists above the morning rills 
Rise white as wings of prayer; 

The altar-curtains of the hills 
Are sunset's purple air. 

The winds with hymns of praise are loud, 

Or low with sobs of pain, — 
The thunder-organ of the cloud, 

The dropping tears of rain. 

With drooping head and branches crossed 
The twilight forest grieves, 30 

Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost 
From all its sunlit leaves. 

The blue sky is the temple's arch, 

Its transept earth and air, 
The music of its starry march 

The chorus of a prayer. 

So Nature keeps the reverent frame 

With which her years began, 
And all her signs and voices shame 

The prayerless heart of man. 40 

1867. 



THE MEETING 

The elder folks shook hands at last, 
Down seat by seat the signal passed. 
To simple ways like ours unused, 
Half solemnized and half amused, 
With long-drawn breath and shrug, my 

guest 
His sense of glad relief expressed. 
Outside, the hills lay warm in sun; 
The cattle in the meadow-run 
Stood half -leg deep; a single bird 
The green repose above us stirred. 10 

' What part or lot have you,' he said, 
' In these dull rites of drowsy-head ? 
Is silence worship ? Seek it where 
It soothes with dreams the summer air, 
Not hi this close and rude-benched hall, 



328 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



But where soft lights and shadows fall, 

And all the slow, sleep-walking hours 

Glide soundless over grass and flowers ! 

From time and place and form apart, 

Its holy ground the human heart, 20 

Nor ritual-bound nor templeward 

Walks the free spirit of the Lord ! 

Our common Master did not pen 

His followers up from other men; 

His service liberty indeed, 

He built no church, He framed no creed; 

But while the saintly Pharisee 

Made broader his phylactery, 

As from the synagogue was seen 

The dusty-sandalled Nazarene 30 

Through ripening cornfields lead the way 

Upon the awful Sabbath day, 

His sermons were the healthful talk 

That shorter made the mountain-walk, 

His wayside texts were flowers and birds, 

Where mingled with his gracious words 

The rustle of the tamarisk-tree 

And ripple-wash of Galilee.' 

'Thy words are well, O friend,' I said; 

' Unmeasured and unlimited, 40 

With noiseless slide of stone to stone, 

The mystic Church of God has grown. 

Invisible and silent stands 

The temple never made with hands, 

Unheard the voices still and small 

Of its unseen confessional. 

He needs no special place of prayer 

Whose hearing ear is everywhere; 

He brings not back the childish days 

That ringed the earth with stones of praise, 

Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid 51 

The plinths of Philse's colonnade. 

Still less He owns the selfish good 

And sickly growth of solitude, — 

The worthless grace that, out of sight, 

Flowers in the desert anchorite ; 

Dissevered from the suffering whole, 

Love hath no power to save a soul. 

Not out of Self, the origin 

And native air and soil of sin, 60 

The living waters spring and flow, 

The trees with leaves of healing grow. 

' Dream not, O friend, because I seek 

This quiet shelter twice a week, 

I better deem its pine-laid floor 

Than breezy hill or sea-sung shore; 

But nature is not solitude: 

She crowds us with her thronging wood; 



Her many hands reach out to us, 

Her many tongues are garrulous; 70 

Perpetual riddles of surprise 

She offers to our ears and eyes; 

She will not leave our senses still, 

But drags them captive at her will: 

And, making earth too great for heaven, 

She hides the Giver in the given. 

' And so I find it well to come 

For deeper rest to this still room, 

For here the habit of the soul 

Feels less the outer world's control; So 

The strength of mutual purpose pleads 

More earnestly our common needs; 

And from the silence multiplied 

By these still forms on either side, 

The world that time and sense have known 

Falls off and leaves us God alone. 

' Yet rarely through the charmed repose 

Unmixed the stream of motive flows, 

A flavor of its many springs, 

The tints of earth and sky it brings; ' 90 

In the still waters needs must be 

Some shade of human sympathy; 

And here, in its accustomed place, 

I look on memory's dearest face; 

The blind by-sitter guesseth not 

What shadow haunts* that vacant spot; 

No eyes save mine alone can see 

The love wherewith it welcomes me ! 

And still, with those alone my kin, 

In doubt and weakness, want and sin, 100 

I bow my head, my heart I bare, 

As when that face was living there, 

And strive (too oft, alas ! in vain) 

The peace of simple trust to gain, 

Fold fancy's restless wings, and lay 

The idols of my heart away. 

' Welcome the silence all unbroken, 
Nor less the words of fitness spoken, — 
Such golden words as hers for whom 
Our autumn flowers have just made 

room; no 

Whose hopeful utterance through and 

through 
The freshness of the morning blew; 
Who loved not less the earth that light 
Fell on it from the heavens in sight, 
But saw in all fair forms more fair 
The Eternal beauty mirrored there. 
Whose eighty years but added grace 
And saintlier meaning to her face, — 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



329 



The look of one who bore away 

Glad tidings from the hills of day, 120 

While all our hearts went forth to meet 

The coming of her beautiful feet ! 

Or haply hers, whose pilgrim tread 

Is in the paths where Jesus led ; 

Who dreams her childhood's sabbath dream 

By Jordan's willow-shaded stream, 

And, of the hymns of hope and faith, 

Sung by the monks of Nazareth, 

Hears pious echoes, in the call 

To prayer, from Moslem minarets fall, 130 

Repeating where his works were wrought 

The lesson that her Master taught, 

Of whom an elder Sibyl gave, 

The prophecies of Cumse's cave ! 

' I ask no organ's soulless breath 

To drone the themes of life and death, 

No altar candle-lit by day, 

No ornate wordsman's rhetoric-play, 

No cool philosophy to teach 

Its bland audacities of speech 140 

To double-tasked idolaters 

Themselves their gods and worshippers, 

No pulpit hammered by the fist 

Of loud-asserting dogmatist, 

Who borrows for the Hand of love 

The smoking thunderbolts of Jove. 

I know how well the fathers taught, 

What work the later schoolmen wrought; 

I reverence old-time faith and men, 

But God is near us now as then; 150 

His force of love is still unspent, 

His hate of sin as imminent; 

And still the measure of our needs 

Outgrows the cramping bounds of creeds; 

The manna gathered yesterday 

Already savors of decay; 

Doubts to the world's child-heart unknown 

Question us now from star and stone; 

Too little or too much we know, 

And sight is swift and faith is slow; 160 

The power is lost to self-deceive 

With shallow forms of make-believe. 

We walk at high noon, and the bells 

Call to a thousand oracles, 

But the sound deafens, and the light 

Is stronger than our dazzled sight; 

The letters of the sacred Book 

Glimmer and swim beneath our look; 

Still struggles in the Age's breast 

With deepening agony of quest 170 

The old entreaty : " Art thou He, 

Or look we for the Christ to be ? " 



' God should be most where man is least: 

So, where is neither church nor priest, 

And never rag of form or creed 

To clothe the nakedness of need, — 

Where farmer-folk in silence meet, — 

I turn my bell-unsummoned feet; 

I lay the critic's glass aside, 

I tread upon my lettered pride, 180 

And, lowest-seated, testify 

To the oneness of humanity; 

Confess the universal w^t»t, 

And share whatever Heaven may grant. 

He findeth not who seeks his own, 

The soul is lost that 's saved alone. 

Not on one favored forehead fell 

Of old the fire-tongued miracle, 

But flamed o'er all the thronging host 

The baptism of the Holy Ghost; 190 

Heart answers heart: in one desire 

The blending lines of prayer aspire ; 

" Where, in my name, meet Wo or three," 

Our Lord hath said, " I there will be ! " 

1 So sometimes comes to soul and sense 

The feeling which is evidence 

That very near about us lies 

The realm of spiritual mysteries. 

The sphere of the supernal powers 

Impinges on this world of ours. 200 

The low and dark horizon lifts, 

To light the scenic terror shifts; 

The breath of a diviner air 

Blows down the answer of a prayer: 

That all our sorrow, pain, and doubt 

A great compassion clasps about, 

And law and goodness, love and force, 

Are wedded fast beyond divorce. 

Then duty leaves to love its task, 

The beggar Self forgets to ask; 210 

With smile of trust and folded hands, 

The passive soul in waiting stands 

To feel, as flowers the sun and dew, 

The One true Life its own renew. 



So to the calmly gathered thought 
[ The innermost of truth is taught, 
I The mystery dimly understood, 
That love of God is love of good, 
And, chiefly, its divinest trace 
In Him of Nazareth's holy face; 
iThat to be saved is only this, — 
Salvation from our selfishness, 
(From more than elemental fire, 
The soul's unsanctified desire, 

rom sin itself, and not the pain 



33° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



That warns us of its chafing chain; 

That worship's deeper meaning lies 

In mercy, and not sacrifice, 

Nofproud humilitiesof sense 

And posturing of penitence, 230 

But love's unforced obedience; 

That Book and Church and Day are given 

For man, not God, — for earth, not 

heaven, — 
The blessed means to holiest ends, 
Not masters, but b:nignant friends; 
That the dear Christ dwells not afar, 
The king of some remoter star, 
Listening, at times, with flattered ear 
To homage wrung from selfish fear, 
But here, amidst the poor and blind, 240 
The bound and suffering of our kind, 
In works we do, in prayers we pray, 
Life of ovrrnfe, He lives to-88y.' 

1868. 



AMONG THE HILLS 1 



PRELUDE 

Along the roadside, like the flowers of 

gold 
That tawny Incas for their gardens wrought, 
Heavy with sunshine droops the golden-rod, 
And the red pennons of the cardinal-flowers 
Hang motionless upon their upright staves. 
The sky is hot and hazy, and the wind, 
Wing-weary with its long flight from the 

south, 
'Unfelt; yet, closely scanned, yon maple 

leaf 
With faintest motion, as one stirs in dreams, 
Confesses it. The locust by the wall 10 
Stabs the noon-silence with his sharp alarm. 
A single hay-cart down the dusty road 
Creaks slowly, with its driver fast asleep 
On the load's top. Against the neighbor- 
ing hill, 
Huddled along the stone wall's shady side, 
The sheep show white, as if a snowdrift 
still 
1 The lady of the poem ' Among the Hills ' was purely 
imaginary. I was charmed with the scenery in Tarn- 
worth and West Ossipee, and tried to call attention to 
it in a story. . . . With the long range of the Sandwich 
Mountains and Chocorua on one hand, and the rugged 
masses of Ossipee on the other, it is really one of the 
most picturesque situations in the State. (Whittibr, 
in a letter of May 11, 1881, quoted in Pickard's Life, 
vol. ii, p. 669. See also pp. 536-538.) The poem was at 
first called ' A Summer Idyl,' and planned as a com- 
panion piece to the ' Snow-Bound, a Winter Idyl.' 



Defied the dog-star. Through the open 
door 

A drowsy smell of flowers — gray helio- 
trope, 

And white sweet clover, and shy mignon- 
ette — 

Comes faintly in, and silent chorus lends 20 

To the pervading symphony of peace. 

No time is this for hands long over-worn 
To task their strength: and (unto Him be 

praise 
Who giveth quietness !) the stress and 

strain 
Of years that did the work of centuries 
Have ceased, and we can draw our breath 

once more 
Freely and full. So, as yon harvesters 
Make glad their nooning underneath the 

elms 
With tale and riddle and old snatch of song, 
I lay aside grave themes, and idly turn 30 
The leaves of memory's sketch-book, dream- 
ing o'er 
Old summer pictures of the quiet hills, 
And human life, as quiet, at their feet. 

And yet not idly all. A farmer's son, 
Proud of field-lore and harvest craft, and 

feeling 
All their fine possibilities, how rich 
And restful even poverty and toil 
Become when beauty, harmony, and love 
Sit at their humble hearth as angels sat 
At evening in the patriarch's tent, when 

man 40 

Makes labor noble, and his farmer's frock 
The symbol of a Christian chivalry 
Tender and just and generous to her 
Who clothes with grace all duty; still, I 

know 
Too well the picture has another side, — 
How wearily the grind of toil goes on 
Where love is wanting, how the eye and 

ear 
And heart are starved amidst the plenitude 
Of nature, and how hard and colorless 
Is life without an atmosphere. I look 50 
Across the lapse of half a century, 
And call to mind old homesteads, where no 

flower 
Told that the spring had come, but evil 

weeds, 
Nightshade and rough-leaved burdock in 

the place 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



33i 



Of the sweet doorway greeting of the rose 
And honeysuckle, where the house walls 

seemed 
Blistering in sun, without a tree or vine 
To east the tremulous shadow of its leaves 
Across the curtainless windows, from whose 

panes 
Fluttered the signal rags of shiftlessness. 60 
Within, the cluttered kitchen floor, un- 
washed 
(Broom-clean I think they called it) ; the 

best room 
Stifling with cellar-damp, shut from the air 
In hot midsummer, bookless, pietureless 
Save the inevitable sampler hung 
Over the fireplace, or a mourning piece, 
A green-haired woman, peony-cheeked, be- 
neath 
Impossible willows; the wide-throated 

hearth 
Bristling with faded pine-boughs half con- 
cealing 
The piled-up rubbish at the chimney's 
back; 7 o 

And, in sad keeping with all things about 

them, 
Shrill, querulous women, sour and sullen 

men, 
Untidy, loveless, old before their time, 
With scarce a human interest save their 

own 
Monotonous round of small economies, 
Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood; 
Blind to the beauty everywhere revealed, 
Treading the May-flowers with regardless 

feet; 
For them the song-sparrow and the boboHnk 
Sang not, nor winds made music in the 
leaves ; ■ 80 

For them hi vain October's holocaust 
Burned, gold and crimson, over all the hills, 
The sacramental mystery of the woods. 
Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers, 
But grumbling over pulpit-tax and pew- 
rent, 
Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls 
And winter pork with the least possible 

outlay 
Of salt and sanctity; in daily life 
Showing as little actual comprehension 
Of Christian charity and love and duty go 
As if the Sermon on the Mount had been 
Outdated like a last year's almanac: 
Rich in broad woodlands and in half-tilled 
fields, 



And yet so pinched and bare and comfort- 
less, 
The veriest straggler limping on his rounds, 
The sun and air his sole inheritance, 
Laughed at a poverty that paid its taxes, 
And hugged his rags in self-complacency ! 

Not such should be the homesteads of a land 
Where whoso wisely wills and acts may 

dwell 100 

As king and lawgiver, in broad-acred state, 
With beauty, art, taste, culture, books, to 

make 
His hour of leisure richer than a life 
Of fourscore to the barons of old time. 
Our yeoman shoidd be equal to his home 
Set in the fair, green valleys, purple walled, 
A man to match his mountains, not to creep 
Dwarfed and abased below them. I would 

fain 
In this light way (of which I needs must 

own 
With the knife-grinder of whom Canning 

sings, no 

1 Story, God bless you ! I have none to tell 

you ! ') 
Invite the eye to see and heart to feel 
The beauty and the joy within their reach, — 
Home, and home loves, and the beatitudes 
Of nature free to all. Haply in years 
That wait to take the places of our own, 
Heard where some breezy balcony looks 

down 
On happy homes, or where the lake in the 

moon 
Sleeps dreaming of the mountains, fair as 

Ruth, 
In the old Hebrew pastoral, at the feet 120 
Of Boaz, even this simple lay of mine 
May seem the burden of a prophecy, 
Finding its late fulfilment in a change 
Slow as the oak's growth, lifting manhood up 
Through broader culture, finer manners, 

love, 
And reverence, to the level of the hills. 

O Golden Age whose light is of the dawn, 
And not of sunset, forward, not behind, 
Flood the new heavens and earth, and with 

thee bring 
All the old virtues, whatsoever things 130 
Are pure and honest and of good repute, 
But add thereto whatever bard has sung 
Or seer has told of when in trance and dream 
They saw the Happy Isles of prophecy ! 



33 2 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Let Justice hold her scale, and Truth divide 
Between the right and wrong; but give the 

heart 
The freedom of its fair inheritance ; 
Let the poor prisoner, cramped and starved 

so long, 
At Nature's table feast his ear and eye 
With joy and wonder; let all harmonies 140 
Of sound, form, color, motion, wait upon 
The princely guest, whether in soft attire 
Of leisure clad, or the coarse frock of toil, 
And, lending life to the dead form of faith, 
Give human nature reverence for the sake 
Of One who bore it, making it divine 
With the ineffable tenderness of God; 
Let common need, the brotherhood of 

prayer, 
The heirship of an unknown destiny, i 49 
The unsolved mystery round about us, make 
A man more precious than the gold of Ophir. 
Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things 
Should minister, as outward types and signs 
Of the eternal beauty which fulfils 
The one great purpose of creation, Love, 
The sole necessity of Earth and Heaven ! 



For weeks the clouds had raked the hills 
And vexed the vales with raining, 

And all the woods were sad with mist, 
And all the brooks complaining. 160 

At last, a sudden night-storm tore 

The mountain veils asunder, 
And swept the valleys clean before 

The besom of the thunder. 

Through Sandwich notch the west-wind 
sang 

Good morrow to the cotter; 
And once again Chocorua's horn 

Of shadow pierced the water. 

Above his broad lake, Ossipee, 

Once more the sunshine wearing, 170 

Stooped, tracing on that silver shield 

His grim armorial bearing. 

Clear drawn against the hard blue sky, 
The peaks had winter's keenness; 

And, close on autumn's frost, the vales 
Had more than June's fresh greenness. 

Again the sodden forest floors 

With golden lights were checkered, 



Once more rejoicing leaves in wind 

And sunshine danced and flickered. 180 

It was as if the summer's late 

Atoning for its sadness 
Had borrowed every season's charm 

To end its days in gladness. 

I call to mind those banded vales 

Of shadow and of shining, 
Through which, my hostess at my side, 

I drove in day's declining. 

We held our sidelong way above 

The river's whitening shallows, 190 

By homesteads old, with wide-flung barns 
Swept through and through by swallows ; 

By maple orchards, belts of pine 

And larches climbing darkly 
The mountain slopes, and, over all, 

The great peaks rising starkly. 

You should have seen that long hill-range 
With gaps of brightness riven, — 

How through each pass and hollow streamed 
The purpling lights of heaven, — 200 

Rivers of gold-mist flowing down 
From far celestial fountains, — 

The great sun flaming through the rifts 
Beyond the wall of mountains ! 

We paused at last where home-bound cows 
Brought down the pasture's treasure, 

And in the barn the rhythmic flails 
Beat out a harvest measure. 

We heard the night-hawk's sullen plunge, 
The crow his tree-mates calling: 210 

The shadows lengthening down the slopes 
About our feet were falling. 

And through them smote the level sun 

In broken lines of splendor, 
Touched the gray rocks and made the green 

Of the shorn grass more tender. 

The maples bending o'er the gate, 
Their arch of leaves just tinted 

With yellow warmth, the golden glow 
Of coming autumn hinted. 220 

Keen white between the farm-house showed, 
And smiled on porch and trellis 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



333 



The fair democracy of flowers 
That equals cot and palace. 

And weaving garlands for her dog, 

'Twixt chidings and caresses, 
A human flower of childhood shook 

The sunshine from her tresses. 

On either hand we saw the signs 

Of fancy and of shrewdness, 230 

Where taste had wound its arms of vines 
Round thrift's uncomely rudeness. 

The sun-brown farmer in his frock 
Shook hands, and called to Mary: 

Bare-armed, as Juno might, she came, 
White-aproned from her dairy. 

Her air, her smile, her motions, told 

Of womanly completeness; 
A music as of household songs 

Was in her voice of sweetness. 240 

Not fair alone in curve and line, 
But something more and better, 

The secret charm eluding art, 
Its spirit, not its letter; — 

An inborn grace that nothing lacked 

Of culture or appliance, — 
The warmth of genial courtesy, 

The calm of self-reliance. 



250 



Before her queenly womanhood 

How dared our hostess utter 
The paltry errand of her need 

To buy her fresh-churned butter ? 

She led the way with housewife pride, 

Her goodly store disclosing, 
Full tenderly the golden balls 

With practised hands disposing. 

Then, while along the western hills 
We watched the changeful glory 

Of sunset, on our homeward way, 

I heard her simple story. 260 

The early cricket's sang; the stream 
Plashed through my friend's narration: 

Her rustic patois of the hills 
Lost in my free translation. 

' More wise,' she said, ' than those who swarm 
Our hills in middle summer, 



She came, when June's first roses blow, 
To greet the early comer. 

' From school and ball and rout she came, 
The city's fair, pale daughter, 270 

To drink the wine of mountain air 
Beside the Bearcamp Water. 

' Her step grew firmer on the hills 
That watch our homesteads over; 

On cheek and lip, from summer fields, 
She caught the bloom of clover. 

' For health comes sparkling in the streams 

From cool Chocorua stealing: 
There 's iron in our northern winds ; 

Our pines are trees of healing. 2S0 

■ She sat beneath the broad-armed elms 
That skirt the mowing meadow, 

And watched the gentle west-wind weave 
The grass with shine and shadow. 

• Beside her, from the summer heat 
To share her grateful screening, 

With forehead bared, the farmer stood, 
Upon his pitchfork leaning. 

' Framed in its damp, dark locks, his face 
Had nothing mean or common, — 290 

Strong, manly, true, the tenderness 
And pride beloved of woman. 

' She looked up, glowing with the health 
The country air had brought her, 

And, laughing, said: "You lack a wife, 
Your mother lacks a daughter. 

' " To mend your frock and bake your bread 

You do not need a lady: 
Be sure among these brown old homes 

Is some one waiting ready, — 300 

' " Some fair, sweet girl with skilful hand 
And cheerful heart for treasure, 

Who never played with ivory keys, 
Or danced the polka's measure." 

' He bent his black brows to a frown, 

He set his white teeth tightly. 
" 'T is well," he said, " for one like you 

To choose for me so lightly. 

' " You think because my life is rude 

I take no note of sweetness: 310 



334 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



I tell you love has naught to do 
With meetness or unmeetness. 

' " Itself its best excuse, it asks 

No leave of pride or fashion 
When silken zone or homespun frock 

It stirs with throbs of passion. 

'"You think me deaf and blind: you bring 

Your winning graces hither 
As free as if from cradle-time 

We two had played together. 320 

' " You tempt me with your laughing eyes, 
Your cheek of sundown's blushes, 

A motion as of waving grain, 
A music as of thrushes. 

' " The plaything of your summer sport, 
The spells you weave around me 

You cannot at your will undo, 
Nor leave me as you found me. 

' " You go as lightly as you came, 

Your life is well without me; 330 

What care you that these hills will close 
Like prison-walls about me ? 

' " No mood is mine to seek a wife, 

Or daughter for my mother: 
Who loves you loses in that love 

All power to love another ! 

' " I dare your pity or your scorn, 
With pride your own exceeding; 

I fling my heart into your lap 

Without a word of pleading." 340 

' She looked up in his face of pain 

So archly, yet so tender: 
" And if I lend you mine," she said, 

" Will you forgive the lender ? 

' " Nor frock nor tan can hide the man; 

And see you not, my farmer, 
How weak and fond a woman waits 

Behind the silken armor ? 



' " I love you: on that love alone, 
And not my worth, presuming, 

Will you not trust for summer fruit 
The tree in May-day blooming ? " 

' Alone the hangbird overhead, 
His hair-swung cradle straining, 



35° 



Looked down to see love's miracle, — 
The giving that is gaining. 

* And so the farmer found a wife, 

His mother found a daughter: 
There looks no happier home than hers 
On pleasant Bearcamp Water. 3 6o 

• Flowers spring to blossom where she walks 

The careful ways of duty; 
Our hard, stiff lines of life with her 
Are flowing curves of beauty. 

' Our homes are cheerier for her sake, 
Our door-yards brighter blooming, 

And all about the social air 
Is sweeter for her coming. 

' Unspoken homilies of peace 

Her daily life is preaching; 3 70 

The still refreshment of the dew 

Is her unconscious teaching. 

' And never tenderer hand than hers 

Unknits the brow of ailing; 
Her garments to the sick man's ear 

Have music in their trailing. 

' And when, in pleasant harvest moons, 

The youthful huskers gather, 
Or sleigh-drives on the mountain ways 

Defy the whiter weather, — 3 so 

' In sugar-camps, when south and warm 
The winds of March are blowing, 

And sweetly from its thawing veins 
The maple's blood is flowing, — 

' In summer, where some lilied pond 

Its virgin zone is baring, 
Or where the ruddy autumn fire 

Lights up the apple-paring, — 

' The coarseness of a ruder time 

Her finer mirth displaces, 3go 

A subtler sense of pleasure fills 

Each rustic sport she graces. 

' Her presence lends its warmth and health 

To all who come before it. 
If woman lost us Eden, such 

As she alone restore it. 

' For larger life and wiser aims 
The farmer is her debtor; 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



335 



Who holds to his another's heart 

Must needs be worse or better. 4 oo 

c Through her his civic service shows 

A purer-toned ambition; 
No double consciousness divides 

The man and politician. 

' In party's doubtful ways he trusts 

Her instincts to determine; 
At the loud polls, the thought of her 

Recalls Christ's Mountain Sermon. 

' He owns her logic of the heart, 

And wisdom of unreason, 410 

Supplying, while he doubts and weighs, 
The needed word in season. 

' He sees with pride her richer thought, 

Her fancy's freer ranges; 
And love thus deepened to respect 

Is proof against all changes. 

' And if she walks at ease in ways 

His feet are slow to travel, 
And if she reads with cultured eyes 

What his may scarce unravel, 420 

' Still clearer, for her keener sight 

Of beauty and of wonder, 
He learns the meaning of the hills 

He dwelt from childhood under. 

' And higher, warmed with summer lights, 

Or whiter-crowned and hoary, 
The ridged horizon lifts for him 

Its inner veils of glory. 

• He has his own free, bookless lore, 

The lessons nature taught him, 430 

The wisdom which the woods and hills 
And toiling men have brought him : 

' The steady force of will whereby 
Her flexile grace seems sweeter; 

The sturdy counterpoise which makes 
Her woman's life completer; 

' A latent fire of soul which lacks 

No breath of love to fan it; 
And wit, that, like his native brooks, 

Plays over solid granite. 440 

' How dwarfed against his manliness 
She sees the poor pretension, 



The wants, the aims, the follies, born 
Of fashion and convention ! 

' How life behind its accidents 

Stands strong and self-sustaining, 

The human fact transcending all 
The losing and the gaining. 

' And so in grateful interchange 

Of teacher and of hearer, 450 

Their lives their true distinctness keep 

While daily drawing nearer. 

' And if the husband or the wife 
In home's strong light discovers 

Such slight defaults as failed to meet 
The blinded eyes of lovers, 

' Why need we care to ask ? — who dreams 

Without their thorns of roses, 
Or wonders that the truest steel 

The readiest spark discloses ? 460 

' For still in mutual sufferance lies 

The secret of true living; 
Love scarce is love that never knows 

The sweetness of forgiving. 

' We send the Squire to General Court, 
He takes his young wife thither; 

No prouder man election day 

Rides through the sweet June weather. 

1 He sees with eyes of manly trust 

All hearts to her inclining; 470 

Not less for him his household light 
That others share its shining.' 

Thus, while my hostess spake, there grew 

Before me, warmer tinted 
And outlined with a tenderer grace, 

The picture that she hinted. 

The sunset smouldered as we drove 
Beneath the deep hill-shadows. 

Below us wreaths of white fog walked 
Like ghosts the haunted meadows. 480 

Sounding the summer night, the stars 
Dropped down their golden plummets; 

The pale arc of the Northern lights 
Rose o'er the mountain summits, 

Until, at last, beneath its bridge, 
We heard the Bearcamp flowing, 



336 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And saw across the mapled lawn 
The welcome home-lights glowing. 

And, musing on the tale I heard, 

'T were well, thought I, if often 490 

To rugged farm-life came the gift 
To harmonize and soften; 

If more and more we found the troth 

Of fact and fancy plighted, 
And culture's charm and labor's strength 

In rural homes united, — 

The simple life, the homely hearth, 
With beauty's sphere surrounding, 

And blessing toil where toil abounds 

With graces more abounding. 500 

1867-1868. 1868. 



MARGUERITE * 

The robins sang in the orchard, the buds 

into blossoms grew; 
Little of human sorrow the buds and the 

robins knew ! 

Sick, in an alien household, the poor French 

neutral lay; 
Into her lonesome garret fell the light of 

the April day, 

Through the dusty window, curtained by 
the spider's warp and woof, 

On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken 
ribs of roof, 

The bedquilt's faded patchwork, the tea- 
cups on the stand, 

The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped 
from her sick hand ! 

What to her was the song of the robin, or 
warm morning light, 

As she lay in the trance of the dying, heed- 
less of sound or sight ? 10 

1 See the note on Longfellow's ' Evangeline,' p. 121. 
Whittier wrote to Mrs. Fields in November, 1870 : ' You 
know that a thousand of the Acadians were distributed 
among the towns of Massachusetts, where they were 
mostly treated as paupers.' In the letter already 
quoted in the note on Evangeline, he says : ' The chil- 
dren were bound out to the families in the localities in 
which they resided; and I wrote a poem upon finding, in 
the records of Haverhill, the indenture that bound an 
Acadian girl as a servant in one of the families of that 
neighborhood. Gathering the story of her death, I wrote 
" Marguerite." ' 



Done was the work of her hands, she had 

eaten her bitter bread; 
The world of the alien people lay behind 

her dim and dead. 

But her soul went back to its child-time ; 

she saw the sun o'erflow 
With gold the Basin of Minas, and set over 

Gaspereau; 

The low, bare flats at ebb-tide, the rush of 

the sea at flood, 
Through inlet and creek and river, from 

dike to upland wood; 

The gulls in the red of morning, the fish- 
hawk's rise and fall, 

The drift of the fog in moonshine, over the 
dark coast-wall. 

She saw the face of her mother, she heard 

the song she sang; 
And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for 

vespers rang ! 20 

By her bed the hard-faced mistress sat, 
smoothing the wrinkled sheet, 

Peering into the face, so helpless, and feel- 
ing the ice-cold feet. 

With a vague remorse atoning for her greed 

and long abuse, 
By care no longer heeded and pity too late 

for use. 

Up the stairs of the garret softly the son of 

the mistress stepped, 
Leaned over the head-board, covering his 

face with his hands, and wept. 

Outspake the mother, who watched him 
sharply, with brow a-frown: 

' What ! love you the Papist, the beggar, 
the charge of the town ? ' 

' Be she Papist or beggar who lies here, I 

know and God knows 
I love her, and fain would go with her 

wherever she goes ! 30 

' O mother ! that sweet face came pleading, 

for love so athirst. 
You saw but the town-charge; I knew her 

God's angel at first.' 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



337 



Shaking her gray head, the mistress hushed 

down a bitter cry; 
And awed by the silence and shadow of 

death drawing nigh, 

She murmured a psalm of the Bible ; but 
closer the young girl pressed, 

With the last of her life in her lingers, the 
cross to her breast. 

' My son, come away,' cried the mother, 

her voice cruel grown. 
' She is joined to her idols, like Ephraim ; 

let her alone ! ' 

But he knelt with his hand on her forehead, 
his lips to her ear, 

And he called back the soul that was pass- 
ing: 'Marguerite, do you hear ? ' 4 o 

She paused on the threshold of heaven; 

love, pity, surprise, 
Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the 

cloud of her eyes. 

With his heart on his lips he kissed her, 
but never her cheek grew red, 

And the words the living long for he spake 
in the ear of the dead. 

And the robins sang in the orchard, where 

buds to blossoms grew; 
Of the folded hands and the still face never 

the robins knew ! 
1869. 1871. 

IN SCHOOL-DAYS 1 

Still sits the school-house by the road, 

A ragged beggar sleeping; 
Around it still the sumachs grow, 

And blackberry-vines are creeping. 

Within, the master's desk is seen, 
Deep scarred by raps official; 

The warping floor, the battered seats, 
The jack-knife's carved initial; 

The charcoal frescoes on its wall; 

Its door's worn sill, betraying io 

1 See Pickard's Whitlier-Land, pp. 32,33. For Long- 
fellow's comment on the poem, see Samuel Longfellow's 
Life of H. W. Longfellow, vol. iii, p. 287; and for 
Holmes's, Packard's Life of Whittier, vol. ii, pp. 641, 642. 
' You helve written,' said Holmes to Whittier, ' the most 
beautiful school-boy poem in the English language.' 



The feet that, creeping slow to school, 
Went storming out to playing ! 

Long years ago a winter sun 

Shone over it at setting; 
Lit up its western window-panes, 

And low eaves' icy fretting. 

It touched the tangled golden curls, 
And brown eyes full of grieving, 

Of one who still her steps delayed 

When all the school were leaving. 20 

For near her stood the little boy 

Her childish favor singled: 
His cap pulled low upon a face 

Where pride and shame were mingled. 

Pushing with restless feet the snow 
To right and left, he lingered; — 

As restlessly her tiny hands 

The blue-checked apron fingered. 

He saw her lift her eyes; he felt 

The soft hand's light caressing, 30 

And heard the tremble of her voice, 
As if a fault confessing. 

' I 'm sorry that I spelt the word: 

I hate to go above you, 
Because,' — the brown eyes lower fell, — 

' Because, you see, I love you ! ' 

Still memory to a gray-haired man 
That sweet child-face is showing. 

Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave 

Have forty years been growing ! 40 

He lives to learn, in life's hard school, 

How few who pass above him 
Lament their triumph and his loss, 

Like her, — because they love him. 
1869. 1870. 

MY TRIUMPH 

The autumn-time has come; 
On woods that dream of bloom, 
And over purpling vines 
The low sun fainter shines. 

The aster-flower is failing, 
The hazel's gold is paling; 
Yet overhead more near 
The eternal stars appear ! 



338 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And present gratitude 


A dream of man and woman 


Insures the future's good, 10 


Diviner but still human, 


And for the things I see, 


Solving the riddle old, 


I trust the things to be; 


Shaping the Age of Gold ! 


That in the paths untrod, 


The love of God and neighbor; 


And the long days of God, 


An equal-handed labor; 


My feet shall still be led, 


The richer life, where beauty 


My heart be comforted. 


Walks hand in hand with duty. 60 


living friends who love me ! 


Ring, bells in unreared steeples, 


dear ones gone above me ! 


The joy of unborn peoples ! 


Careless of other fame, 


Sound, trumpets far off blown, 


I leave to you my name. 20 


Your triumph is my own ! 


Hide it from idle praises, 


Parcel and part of all, 


Save it from evil phrases: 


I keep the festival, 


Why, when dear lips that spake it 


Fore-reach the good to be, 


Are dumb, should strangers wake 
it? 


And share the victory. 


I feel the earth move sunward, 


Let the thick curtain fall; 


I join the great march onward, 70 


I better know than all 


And take, by faith, while living, 


How little I have gained, 


My freehold of thanksgiving. 


How vast the unattained. 


1870? 


Not by the page word-painted 


MY BIRTHDAY 


Let life be banned or sainted: 30 




Deeper than written scroll 


Beneath the moonlight and the snow 


The colors of the soul. 


Lies dead my latest year; 




The winter winds are wailing low 


Sweeter than any sung 


Its dirges in my ear. 


My songs that found no tongue; 




Nobler than any fact 


I grieve not with the moaning wind 


My wish that failed of act. 


As if a loss befell; 




Before me, even as behind, 


Others shall sing the song, 


God is, and all is well ! 


Others shall right the wrong, — 




Finish what I begin, 


His light shines on me from above, 


And all I fail of win. 40 


His low voice speaks within, — 10 




The patience of immortal love 


What matter, I or they ? 


Outwearying mortal sin. 


Mine or another's day, 




So the right word be said 


Not mindless of the growing years 


And life the sweeter made ? 


Of care and loss and pain, 




My eyes are wet with thankful tears 


Hail to the coming singers ! 


For blessings which remain. 


Hail to the brave light-bringers ! 




Forward I reach and share 


If dim the gold of life has grown, 


All that they sing and dare. 


I will not count it dross, 




Nor turn from treasures still my own 


The airs of heaven blow o'er me; 


To sigh for lack and loss. 20 


A glory shines before me 50 




Of what mankind shall be, — 


The years no charm from Nature take; 


Pure, generous, brave, and free. 


As sweet her voices call, 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



339 



As beautiful her mornings break, 
As fair her evenings fall. 

Love watches o'er my quiet ways, 

Kind voices speak my name, 
And lips that find it hard to praise 

Are slow, at least, to blame. 

How softly ebb the tides of will ! 

How fields, once lost or won, 30 

Now lie behind me green and still 

Beneath a level sun ! 

How hushed the hiss of party hate, 

The clamor of the throng ! 
How old, harsh voices of debate 

Flow into rhythmic song ! 

Methinks the spirit's temper grows 

Too soft in this still air; 
Somewhat the restful heart foregoes 

Of needed watch and prayer. 40 

The bark by tempest vainly tossed 

May founder in the calm, 
And he who braved the polar frost 

Faint by the isles of balm. 

Better than self-indulgent years 

The outflung heart of youth, 
Than pleasant songs in idle ears 

The tumult of the truth. 

Rest for the weary hands is good, 

And love for hearts that pine, S o 

But let the manly habitude 
Of upright souls be mine. 

Let winds that blow from heaven re- 
fresh, 

Dear Lord, the languid air; 
And let the weakness of the flesh 

Thy strength of spirit share. 

And, if the eye must fail of light, 

The ear forget to hear, 
Make clearer still the spirit's sight, 

More fine the inward ear ! 60 

Be near me in mine hours of need 

To soothe, or cheer, or warn, 
And down these slopes of sunset lead 

As up the hills of morn ! 

1871. 



THE SISTERS 

Annie and Rhoda, sisters twain, 
Woke in the night to the sound of rain, 

The rush of wind, the ramp and roar 
Of great waves climbing a rocky shore. 

Annie rose up in her bed-gown white, 
And looked out into the storm and night. 

' Hush, and hearken ! ' she cried in fear, 
' Hearest thou nothing, sister dear ? ' 

' I hear the sea, and the plash of rain, 
And roar of the northeast hurricane. 10 

' Get thee back to the bed so warm, 
No good comes of watching a storm. 

' What is it to thee, I fain would know, 
That waves are roaring and wild winds 
blow? 

1 No lover of thine 's afloat to miss 
The harbor-lights on a night like this.' 

' But I heard a voice cry out my name, 
Up from the sea on the wind it came ! 

' Twice and thrice have I heard it call, 
And the voice is the voice of Estwick 
Hall ! ' 20 

On her pillow the sister tossed her head. 
' Hall of the Heron is safe,' she said. 

' In the tautest schooner that ever swam 
He rides at anchor in Annisquam. 

' And, if in peril from swamping sea 

Or lee shore rocks, would he call on thee ? ' 

But the girl heard only the wind and tide, 
And wringing her small white hands she 
cried: 

' O sister Rhoda, there 's something wrong; 
I hear it again, so loud and long. 30 

• " Annie ! Annie ! " I hear it call, 

And the voice is the voice of Estwick Hall ! ' 

Up sprang the elder, with eyes aflame, 
1 Thou liest ! He never would call thy name ! 



34° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



' If he did, I would pray the wind and sea 
To keep him forever from thee and me ! ' 

Then out of the sea blew a dreadful blast; 
Like the cry of a dying man it passed. 

The young girl hushed on her lips a groan, 

But through her tears a strange light 

shone, — 40 

The solemn joy of her heart's release 
To own and cherish its love in peace. 

' Dearest ! ' she whispered, under breath, 
' Life was a lie, but true is death. 

' The love I hid from myself away 
Shall crown me now in the light of day. 

' My ears shall never to wooer list, 
Never by lover my lips be kissed. 

' Sacred to thee am I henceforth, 

Thou in heaven and I on earth ! ' 50 

She came and stood by her sister's bed: 
' Hall of the Heron is dead ! ' she said. 

' The wind and the waves their work have 

done, 
We shall see him no more beneath the sun. 

' Little will reck that heart of thine ; 
It loved him not with a love like mine. 

' I, for his sake, were he but here, 
Could hem and 'broider thy bridal gear, 

'Though hands should tremble and eyes 

be wet, 
And stitch for stitch in my heart be set. 60 



' But now my soul with his soul I wed; 
Thine the living, and mine the dead ! ' 



1871. 



THE THREE BELLS 



Beneath the low-hung night cloud 
That raked her splintering mast 

The good ship settled slowly, 
The cruel leak gained fast. 

Over the awful ocean 
Her signal guns pealed out. 



Dear God ! was that thy answer 
From the horror round about ? 

A voice came down the wild wind, 

' Ho ! ship ahoy ! ' its cry: 10 

' Our stout Three Bells of Glasgow 
ShaU lay till daylight by ! ' 

Hour after hour crept slowly, 

Yet on the heaving swells 
Tossed up and down the ship-lights, 

The lights of the Three Bells ! 

And ship to ship made signals, 

Man answered back to man, 
While oft, to cheer and hearten, 

The Three Bells nearer ran; 20 

And the captain from her taffrail 

Sent down his hopeful cry: 
' Take heart ! Hold on ! ' he shouted ! 

' The Three Bells shall lay by ! ' 

All night across the waters 
The tossing lights shone clear; 

All night from reeling taffrail 
The Three Bells sent her cheer. 

And when the dreary watches 

Of storm and darkness passed, 30 

Just as the wreck lurched under, 

All souls were saved at last. 

Sail on, Three Bells, forever, 

In grateful memory sail ! 
Ring on, Three Bells of rescue, 

Above the wave and gale ! 

Type of the Love eternal, 

Repeat the Master's cry, 
As tossing through our darkness 

The lights of God draw nigh ! 40 

1872. 



CONDUCTOR BRADLEY 1 

Conductor Bradley (always may his 

name 
Be said with reverence !), as the swift doom 

came, 
Smitten to death, a crushed and mangled 

frame, 

1 A railway conductor who lost hia life in an accident 
on a Connecticut railway, May 9, 1873. (Whtttieb.) 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



34i 



Sank, with the brake he grasped just where 

he stood 
To do the utmost that a brave man could, 
And die, if needful, as a true man should. 

Men stooped above him; women dropped 

their tears 
On that poor wreck beyond all hopes or 

fears, 
Lost in the strength and glory of his years. 

"What heard they ? Lo ! the ghastly lips 
of pain, 10 

Dead to all thought save duty's, moved 
again: 

' Put out the signals for the other train ! ' 

No nobler utterance since the world be- 
gan 
From lips of saint or martyr ever ran, 
Electric, through the sympathies of man. 

Ah me ! how poor and noteless seem to 
this 

The sick-bed dramas of self-conscious- 
ness, 

Our sensual fears of pain and hopes of 
bliss ! 

Oh, grand, supreme endeavor ! Not in 

vain 
That last brave act of failing tongue and 

brain ! 20 

Freighted with life the downward rushing 

train, 

Following the wrecked one, as wave follows 

wave, 
Obeyed the warning which the dead lips 

gave. 
Others he saved, himself he could not 

save. 

Nay, the lost life was saved. He is not 

dead 
Who in his record still the earth shall 

tread 
With God's clear aureole shining round 

his head. 

We bow as in the dust, with all our pride 
Of virtue dwarfed the noble deed beside. 
God give us grace to live as Bradley 
died ! 30 

1873. 1873. 



A MYSTERY 1 

The river hemmed with leaning trees 
Wound through its meadows green; 

A low, blue line of mountains showed 
The open pines between. 

One sharp, tall peak above them all 

Clear into sunlight sprang: 
I saw the river of my dreams, 

The mountains that I sang ! 

No clew of memory led me on, 

But well the ways I knew; n 

A feeling of familiar things 
With every footstep grew. 

Not otherwise above its crag 
Could lean the blasted pine ; 

Not otherwise the maple hold 
Aloft its red ensign. 

So up the long and shorn foot-hills 
The mountain road should creep; 

So, green and low, the meadow fold 
Its red-haired kine asleep. 2< 

The river wound as it should wind; 

Their place the mountains took; 
The white torn fringes of their clouds 

Wore no unwonted look. 

Yet ne'er before that river's rim 
Was pressed by feet of mine, 

Never before mine eyes had crossed 
That broken mountain line. 

A presence, strange at once and known, 
Walked with me as my guide ; 3 < 

The skirts of some forgotten life 
Trailed noiseless at my side. 

Was it a dim-remembered dream ? 

Or glimpse through seons old ? 
The secret which the mountains kept 

The river never told. 

But from the vision ere it passed 

A tender hope I drew, 
And, pleasant as a dawn of spring, 

The thought within me grew, 4 < 

That love would temper every change, 
And soften all surprise, 
1 Compare Lowell's ' In the Twilight.' 



342 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And, misty with the dreams of earth, 
The hills of Heaven arise. 

1873. 



THE PRAYER OF AGASSIZ 1 

On the isle of Penikese, 

Ringed about by sapphire seas, 

Fanned by breezes salt and cool, 

Stood the Master with his school. 

Over sails that not in vain 

"Wooed the west-wind's steady strain, 

Line of coast that low and far 

Stretched its undulating bar, 

Wings aslant across the rim 

Of the waves they stooped to skim, to 

Rock and isle and glistening bay, 

Fell the beautiful white day. 

Said the Master to the youth: 
' We have come in search of truth, 
Trying with uncertain key 
Door by door of mystery; 
We are reaching, through his laws, 
To the garment-hem of Cause, 
' Him, the endless, unbegun, 
The Unnamable, the One 20 

Light of all our light the Source, 
Life of life, and Force of force. 

As with fingers of the blind, 

We are groping here to find 

What the hieroglyphics mean 

Of the Unseen in the seen, 

What the Thought which underlies 

Nature's masking and disguise, 

What it is that hides beneath 

Blight and bloom and birth and death. 30 

By past efforts unavailing, 

Doubt and error, loss and failing, 

Of our weakness made aware, 

1 The island of Penikese in Buzzard's Bay was given by 
Mr. John Anderson to Agassiz for the uses of a summer 
school of natural history. A large barn was cleared 
and improvised as a lecture-room. Here, on the first 
morning of the school, all the company was gathered. 
' Agassiz had arranged no programme of exercises,' 
says Mrs. Agassiz, in Louis Agassiz; his Life and Cor- 
respondence, 'trusting to the interest of the occasion 
to suggest what might best be said or done. But, as he 
looked upon his pupils gathered there to study nature 
with him, by an impulse as natural as it was unpre- 
meditated, he called upon them to join in silently ask- 
ing God's blessing on their work together. The pause 
was broken by the first words of an address no less 
fervent than its unspoken prelude.' This was in the 
summer of 1873, and Agassiz died the December fol- 
lowing. (Whittier.) 



On the threshold of our task 
Let us light and guidance ask, 
Let us pause in silent prayer ! ' 

Then the Master in his place 

Bowed his head a little space, 

And the leaves by soft airs stirred, 

Lapse of wave and cry of bird, 40 

Left the solemn hush unbroken 

Of that wordless prayer unspoken, 

While its wish, on earth unsaid, 

Rose to heaven interpreted. 

As, in life's best hours, we hear 

By the spirit's finer ear 

His low voice within us, thus 

The All- Father heareth us; 

And his holy ear we pain 

With our noisy words and vain. 50 

Not for Him our violence 

Storming at the gates of sense, 

His the primal language, his 

The eternal silences ! 

Even the careless heart was moved, 

And the doubting gave assent, 

With a gesture reverent, 

To the Master well-beloved. 

As thin mists are glorified 

By the light they cannot hide, 60 

All who gazed upon him saw, 

Through its veil of tender awe, 

How his face was still uplit 

By the old sweet look of it, 

Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer, 

And the love that casts out fear. 

Who the secret may declare 

Of that brief, unuttered prayer ? 

Did the shade before him come 

Of th' inevitable doom, ?0 

Of the end of earth so near, 

And Eternity's new year ? 

In the lap of sheltering seas 

Rests the isle of Penikese ; 

But the lord of the domain 

Comes not to his own again: 

Where the eyes that follow fail, 

On a vaster sea his sail 

Drifts beyond our beck and hail. 

Other lips within its bound 80 

Shall the laws of life expoimd; 

Other eyes from rock and shell 

Read the world's old riddles well: 

But when breezes light and bland 

Blow from Summer's blossomed land, 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



343 



When the air is glad with wings, 
And the blithe song-sparrow sings, 
Many an eye with his still face 
Shall the living ones displace, 
Many an ear the word shall seek 
He alone could fitly speak. 
And one name forevermore 
Shall be uttered o'er and o'er 
By the waves that kiss the shore, 
By the curlew's whistle sent 
Down the cool, sea-scented air; 
In all voices known to her, 
Nature owns her worshipper, 
Half in triumph, half lament. 
Thither Love shall tearful turn, 
Friendship pause uncovered there, 
And the wisest reverence learn 
From the Master's silent prayer. 
1874. 



A SEA DREAM 1 

We saw the slow tides go and come, 
The curving surf-lines lightly drawn, 

The gray rocks touched with tender 
bloom 
Beneath the fresh-blown rose of dawn. 

We saw in richer sunsets lost 

The sombre pomp of showery noons; 

And signalled spectral sails that crossed 
The weird, low light of rising moons. 

On stormy eves from cliff and head 
We saw the white spray tossed and 
spurned; 10 

While over all, in gold and red, 

Its face of fire the lighthouse turned. 

The rail-car brought its daily crowds, 

Half curious, half indifferent, 
Like passing sails or floating clouds, 

We saw them as they came and went. 

But, one calm morning, as we lay 
And watched the mirage-lifted wall 

Of coast, across the dreamy bay, 

And heard afar the curlew call, 20 

And nearer voices, wild or tame, 
Of airy flock and childish throng, 

Up from the water's edge there came 
Faint snatches of familiar song. 
1 See Pickard's Whiltier-Land, pp. 67-72. 



Careless we heard the singer's choice 
Of old and common airs; at last 

The tender pathos of his voice 
In one low chanson held us fast. 

A song that mingled joy and pain, 

And memories old and sadly sweet; 30 

While, timing to its minor strain, 
The waves in lapsing cadence beat. 



The waves are glad in breeze and sun; 

The rocks are fringed with foam; 
I walk once more a haunted shore, 

A stranger, yet at home, 

A land of dreams I roam. 

Is this the wind, the soft sea-wind 
That stirred thy locks of brown ? 

Are these the rocks whose mosses knew 
The trail of thy light gown, 41 

Where boy and girl sat down ? 

I see the gray fort's broken wall, 
The boats that rock below; 

And, out at sea, the passing sails 
We saw so long ago 
Rose-red in morning's glow. 

The freshness of the early time 

On every breeze is blown; 
As glad the sea, as blue the sky, — 50 

The change is ours alone; 

The saddest is my own. 

A stranger now, a world-worn man, 

Is he who bears my name; 
But thou, methinks, whose mortal life 

Immortal youth became, 

Art evermore the same. 

Thou art not here, thou art not there, 
Thy place I cannot see; 

I only know that where thou art 60 

The blessed angels be, 
And heaven is glad for thee. 

Forgive me if the evil years 

Have left on me their sign; 
Wash out, O soul so beautiful, 
The many stains of mine 
In tears of love divine ! 
1 The place that was in the mind of the poet when he 
wrote this stanza was on the rocks at Marblehead, 
where he had spent an early morning more than forty 
years before. ( Cambridge Edition of Whittier's Poems.) 



344 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



I could not look on thee and live, 

If thou wert by my side; 
The vision of a shining one, 70 

The white and heavenly bride, 

Is well to me denied. 

But turn to me thy dear girl-face 

Without the angel's crown, 
The wedded roses of thy lips, 

Thy loose hair rippling down 

In waves of golden brown. 

Look forth once more through space and 
time, 

And let thy sweet shade fall 
In tenderest grace of soul and form 80 

On memory's frescoed wall, 

A shadow, and yet all ! 

Draw near, more near, forever dear ! 

Where'er I rest or roam, 
Or in the city's crowded streets, 

Or by the blown sea foam, 

The thought of thee is home ! 



At breakfast hour the singer read 
The city news, with comment wise, 

Like one who felt the pulse of trade 90 

Beneath his finger fall and rise. 

His look, his air, his curt speech, told 
The man of action, not of books, 

To whom the corners made in gold 

And stocks were more than seaside 
nooks. 

Of life beneath the life confessed 
His song had hinted unawares; 

Of flowers in traffic's ledgers pressed, 
Of human hearts in bulls and bears. 

But eyes in vain were turned to watch 100 
That face so hard and shrewd and strong; 

And ears in vain grew sharp to catch 
The meaning of that morning song. 

In vain some sweet-voiced querist sought 
To sound him, leaving as she came; 

Her baited album only caught 
A common, unromantic name. 

No word betrayed the mystery fine, 
That trembled on the singer's tongue; 



He came and went, and left no sign 
Behind him save the song he sung. 



1874. 



SUNSET ON THE BEARCAMP 

A gold fringe on the purpling hem 

Of hills the river runs, 
As down its long, green valley falls 

The last of summer's suns. 
Along its tawny gravel-bed 

Broad-flowing, swift, and still, 
As if its meadow levels felt 

The hurry of the hill, 
Noiseless between its banks of green 

From curve to curve it slips; 10 

The drowsy maple-shadows rest 

Like fingers on its lips. 

A waif from Carroll's wildest hills, 

Unstoried and unknown; 
The ursine legend of its name 

Prowls on its banks alone. 
Yet flowers as fair its slopes adorn 

As ever Yarrow knew, 
Or, under rainy Irish skies, 

By Spenser's Mulla grew; 20 

And through the gaps of leaning trees 

Its mountain cradle shows: 
The gold against the amethyst, 

The green against the rose. 

Touched by a light that hath no name, 

A glory never sung, 
Aloft on sky and mountain wall 

Are God's great pictures hung. 
How changed the summits vast and old ! 

No longer granite-browed, 30 

They melt in rosy mist; the rock 

Is softer than the cloud; 
The valley holds its breath; no leaf 

Of all its elms is twirled: 
The silence of eternity 

Seems falling on the world. 

The pause before the breaking seals 

Of mystery is this; 
Yon miracle-play of night and day 

Makes dumb its witnesses. 4t5 

What unseen altar crowns the hills 

That reach up stair on stair ? 
What eyes look through, what white wings 
fan 

These purple veils of air ? 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



345 



What Presence from the heavenly heights 
To those of earth stoops down ? 

Not vainly Hellas dreamed of gods 
On Ida's snowy crown ! 

Slow fades the vision of the sky, 

The golden water pales, so 

And over all the valley-land 

A gray-winged vapor sails. 
I go the common way of all; 

The sunset fires will burn, 
The flowers will blow, the river flow, 

When I no more return. 
No whisper from the mountain pine 

Nor lapsing stream shall tell 
The stranger, treading where I tread, 

Of him who loved them well. 60 

But beauty seen is never lost, 

God's colors all are fast; 
The glory of this sunset heaven 

Into my soul has passed, 
A sense of gladness unconfined 

To mortal date or clime; 
As the soul liveth, it shall live 

Beyond the years of time. 
Beside the mystic asphodels 

Shall bloom the home-born flowers, 70 
And new horizons flush and glow 

With sunset hues of ours. 

Farewell ! these smiling hills must wear 

Too soon their wintry frown, 
And snow-cold winds from off them 
shake 

The maple's red leaves down. 
But I shall see a summer sun 

Still setting broad and low; 
The mountain slopes shall blush and bloom, 

The golden water flow. 80 

A lover's claim is mme on all 

I see to have and hold, — 
The rose-light of perpetual hills, 

And sunsets never cold ! 



1875. 



1876. 



LEXINGTON 

1775 

No Berserk thirst of blood had they, 
No battle-joy was theirs, who set 
Against the alien bayonet 

Their homespun breasts in that old day. 



Their feet had trodden peaceful ways; 
They loved not strife, they dreaded 

pain; 
They saw not, what to us is plain, 
That God would make man's wrath his 
praise. 

No seers were they, but simple men; 

Its vast results the future hid: 10 

The meaning of the work they did 

Was strange and dark and doubtful then. 

Swift as their summons came they left 
The plough mid-furrow standing still, 
The half - ground corn grist in the 
mill, 

The spade in earth, the axe in cleft. 

They went where duty seemed to call, 
They scarcely asked the reason why; 
They only knew they could but die, 

And death was not the worst of all ! 20 

Of man for man the sacrifice, 

All that was theirs to give, they gave. 

The flowers that blossomed from their 
grave 
Have sown themselves beneath all skies. 

Their death-shot shook the feudal tower, 
And shattered slavery's chain as well; 
On the sky's dome, as on a bell, 

Its echo struck the world's great hour. 

That fateful echo is not dumb: 

The nations listening to its sound 30 

Wait, from a century's vantage-ground, 

The holier triumphs yet to come, — 

The bridal time of Law and Love, 
The gladness of the world's release, 
When, war-sick, at the feet of Peace 

The hawk shall nestle with the dove ! — 

The golden age of brotherhood 

Unknown to other rivalries 

Than of the mild humanities, 
And gracious interchange of good, 40 

When closer strand shall lean to strand, 
Till meet, beneath saluting flags, 
The eagle of our mountain-crags, 

The lion of our Motherland ! 

1875. 1875. 



346 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



CENTENNIAL HYMN* 



Our fathers' God ! from out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand, 
We meet to-day, united, free, 
And loyal to our land and Thee, 
To thank Thee for the era done, 
And trust Thee for the opening one. 



Here, where of old, by thy design, 
The fathers spake that word of thine 
Whose echo is the glad refrain 
Of rended bolt and falling chain, 
To grace our festal time, from all 
The zones of earth our guests we call. 



Be with us while the New World greets 
The Old World thronging all its streets, 
Unveiling all the triumphs won 
By art or toil beneath the smi; 
And unto common good ordain 
This rivalship of hand and brain. 

IV 
Thou, who hast here in concord furled 
The war flags of a gathered world, 2( 

Beneath our Western skies fulfil 
The Orient's mission of good-will, 
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece, 
Send back its Argonauts of peace. 



For art and labor met in truce, 
For beauty made the bride of use, 
We thank Thee; but, withal, we crave 
The austere virtues strong to save, 
The honor proof to place or gold, 
The manhood never bought nor sold ! 



Oh make Thou us, through centuries 

long, 
In peace secure, in justice strong; 
Aromid our gift of freedom draw 
The safeguards of thy righteous law: 
And, cast in some diviner mould, 
Let the new cycle shame the old ! 



1876. 



1876. 



1 Written for the opening of the International Ex- 
hibition, Philadelphia, May 10, 1876. The music for 
the hymn was written by John K. Paine, and may be 
found in The Atlantic Monthly for June, 1870. 

(Whittier.) 



THE PROBLEM 



Not without envy Wealth at times must 

look 
On their brown strength who wield the 

reaping-hook 
And scythe, or at the forge-fire shape 

the plough 
Or the steel harness of the steeds of steam ; 

All who, by skill and patience, anyhow 
Make service noble, and the earth redeem 
From savageness. By kingly accolade 
Than theirs was never worthier knighthood 

made. 
Well for them, if, while demagogues their 

vain 
And evil counsels proffer, they maintain io 
Their honest manhood unseduced, and 

wage 
No war with Labor's right to Labor's gam 
Of sweet home-comfort, rest of fiand and 

bram, 
And softer pillow for the head of Age. 



And well for Gain if it ungrudging yields 
Labor its just demand; and well for 

Ease 
If in the uses of its own, it sees 
No wrong to him who tills its pleasant 
fields 
And spreads the table of its luxuries. 
The interests of the rich man and the poor 
Are one and same, inseparable evermore.; 21 
And, when scant wage or labor fail to give 
Food, shelter, raiment, wherewithal to live, 
Need has its rights, necessity its claim. 
Yea, even self-wrought misery and shame 
Test well the charity suffering long and 

kind. 
The home-pressed question of the age can 

find 
No answer in the catch-words of the blind 
Leaders of blind. Solution there is none 
Save in the Golden Rule of Christ alone. 30 
1876 ? (1878.) 



RESPONSE 2 

Beside that milestone where the level sun, 
Nigh unto setting, sheds his last, low rays 

2 Written in response to the many tokens of esteem 
which Whittier received on his seventieth birthday. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



347 



On word and work irrevocably done, 

Life's blending threads of good and ill out- 
spun, 

I hear, O friends ! your words of cheer and 
praise, 

Half doubtful if myself or otherwise. 

Like him who, in the old Arabian joke, 

A beggar slept and crowned Caliph woke. 

Thanks not the less. With not unglad sur- 
prise 

I see my life-work through your partial 
eyes; 

Assured, in giving to my home-taught 
songs 

A higher value than of right belongs, 

You do but read between the written 
lines 

The finer grace of unfulfilled designs. 

1877. 1877. 



AT EVENTIDE 

Poor and inadequate the shadow-play 
Of gain and loss, of waking and of 

dream, 
Against life's solemn background needs 
must seem 

At this late hour. Yet, not unthankfully, 

I call to mind the fountains by the way, 

The breath of flowers, the bird-song on the 
spray, 

Dear friends, sweet human loves, the joy 
of giving 

And of receiving, the great boon of liv- 
ing 
In grand historic years when Liberty 

Had need of word and work, quick sympa- 
thies 

For all who fail and suffer, song's relief, 

Nature's uncloying loveliness; and chief, 
The kind restraining hand of Provi- 
dence, 
The inward witness, the assuring sense 

Of an Eternal Good which overlies 

The sorrow of the world, Love which out- 
lives 

All sin and wrong, Compassion which for- 
gives 

To the uttermost, and Justice whose clear 
eyes 

Through lapse and failure look to the in- 
tent, 

And judge our frailty by the life we meant. 

1878. 



THE TRAILING ARBUTUS 

I wandered lonely where the pine-trees 

made 
Against the bitter East their barricade, 

And, guided by its sweet 
Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell, 
The trailing spring flower tinted like a 
shell 
Amid dry leaves and mosses at my feet. 

From under dead boughs, for whose loss 

the pines 
Moaned ceaseless overhead, the blossoming 

vines 
Lifted their glad surprise, 
While yet the bluebird smoothed in leafless 

trees 
His feathers ruffled by the chill sea-breeze, 
And snow-drifts lingered under April 

skies. 

As, pausing, o'er the lonely flower I bent, 
I thought of lives thus lowly, clogged and 
pent, 
Which yet find room, 
Through care and cumber, coldness and 

decay, 
To lend a sweetness to the ungenial day, 
And make the sad earth happier for their 
bloom. 

1879? 



OUR AUTOCRAT* 

His laurels fresh from song and lay, 
Romance, art, science, rich in all, 

And young of heart, how dare we say 
We keep his seventieth festival ? 

No sense is here of loss or lack; 

Before his sweetness and his light 
The dial holds its shadow back, 

The charmed hours delay their flight. 

His still the keen analysis 

Of men and moods, electric wit, io 
Free play of mirth, and tenderness 

To heal the slightest wound from it. 

And his the pathos touching all 

Life's sins and sorrows and regrets, 

1 Read at the breakfast given in honor of Holmes's 
seventieth birthday. 



343 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Its hopes and fears, its final call 
And rest beneath the violets. 

His sparkling surface scarce betrays 
The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled, 

The wisdom of the latter days, 

And tender memories of the old. 20 

What shapes and fancies, grave or gay, 
Before us at his bidding come ! 

The Treadmill tramp, the One -Horse 
Shay, 
The dumb despair of Elsie's doom ! 

The tale of Avis and the Maid, 

The plea for lips that cannot speak, 

The holy kiss that Iris laid 

On Little Boston's pallid cheek! 

Long may he live to sing for us 

His sweetest songs at evening time, 30 
And, like his Chambered Nautilus, 

To holier heights of beauty climb ! 

Though now unnumbered guests surround 
The table that he rules at will, 

Its Autocrat, however crowned, 
Is but our friend and comrade still. 

The world may keep his honored name, 
The wealth of all his varied powers; 

A stronger claim has love than fame, 
And he himself is only ours ! 40 

1S79. 1879. 



GARRISON 1 

The storm and peril overpast, 

The hounding hatred shamed and still, 
Go, soul of freedom ! take at last 

The place which thou alone canst fill. 

Confirm the lesson taught of old — 
Life saved for self is lost, while they 

Who lose it in his service hold 
The lease of God's eternal day. 

Not for thyself, but for the slave 

Thy words of thunder shook the world ; 10 

1 My poetical service in the cause of freedom is almost 
synchronous with his life of devotion to the same cause. 
(Whittier.) 

See Pickard's Life of Whittier, vol. ii, p. 668 ; and the 
article on Garrison in Whittier's Prose Works, vol. iii, 
pp. 189-192. 



No selfish griefs or hatred gave 

The strength wherewith thy bolts were 
hurled. 

From lips that Sinai's trumpet blew 
We heard a tender under song; 

Thy very wrath from pity grew, 

From love of man thy hate of wrong. 

Now past and present are as one; 

The life below is life above ; 
Thy mortal years have but begun 

Thy immortality of love. 20 

With somewhat of thy lofty faith 
We lay the outworn garment by, 

Give death but what belongs to death, 
And life the life that cannot die ! 

Not for a soul like thine the calm 
Of selfish ease and joys of sense ; 

But duty, more than crown or palm, 
Its own exceeding recompense. 

Go up and on ! thy day well done, 

Its morning promise well fulfilled, 30 

Arise to triumphs yet unwon, 

To holier tasks that God has willed. 

Go, leave behind thee all that mars 
The work below of man for man; 

With the white legions of the stars 
Do service such as angels can. 

Wherever wrong shall right deny 
Or suffering spirits urge their plea, 

Be thine a voice to smite the lie, 

A hand to set the captive free ! 40 

1879. 1879. 



THE LOST OCCASION 2 

Some die too late and some too soon, 

At early morning, heat of noon, 

Or the chill evening twilight. Thou, 

Whom the rich heavens did so endow 

With eyes of power and Jove's own brow, 

With all the massive strength that fills 

Thy home-horizon's granite hills, 

With rarest gifts of heart and head 

From manliest stock inherited, 

New England's stateliest type of man, 10 

In port and speech Olympian ; 

* See the note on ' Ichabod,' p. 282. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



349 



Whom no one met, at first, but took 

A second awed and wondering look 

(As turned, perchance, the eyes of Greece 

On Phidias' unveiled masterpiece) ; 

Whose words in simplest homespun clad, 

The Saxon strength of Csedmon's had, 

With power reserved at need to reach 

The Roman forum's loftiest speech, 

Sweet with persuasion, eloquent 20 

In passion, cool in argument, 

Or, ponderous, falling on thy foes 

As fell the Norse god's hammer blows, 

Crushing as if with Talus' flail 

Through Error's logic-woven mail, 

And failing only when they tried 

The adamant of the righteous side, — 

Thou, foiled in aim and hope, bereaved 

Of old friends, by the new deceived, 

Too soon for us, too soon for thee, 30 

Beside thy lonely Northern sea, 

Where long and low the marsh-lands spread, 

Laid wearily down thy august head. 

Thou shouldst have lived to feel below 

Thy feet Disunion's fierce upthrow; 

The late-sprung mine that underlaid 

Thy sad concessions vainly made. 

Thou shouldst have seen from Sumter's wall 

The star-flag of the Union fall, 

And armed rebellion pressing on 40 

The broken lines of Washington ! 

No stronger voice than thine had then 

Called out the utmost might of men, 

To make the Union's charter free 

And strengthen law by liberty. 

How had that stern arbitrament 

To thy gray age youth's vigor lent, 

Shaming ambition's paltry prize 

Before thy disillusioned eyes; 

Breaking the spell about thee wound 50 

Like the green withes that Samson bound; 

Redeeming in one effort grand, 

Thyself and thy imperilled land ! 

Ah, cruel fate, that closed to thee, 

O sleeper by the Northern sea, 

The gates of opportunity ! 

God fills the gaps of human need, 

Each crisis brings its word and deed. 

Wise men and strong we did not lack; 

But still, with memory turning back, 60 

In the dark hours we thought of thee, 

And thy lone grave beside the sea. 

Above that grave the east winds blow, 

And from the marsh-lands drifting slow 

The sea-fog comes, with evermore 



The wave-wash of a lonely shore, 

And sea-bird's melancholy cry, 

As Nature fain would typify 

The sadness of a closing scene, 

The loss of that which should have been. 70 

But, where thy native mountains bare 

Their foreheads to diviner air, 

Fit emblem of enduring fame, 

One lofty summit keeps thy name. 

For thee the cosmic forces did 

The rearing of that pyramid, 

The prescient ages shaping with 

Fire, flood, and frost thy monolith. 

Sunrise and sunset lay thereon 

With hands of light their benison, 80 

The stars of midnight pause to set 

Their jewels in its coronet. 

And evermore that mountain mass 

Seems climbing from the shadowy pass * 

To light, as if to manifest 

Thy nobler self, thy life at best ! 

1880. 



STORM ON LAKE ASQUAM 

A cloud, like that the old-time Hebrew saw 
On Carmel prophesying rain, began 
To lift itself o'er wooded Cardigan, 

Growing and blackening. Suddenly, a flaw 

Of chill wind menaced ; then a strong blast 
beat 
Down the long valley's murmuring pines, 

and woke 
The noon-dream of the sleeping lake, and 
broke 
Its smooth steel mirror at the mountains' 
feet. 

Thunderous and vast, a fire- veined darkness 
swept 
Over the rough pine-bearded Asquam 

range ; 
A wraith of tempest, wonderful and 
strange, 
From peak to peak the cloudy giant stepped. 

One moment, as if challenging the storm, 
Chocorua's tall, defiant sentinel 
Looked from his watch-tower; then the 
shadow fell, 

And the wild ram-drift blotted out his form. 

1 Mt. Webster stands next the White Mountain Notch, 
at the southern end of the Presidential Range. 



35° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And over all the still unhidden sun, 


With a joy akin to sadness 


Weaving its light through slant-blown 


And a greeting like farewell. 


veils of rain, 




Smiled on the trouble, as hope smiles on 


With a sense of awe he listened 


pain ; 


To the voices sweet and young; 30 


And, when the tumult and the strife were 


The last of earth and the first of heaven 


done, 


Seemed in the songs they sung. 


With one foot on the lake, and one on 


And waiting a little longer 


land, 


For the wonderful change to come, 


Framing within his crescent's tinted 


He heard the Summoning Angel, 


streak 


Who calls God's children home ! 


A far-off picture of the Melvin peak, 




Spent broken clouds the rainbow's angel 


And to him in a holier welcome 


spanned. 


Was the mystical meaning given 


1882. 


Of the words of the blessed Master: 




' Of such is the kingdom of heaven ! ' 40 


THE POET AND THE CHILDREN 


1882. 




AN AUTOGRAPH 


LONGFELLOW 






I write my name as one, 


With a glory of winter sunshine 


On sands by waves o'errun 


Over his locks of gray, 


Or winter's frosted pane, 


In the old historic mansion 


Traces a record vain. 


He sat on his last birthday; 






Oblivion's blankness claims 


With his books and his pleasant pic- 


Wiser and better names, 


tures, 


And well my own may pass 


And his household and his kin, 


As from the strand or glass. 


While a sound as of myriads singing 




From far and near stole in. 


Wash on, waves of time ! 




Melt, noons, the frosty rime ! 10 


It came from his own fair city, 


Welcome the shadow vast, 


From the prairie's boundless plain, 10 


The silence that shall last ! 


From the Golden Gate of sunset, 




And the cedarn woods of Maine. 


When I and all who know 




And love me vanish so, 


And his heart grew warm within him, 


What harm to them or me 


And his moistening eyes grew dim, 


Will the lost memory be ? 


For he knew that his country's children 




Were singing the songs of him: 


If any words of mine, 




Through right of life divine, 


The lays of his life's glad morning, 


Remain, what matters it 


The psalms of his evening time, 


Whose hand the message writ ? 20 


Whose echoes shall float forever 




On the winds of every clime. 20 


Why should the ' crowner's quest ' 




Sit on my worst or best ? 


All their beautiful consolations, 


Why should the showman claim 


Sent forth like birds of cheer, 


The poor ghost of my name ? 


Came flocking back to his windows, 




And sang in the Poet's ear. 


Yet, as when dies a sound 




Its spectre lingers round, 


Grateful, but solemn and tender, 


Haply my spent life will 


The music rose and fell 


1 Leave some faint echo still. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



35 1 



A whisper giving breath 
Of praise or blame to death, 
Soothing or saddening such 
As loved the living much. 

Therefore with yearnings vain 
And fond I still would fain 
A kindly judgment seek, 
A tender thought bespeak. 

And, while my words are read, 
Let this at least be said: 
' Whate'er his life's defeatures, 
He loved his fellow-creatures. 

' If, of the Law's stone table, 
To hold he scarce was able 
The first great precept fast, 
He kept for man the last. 

' Through mortal lapse and dulness 
What lacks the Eternal Fulness, 
If still our weakness can 
Love Him in loving man ? 

' Age brought him no despairing 
Of the world's future faring; 
In human nature still 
He found more good than ill. 

' To all who dumbly suffered, 
His tongue and pen he offered; 
His life was not his own, 
Nor lived for self alone. 

' Hater of din and riot 
He lived in days unquiet; 
And, lover of all beauty, 
Trod the hard ways of duty. 

• He meant no wrong to any 
He sought the good of many, 
Yet knew both sin and folly, — 
May God forgive him wholly ! ' 



1882? 



UNITY 1 



Forgive, O Lord, our severing ways, 

The separate altars that we raise, 

The varying tongues that speak thy praise ! 

1 This poem was written by Mr. Whittier while he 
was a guest at the Asquam House. A fair was being 
held in aid of the little Episcopal church at HolUerness, 
and people at the hotel were asked to contribute. 
These Hues were Whittier's contribution, and the ladies 



Suffice it now. In time to be 
Shall one great temple rise to Thee, 
Thy church our broad humanity. 

White flowers of love its walls shall 

climb, 
Sweet bells of peace shall ring its chime, 
Its days shall all be holy time. 

The hymn, long sought, shall then be 

heard, 
The music of the world's accord, 
Confessing Christ, the inward word ! 

That song shall swell from shore to shore, 
One faith, one love, one hope restore 
The seamless garb that Jesus wore ! 
1883. 

SWEET FERN 

The subtle power in perfume found 
Nor priest nor sibyl vainly learned; 

On Grecian shrine or Aztec mound 
No censer idly burned. 

That power the old-time worships knew, 
The Corybantes' frenzied dance, 

The Pythian priestess swooning through 
The wonderland of trance. 

And Nature holds, in wood and field, 
Her thousand sunlit censers still; io 

To spells of flower and shrub we yield 
Against or with our will. 

I climbed a hill path strange and new 
With slow feet, pausing at each turn; 

A sudden waft of west wind blew 
The breath of the sweet fern. 

That fragrance from my vision swept 
The alien landscape; in its stead, 

Up fairer hills of youth I» stepped, 

As light of heart as tread. 20 

I saw my boyhood's lakelet shine 

Once more through rifts of woodland 
shade ; 

I knew my river's winding line 
By morning mist betrayed. 

in charge of the fair received ten dollars for them. 
They were written in an album now in the possession 
of a niece of Whittier's Philadelphia friend, Joseph 
Liddon Penuock. (Pickard.) 



352 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



With me June's freshness, lapsing brook, 
Murmurs of leaf and bee, the call 

Of birds, and one in voice and look 
In keeping with them all. 

A fern beside the way we went 

She plucked, and, smiling, held it up, 30 
While from her hand the wild, sweet 
scent 

I drank as from a cup. 



O potent witchery of smell ! 

The dust-dry leaves to life return, 
And she who plucked them owns 
spell 

And lifts her ghostly fern. 



the 



Or sense or spirit ? Who shall say 

What touch the chord of memory thrills ? 

It passed, and left the August day 

Ablaze on lonely hills. 40 

1884. 



SAMUEL J. TILDEN 

GREYSTONE, AUGUST 4, 1886 

Once more, O all-adjusting Death ! 

The nation's Pantheon opens wide; 
Once more a common sorrow saith 

A strong, wise man has died. 

Faults doubtless had he. Had we not 
Our own, to question and asperse 

The worth we doubted or forgot 
Until beside his hearse ? 

Ambitious, cautious, yet the man 

To strike down fraud with resolute 
hand; 

A patriot, if a partisan, 
He loved his native land. 

So let the mourning bells be rung, 
The banner droop its folds half way, 

And while the public pen and tongue 
Their fitting tribute pay, 

Shall we not vow above his bier 

To set our feet on party lies, 
And wound no more a living ear 

With words that Death denies ? 

1886. 1886. 



THE BARTHOLDI STATUE 
1886 

The land, that, from the rule of kings, 
In freeing us, itself made free, 

Our Old World Sister, to us brings 
Her sculptured Dream of Liberty: 

Unlike the shapes on Egypt's sands 
Uplifted by the toil-worn slave, 

On Freedom's soil with freemen's hands 
We rear the symbol free hands gave. 

O France, the beautiful ! to thee 
Once more a debt of love we owe: 

In peace beneath thy Colors Three, 
We hail a later Rochambeau ! 

Rise, stately Symbol ! holding forth 
Thy light and hope to all who sit 

In chains and darkness ! Belt the earth 
With watch-fires from thy torch uplit ! 

Reveal the primal mandate still 

Which Chaos heard and ceased to be, 

Trace on mid-air th' Eternal Will 
In signs of fire : ' Let man be free ! ' 

Shine far, shine free, a guiding light 
To Reason's ways and Virtue's aim, 

A lightning-flash the wretch to smite 
Who shields his license with thy name ! 

1886. 



TO E. C. S. 1 

Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass 
Detects no flower in winter's tuft of 

grass, 
Let this slight token of the debt I owe 
Outlive for thee December's frozen 

day, 
And, like the arbutus budding under 

snow, 
Take bloom and fragrance from some 

morn of May 
When he who gives it shall have gone the 

way 
Where faith shall see and reverent trust 

shall know. 

1890. 

1 The dedication of Whittier's last volume, At Sun- 
down, to Edmund Clarence Stedman. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



353 



THE LAST EVE OF SUMMER 

Summer's last sun nigh unto setting shines 
Through yon columnar pines, 

And on the deepening shadows of the 
lawn 
Its golden lines are drawn. 

Dreaming of long gone summer days like 
this, 
Feeling the wind's soft kiss, 
Grateful and glad that failing ear and 
sight 
Have still their old delight, 

I sit alone, and watch the warm, sweet 
day 

Lapse tenderly away ; 10 

And, wistful, with a feeling of forecast, 

I ask, ' Is this the last ? 

' Will nevermore for me the seasons run 
Their round, and will the sun 

Of ardent summers yet to come forget 
For me to rise and set ? ' 

Thou shouldst be here, or I should be with 
thee 
Wherever thou mayst be, 
Lips mute, hands clasped, in silences of 
speech 
Each answering unto each. 20 

For this still hour, this sense of mystery 
far 

Beyond the evening star, 
No words outworn suffice on lip or scroll: 

The soul would fain with soul 

Wait, while these few swift-passing days 
fulfil 

The wise-disposing Will, 
And, in the evening as at morning, trust 

The All-Merciful and Just. 

The solemn joy that soul-communion feels 
Immortal life reveals; 3 o 

And human love, its prophecy and sign, 
Interprets love divine. 

Come then, in thought, if that alone may be, 
O friend ! and bring with thee 

Thy calm assurance of transcendent Spheres 
And the Eternal Years ! 

1890. 1890. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

From purest wells of English undefiled 
None deeper drank than he, the New 

World's child, 
Who in the language of their farm-fields 

spoke 
The wit and wisdom of New England folk, 
Shaming a monstrous wrong. The world- 
wide laugh 
Provoked thereby might well have shaken 

half 
The walls of Slavery down, ere yet the ball 
And mine of battle overthrew them all. 
1891. 



TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

8th Mo. 29TH, 1892 

Among the thousands who with hail and 
cheer 

Will welcome thy new year, 
How few of all have passed, as thou and I, 

So many milestones by ! 

We have grown old together ; we have 
seen, 

Our youth and age between, 
Two generations leave us, and to-day 

We with the third hold way, 

Loving and loved. If thought must back- 
ward run 

To those who, one by one, 10 

In the great silence and the dark beyond 

Vanished with farewells fond, 

Unseen, not lost ; our grateful memories 
still 
Their vacant places fill, 
And with the full-voiced greeting of new 
friends 
A tenderer whisper blends. 

Linked close in a pathetic brotherhood 

Of mingled ill and good, 
Of joy and grief, of grandeur and of shame, 

For pity more than blame, — 20 

The gift is thine the weary world to make 
More cheerful for thy sake, 

Soothing the ears its Miserere pains, 
With the old Hellenic strains, 



354 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Lighting the sullen face of discontent 
With smiles for blessing sent. 

Enough of selfish wailing has been had, 
Thank God ! for notes more glad. 

Life is indeed no holiday; therein 

Are want, and woe, and sin, 3 o 

Death and its nameless fears, and over all 
Our pitying tears must fall. 

Sorrow is real; but the counterfeit 

Which folly brings to it, 
We need thy wit and wisdom to resist, 

O rarest Optimist ! 

Thy hand, old friend ! the service of our 
days, 
In differing moods and ways 
May prove to those avIio follow in our train 
Not valueless nor vain. 4 o 

. 



Far off, and faint as echoes of a dream, 
The songs of boyhood seem, 

Yet on our autumn boughs, unflown with 
spring, 
The evening thrushes sing. 

The hour draws near, howe'er delayed and 
late, 
When at the Eternal Gate 
We leave the words and works we call our 
own, 
And lift void hands alone 

For love to fill. Our nakedness of 
soul 
Brings to that Gate no toll; 50 

Giftless we come to Him, who all things 
gives, 
And live because He lives. 
1S92. 1892. 




OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



OLD IRONSIDES 1 

* 

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down ! 

Long has it waved on higb, 
And many an eye has danced to see 

That banner in the sky; 
Beneath it rung the battle shout, 

And burst the cannon's roar; — 
The meteor of the ocean air 

Shall sweep the clouds no more. 

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, 

Where knelt the vanquished foe, 
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, 

And waves were white below, 
No more shall feel the victor's tread, 

Or know the conquered knee ; — 
The harpies of the shore shall pluck 

The eagle of the sea ! 

Oh, better that her shattered hulk 
Should sink beneath the wave; 

1 One genuine lyric outburst, however, done in this 
year of the law, almost made him in a way actually 
famous. The frigate Constitution, historic indeed, but 
old and unseaworthy, then lying in the navy yard at 
Charlestown, was condemned by the Navy Department 
to be destroyed. Holmes read this in a newspaper par- 
agraph, and it stirred him. On a scrap of paper, with 
a lead pencil, he rapidly shaped the impetuous stanzas 
of ' Old Ironsides,' and sent them to the Daily Adver- 
tiser, of Boston. Fast and far they travelled through 
the newspaper press of the country ; they were even 
printed in hand-bills and circulated about the streets 
of Washington. An occurrence, which otherwise would 
probably have passed unnoticed, now stirred a national 
indignation. The astonished Secretary made haste to 
retrace a step which he had taken quite innocently in 
the way of business. The Constitution's tattered en- 
sign was not torn down. The ringing, spirited verses 
gave the gallant ship a reprieve, which satisfied senti- 
mentality, and a large part of the people of the United 
States had heard of 0. W. Holmes, law student at 
Cambridge, who had only come of age a month ago. 
(Morse's Life of Holmes, vol. i, pp. 79, 80.) 

This is probably the only case in which a government 
policy was changed by the verses of 'a college student. 

The frigate Constitution was launched in 1797, first 
served in the war against the pirates in the Mediterra- 
nean, and made a brilliant record in the war of 1812. 
In 1834 she was almost entirely rebuilt, and continued 
in commission until 1681. From that time she was kept 
at the navy yard at Portsmouth, N. H., until in 1897 
she was taken to the Charlestown Navy Yard for the 
celebration of the centenary of her launching. 



Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 
And there should be her grave; 

Nail to the mast her holy flag, 
Set every threadbare sail, 

And give her to the god of storms, 
The lightning and the gale ! 
1830. 1830. 



THE BALLAD OF THE OYSTER- 
MAN \ 

It was a tall young oysterman lived by the 
river-side, 

His shop was just upon the bank, his boat 
was on the tide; 

The daughter of a fisherman, that was so 
straight and slim, 

Lived over on the other bank, right oppo- 
site to him. 

It was the pensive oysterman that saw a 

lovely maid, 
Upon a moonlight evening, a-sitting in the 

shade; 
He saw her wave her handkerchief, as much 

as if to say, 
' I 'm wide awake, young oysterman, and all 

the folks away.' 

Then up arose the oysterman, and to him- 
self said he, 

' I guess I '11 leave the skiff at home, for 
fear that folks should see; 

I read it in the story-book, that, for to kiss 
his dear, 

Leander swam the Hellespont, — and I will 
swim this here.' 



2 Except for the ballad of ' Old Ironsides,' the ' Met- 
rical Essay on Poetry ' written for the Phi Beta Kappa 
meeting in 1836, and a few other occasional poems, 
Holmes wrote little but humorous verse from 1830 to 
1848 ; most of this he excluded from the later editions 
of his work. ' The Ballad of the Oysterman,' and ' The 
Spectre Pig,' are the beBt of his parodies on the pseudo- 
ballads so popular at that time. 



35 6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And he has leaped into the waves, and 

crossed the shining stream, 
And he has clambered up the bank, all in 

the moonlight gleam; 
Oh there were kisses sweet as dew, and 

words as soft as rain, — 
But they have heard her father's step, and 

in he leaps again ! 

Out spoke the ancient fisherman, — ' Oh, 

what was that, my daughter ? ' 
' 'T was nothing but a pebble, sir, I threw 

into the water.' 
' And what is that, pray tell me, love, that 

paddles off so fast ? ' 
' It 's nothing but a porpoise, sir, that 's been 

a-swimming past.' 

Out spoke the ancient fisherman, — ' Now 

bring me my harpoon ! 
I '11 get into my fishing-boat, and fix the 

fellow soon.' 
Down fell that pretty innocent, as falls a 

snow-white lamb, 
Her hair drooped round her pallid cheeks, 

like seaweed on a clam. 

Alas for those two loving ones ! she waked 
not from her swoimd, 

And he was taken with the cramp, and in 
the waves was drowned; 

But Fate has metamorphosed them, in pity 
of their woe, 

And now they keep an oyster-shop for mer- 
maids down below. 

1830? 



THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICU- 
LOUS. 

I wrote some lines once on a time 
In wondrous merry mood, 

And thought, as usual, men would say 
They were exceeding good. 

They were so queer, so very queer, 
I laughed as I would die ; 

Albeit, in the general way, 
A sober man am I. 

I called my servant, and he came; 

How kind it was of him i< 

To mind a slender man like me, 

He of the mighty limb ! 



' These to the printer,' I exclaimed, 
And, in my humorous way, 

I added (as a trifling jest), 

' There '11 be the devil to pay.' 

He took the paper, and I watched, 
And saw him peep within; 

At the first line he read, his face 

Was all upon the grin. 20 

He read the next; the grin grew broad, 
And shot from ear to ear; 

He read the third; a chuckling noise 
I now began to hear. 

The fourth; he broke into a roar; 

The fifth; his waistband split; 
The sixth; he burst five buttons off, 

And tumbled in a fit. 

Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye, 
I watched that wretched man, 30 

And since, I never dare to write 
As funny as I can. 

1830. 



TO AN INSECT* 

I love to hear thine earnest voice, 

Wherever thou art hid, 
Thou testy little dogmatist, 

Thou pretty Katydid ! 
Thou mindest me of gentlefolks, — 

Old gentlefolks are they, — 
Thou say'st an undisputed thing 

In such a solemn way. 

Thou art a female, Katydid ! 

I know it by the trill 10 

That quivers through thy piercing notes, 

So petulant and shrill; 
I think there is a knot of you 

Beneath the hollow tree, — 
A knot of spinster Katydids, — 

Do Katydids drink tea ? 

Oh, tell me where did Katy live, 

And what did Katy do ? 
And was she very fair and young, 

And yet so wicked, too ? 20 

Did Katy love a naughty man, 

Or kiss more cheeks than one ? 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



357 



I warrant Katy did no more 

Than many a Kate has done. 

Dear me ! I '11 tell you all about 

My fuss with little Jane, 
And Ann, with whom I used to walk 

So often down the lane, 
And all that tore their locks of black, 

Or wet their eyes of blue, — 30 

Pray tell me, sweetest Katydid, 

What did poor Katy do ? 

Ah no ! the living oak shall crash, 

That stood for ages still, 
The rock shall rend its mossy base 

And thunder down the hill, 
Before the little Katydid 

Shall add one word, to tell 
The mystic story of the maid 

Whose name she knows so well. 40 

Peace to the ever-murmuring race ! 

And when the latest one 
Shall fold in death her feeble wings 

Beneath the autumn sun, 
Then shall she raise her fainting voice, 

And lift her drooping lid, 
And then the child of future years 

Shall hear what Katy did. 

1831. 



L'INCONNUE. 

Is thy name Mary, maiden fair ? 

Such should, methinks, its music be ; 
The sweetest name that mortals bear 

Were best befitting thee; 
And she to whom it once was given, 
Was half of earth and half of heaven. 

I hear thy voice, I see thy smile, 

I look upon thy folded hair; 
Ah ! while we dream not they beguile, 

Our hearts are in the snare; 
And she who chains a wild bird's wing 
Must start not if her captive sing. 

So, lady, take the leaf that falls, 
To all but thee unseen, unknown: 

When evening shades thy silent walls, 
Then read it all alone; 

In stillness read, in darkness seal, 

Forget, despise, but not reveal I 

1831. 



MY AUNT. 

My aunt ! my dear unmarried aunt ! 

Long years have o'er her flown ; 
Yet still she strains the aching clasp 

That binds her virgin zone; 
I know it hurts her, — though she looks 

As cheerful as she can; 
Her waist is ampler than her life, 

For life is but a span. 

My aunt ! my poor deluded aunt ! 

Her hair is almost gray; 10 

Why will she tram that winter curl 

In such a spring-like way ? 
How can she lay her glasses down, 

And say she reads as well, 
When through a double convex lens 

She just makes out to spell ? 

Her father — grandpapa ! forgive 

This erring lip its smiles — 
Vowed she should make the finest girl 

Within a hundred miles; 20 

He sent her to a stylish school; 

'T was in her thirteenth June ; 
And with her, as the rules required, 

' Two towels and a spoon.' 

They braced my aunt against a board, 

To make her straight and tall ; 
They laced her up, they starved her down, 

To make her light and small; 
They pinched her feet, they singed her hair, 

They screwed it up with pins ; — 30 
Oh, never mortal suffered more 

In penance for her sins. 

So, when my precious aunt was done, 

My grandsire brought her back 
(By daylight, lest some rabid youth 

Might follow on the track) ; 
' Ah ! ' said my grandsire, as he shook 

Some powder in his pan, 
'What could this lovely creature do 

Against a desperate man ! ' 4 o 

Alas ! nor chariot, nor barouche, 

Nor bandit cavalcade, 
Tore from the trembling father's arms 

His all-accomplished maid. 
For her how happy had it been ! 

And Heaven had spared to me 
To see one sad, ungathered rose 

On my ancestral tree. 

1831. 



358 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



THE LAST LEAF.* 

I saw him once before, 
As be passed by the door, 

And again 
The pavement stones resound, 
As he totters o'er the ground 

With his cane. 

They. Nay that in his prime, 
Ere the pruning-knifo of Time 

Cut him down, 
Not a better man was found 10 

By the Crier on his round 

Through the town. 

But now lie walks the streets! 
And he looks ;d, all he meets 

Sad and wan, 

1 Tho poem wiih Suggested 1 > y the light Of ft HgUrQ 
well known to Bostonlaus fin i^: ; i or 18821, that of Ma- 
jor Thomas Melville, ' the last of the ooosed hats,' hb 
he was sometimes called, The Uajor had been n pet 
sonable young man, very evidently, ami retained ovl- 
denoe of it in 

Tho monumental pomp of ago — 
whioh hud something Imposing and Homothing odd 

about it foi youthful eyes like mine. Ho was often 
pointed at at, one of the ' Indians' of the famouH ' Bos- 
ton Tea -Party ' of 1771. IIIh aspoet among tho crowds 
ol a lalor generation romiiitloil mo of a Withered leaf 

whii'ii loin held to its stem through the storms of au- 
tumn and winter, and finds Itself Still t^lii>K' ,l K to Its 

bough while the now growths of spring are bursting 
their buds ami spreading their Collage nil around it. l 
make this explanation for tho benefit of those who have 
boon puisled by the lines, 

The hint leaf upon the troo 

in tin- tpring> 

Tho way in which it came to be wrltton in a bohio- 

wii.it mn(.; iii.ir loi-.mui ■■ « n i lu.'i. i had become a little 

known ana versifier, ami 1 thought that one or two other 
young writer! wore following COS efforts with iniita- 

tioiis, not meant as parodies and hardly to be oonsid- 
ered Improvements on their models, 1 determined to 

write in a meaHiiro which would at onoo betray any 
eopyi.it. So far aH it was Suggested by any previous 

poem, the eoho must have oome from Oampbelcs 'Bat- 
tle oi the Baltlo,' with its short terminal lines, suohas 

tho lani, of thoHe two, 

By thy wild uhd Btormy ittSDi 

Kl.slnoir. 

ltnt i do not remember any poem in tho same measure) 

BXOept BUOh BS have boon written sineo Its publication. 
(HOJjMBB.) 

Holmes wrote to hi', pub in, ho in in lH'.M: 'I liavo 

lasted long enough to serve as an Illustration of my 

own poem. ... It wna with a Biuile on my HpH that 
1 wrote it; I eanuot road it without a si|»h of tender 
rouionibi imio. 1 hopo it will not sadden my older road- 
,'ii, while it. may aniimo mouio of the VOUngOT ohoh lo 
whom Hb experiences are as yet only Moating faneies.' 

Llnooln called the poem ' inexpressibly touching,' 

and know it, by heart. Holmes iHissoased a eopy of it 
written out. by Kdgar Allan Poe. Whittier (/V<w 
ir,';7,.v, vol. Ill, p. 881) called it a 'unique compound of 
bUmOI ami pathos.' 



And be shakes his feeble head, 

That it, seems its il* he said, 
They tire gone.' 

Tho mossy marbles rest 

On the li|>s that, lie lias prest 

In their bloom, 
And tho names lie loved to hear 
Have been carved for many a year 

On tho tomb. 

My grandmamma has said — 
Poor old lady, she is dead 

Long ago — 
That lie Dad a Roman nose, 
And his eheek was like a rose 

In the snow; 

But now his nose is thin, - 
And it tests upon his chin 

Like a stall'. 
And a orook is in his back, 
And it melancholy crack 

In his laugh. 

I know it is a sin 
For mo to sit and grin 

At him here; 
But the old three-cornered hat, 

And the breeches, and all that, 
Are so queer ! 

And if I should live to be 
The last, Leaf upon tho tree 

In the spring, 
Let them smile, as I do now, 

At the old forsaken bough 

Where I cling. 



1S31 or 1882 



(18*80 • 



LA GRISETTE 
Ah, Clemenoe ! when I saw thee last 

Trip down the line de Seine, 
And turning when thy form had past, 

I said, • We meet again,' — 
I dreamed not in that idle glance 

Thy latest image came, 

,J Just when it waB written I eaunot exaotly say, nor 
In what paper or periodical It was first published., It 

muHt have boon written before April, ISIl.'i; probably 

in is:u or 1882. it was republished In the first edit ion 
of my poems In 1886. (Holmes, Note to the illustrated 
edition of ' The Lost Loaf,' 1885.) 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



359 



And only left to memory's trance 
A shadow and a name. 

The few strange words my lips had taught 

Thy timid voice to speak, 10 

Their gentler signs, which often brought 

Fresh roses to thy cheek, 
The trailing of thy long loose hair 

Bent o'er my couch of pain, 
All, all returned, more sweet, more fair; 

Oh, had we met again ! 

I walked where saint and virgin keep 

The vigil lights of Heaven, 
I knew that thou hadst woes to weep, 

And sins to be forgiven; 20 

I watched where Genevieve was laid, 

I knelt by Mary's shrine, 
Beside me low, soft voices prayed; 

Alas ! but where was thine ? 

And when the morning sun was bright, 

When wind and wave were calm, 
And flamed, in thousand-tinted light, 

The rose of Notre Dame, 
I wandered through the haunts of men, 

From Boulevard to Quai, 30 

Till, frowning o'er Saint Etienne, 

The Pantheon's shadow lay. 

In vain, in vain; we meet no more, 

Nor dream what fates befall; 
And long upon the stranger's shore 

My voice on thee may call, 
When years have clothed the line in 
moss 

That tells thy name and days, 
And withered, on thy simple cross, 

The wreaths of Pere-la-Chaise ! 40 

^ 1836. 



OUR YANKEE GIRLS 

Let greener lands and bluer skies, 

If such the wide earth shows, 
With fairer cheeks and brighter eyes, 

Match us the star and rose; 
The winds that lift the Georgian's veil, 

Or wave Circassia's curls, 
Waft to their shores the sultan's sail, — 

Who buys our Yankee girls ? 

The gay grisette, whose fingers touch 
Love's thousand chords so well; 



The dark Italian, loving much, 

But more than one can tell; 
And England's fair-haired, blue-eyed dame, 

Who binds her brow with pearls ; — 
Ye who have seen them, can they shame 

Our own sweet Yankee girls ? 

And what if court or castle vaunt 

Its children loftier born ? 
Who heeds the silken tassel's flaunt 

Beside the golden corn ? 20 

They ask not for the dainty toil 

Of ribboned knights and earls, 
The daughters of the virgin soil, 

Our freeborn Yankee girls ! 

By every hill whose stately pines 

• Wave their dark arms above 
The home where some fair being shines, 

To warm the wilds with love, 
From barest rock to bleakest shore 

Where farthest sail unfurls, 30 

That stars and stripes are streaming o'er, — 
God bless our Yankee girls ! 

1836. 



ON LENDING A PUNCH-BOWL 1 

This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of 

good old times, 
Of joyous days and jolly nights, and merry 

Christmas chimes; 
They were a free and jovial race, but 

honest, brave, and true, 
Who dipped their ladle in the punch when 

this old bowl was new. 

A Spanish galleon brought the bar, — so 

rims the ancient tale; 
'Twas hammered by an Antwerp smith, 

whose arm was like a flail; 
And now and then between the strokes, for 

fear his strength should fail, 
He wiped his brow and quaffed a cup of 

good old Flemish ale. 

'T was purchased by an English squire to 
please his loving dame, 

1 This ' punch-bowl ' was, according to old family 
tradition, a caudle-cup. It is a massive piece of silver, 
Its. cherubs and other ornaments of coarse repousse^ 
work, and has two handles like a loving-cup, by which 
it was held, or passed from guest to guest. (Holmes.) 



3 6 ° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Who saw the cherubs, and conceived a 

longing for the same; 10 

And oft as on the ancient stock another 

twig was found, 
T was tilled with caudle spiced and hot, 

and handed smoking round. 

But, changing hands, it reached at length a 

Puritan divine. 
Who used to follow Timothy, and take a 

little wine. 
But hated punch and prelacy; and so it 

was. perhaps, 
He went to Leyden, where he found eon- 

venticles and schnapps. 

And then, of course, you know what 's 

next: it left the Dutchman's shore 
With those that in the Mayflower came, — 

a lmndred souls and more, — 
Along with all the furniture, to fill their 

new abodes. — 
To judge by what is still on hand, at least 

a hundred loads. 20 

'T was on a dreary winter's eve, the night 

was closing dim, 
When brave Miles Standish took the bowl, 

and filled it to the brim ; 
The little Captain stood and stirred the 

posset with his sword, 
And all his sturdy men-at-arms were 

ranged about the board. 

He poured the fiery Hollands in, — the 

man that never feared, — 
He took a long and solemn draught, and 

wiped his yellow beard; 
And one by one the musketeers — the men 

that fought and prayed — 
All drank as 't were their mother's milk, 

and not a man afraid. 

That night, affrighted from his nest, the 

screaming eagle flew, 
He heard the Pequot's ringing whoop, the 

soldier's wild halloo; 30 

And there the sachem learned the rule he 

taught to kith and kin: 
' Run from the white man when you find 

he smells of Holland's °-in ! ' 



hundred years, and fifty more, 
spread their leaves and snows, 



had 



A thousand rubs had flattened down each 

little cherub's nose. 
"When once again the bowl was filled, but 

not in mirth or joy, — 
T was mingled by a mother's hand to 

cheer her parting boy. 

Drink, John, she said, twill do you good, 

— pool child, you'll never bear 
This working in the dismal trench, out in 

the midnight air; 
And if — God bless me ! — you were hurt, 

'twould keep away the chill. 
So John did drink] — and well he wrought 

that night at Bunker's Hill ! <a 

I tell you, there was generous warmth in 

good old English cheer: 
I tell you, 't was a pleasant thought to 

bring its symbol here. 
'Tis but the fool that loves excess; hast 

thou a drunken soul ? 
Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my 

silver bowl ! 

I love the memory of the past, — its 

pressed yet fragrant flowers, — 
The moss that clothes its broken walls, the 

ivy on its towers; 
Nay, this poor bauble it bequeathed, — 

my eyes grow moist and dim, 
To think of all the vanished joys that 

danced around its brim. 

Then fill a fair and honest cup. and bear it 

straight to me; 
The goblet hallows all it holds, whate'er 

the liquid be; 50 

And may r the cherubs on its face protect 

me from the sin 
That dooms one to those dreadful words, 

— 'My dear, where have you 
been ? ' 

(1S48.) 



THE STETHOSCOPE SONG 

A PROFESSIONAL BALLAD 

There was a young man in Boston town, 
He bought him a stethoscope nice and 
new, 
All mounted and finished and polished 
down, 
With an ivory cap and a stopper too. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



361 



It happened a spider within did crawl, 
And spun him a weh of ample size, 

Wherein there chanced one day to fall 
A couple of very imprudent flies. 

The first was a bottle-fly, big and blue, 
The second was smaller, and thin and 
long; 10 

So there was a concert between the two, 
Like an octave flute and a tavern gong. 

Now being from Paris but recently, 

This fine young man would show his 
skill; 

And so they gave him, his hand to try, 
A hospital patient extremely ill. 

Some said that his liver was short of bile, 
And some that his heart was over size, 

While some kept arguing, all the while, 
He was crammed with tubercles up to his 
eyes. 20 

This fine young man then up stepped he, 
And all the doctors made a pause; 

Said he, The man must die, you see, 
By the fifty-seventh of Louis's laws. 

But since the case is a desperate one, 
To explore his chest it may be well; 

For if he should die and it were not done, 
you know the autopsy would not tell. 

Then out his stethoscope he took, 

And on it placed his curious ear; 30 

Mon Dieu ! said he, with a knowing look, 
Why, here • is a sound that 's mighty 
queer ! 

The bourdonnement is very clear, — 
Amphoric buzzing, as I 'm alive ! 

Five doctors took their turn to hear; 
A mphoric buzzing, said all the five. 

There 's empyema beyond a doubt; 

We '11 plunge a trocar in his side. 
The diagnosis was made out, — 

They tapped the patient; so he died. 4 o 

Now such as hate new-fashioned toys 

Began to look extremely glum ; 
They said that rattles were made for 
boys, 
And vowed that his buzzing was all a 
hum. 



There was an old lady had long been sick, 
And what was the matter none did 
know : 
Her pulse was slow, though her tongue was 
quick ; 
To her this knowing youth must go. 

So there the nice old lady sat, 

With phials and boxes all in a row; 50 
She asked the young doctor what he was 
at, 
To thump her and tumble her ruffles 
so. 

Now, when the stethoscope came out, 
The flies began to buzz and whiz: 

Oh, ho ! the matter is clear, no doubt; 
An aneurism there plainly is. 

The bruit de rape and the bruit de scie 
And the bruit de diable are all combined; 

How happy Bouillaud would be, 

If he a case like this could find ! 60 

Now, when the neighboring doctors found 
A case so rare had been descried, 

They every day her ribs did pound 
In squads of twenty; so she died. 

Then six young damsels, slight and frail, 
Received this kind young doctor's cares; 

They all were getting slim and pale, 
And short of breath on mounting stairs. 

They all made rhymes with ' sighs ' and 

'skies,' 

And loathed their puddings and buttered 

rolls, 70 

And dieted, much to their friends' surprise, 

On pickles and pencils and chalk and 

coals. 

So fast their little hearts did bound, 

The frightened insects buzzed the more; 

So over all their chests he found 
The rale sifflant and the rale sonore. 

He shook his head. There 's grave dis- 
ease, — 

I greatly fear you all must die; 
A slight post-mortem, if you please, 

Surviving friends would gratify. 80 

The six young damsels wept aloud, 
Which so prevailed on six young men 



362 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



That each his honest love avowed, 
Whereat they all got well again. 

This poor young man was all aghast; 

The price of stethoscopes came down; 
And so he was reduced at last 

To practise in a country town. 

The doctors being very sore, 

A stethoscope they did devise 90 

That had a rammer to clear the bore, 

With a knob at the end to kill the flies. 

Now use your ears, all you that can, 

But don't forget to mind your eyes, 
Or you may be cheated, like this young 
man, 
By a couple of silly, abnormal flies. 

(1848.) 



THE STATESMAN'S SECRET 1 

Who of all statesmen is his country's 

pride, 
Her councils' prompter and her leaders' 

guide ? 
He speaks; the nation holds its breath to 

hear; 
He nods, and shakes the sunset hemisphere. 
Born where the primal fount of Nature 

springs 
By the rude cradles of her throneless 

kings, 
In his proud eye her royal signet flames, 
By his own lips her Monarch she pro- 
claims. 
Why name his countless triumphs, whom 

to meet 
Is to be famous, envied in defeat ? 10 

The keen debaters, trained to brawls and 

strife, 
Who fire one shot, and finish with the 

knife, 
Tried him but once, and, cowering in their 

shame, 
Ground their hacked blades to strike at 

meaner game. 
The lordly chief, his party's central stay, 
Whose lightest word a hundred votes obey, 
Found a new listener seated at his side, 
Looked in his eye, and felt himself defied, 

1 Originally called ' The Disappointed Statesman.' 
See the notes on Emerson's ' Webster,' p. 61, and Whit- 
tier's ' Ichabod,' p. 282. 



Flung his rash gauntlet on the startled 

floor, 
Met the all - conquering, fought, — and 

ruled no more. 2 o 

See where he moves, what eager crowds 

attend ! 
What shouts of thronging multitudes as- 
cend ! 
If this is life, — to mark with every hour 
The purple deepening in his robes of 

power, 
To see the painted fruits of honor fall 
Thick at his feet, and choose among them 

all, 
To hear the sounds that shape his spread- 
ing name 
Peal through the myriad organ-stops of 

fame, 
Stamp the lone isle that spots the seaman's 

chart, 
And crown the pillared glory of the mart, 30 
To count as peers the few supremely 

wise 
Who mark their planet in the angels' 

eyes,— 
If this is life — 

What savage man is he 
Who strides alone beside the sounding 

sea? 
Alone he wanders by the murmuring shore, 
His thoughts as restless as the waves that 

roar; 
Looks on the sullen sky as stormy-browed 
As on the waves yon tempest-brooding 

cloud, 
Heaves from his aching breast a wailing 

sigh, 
Sad as the gust that sweeps the clouded 

sky. 40 

Ask him his griefs ; what midnight demons 

plough 
The lines of torture on his lofty brow; 
Unlock those marble lips, and bid them 

speak 
The mystery freezing in his bloodless 

cheek. 
His secret ? Hid beneath a flimsy word ; 
One foolish whisper that ambition heard; 
And thus it spake : ' Behold yon gilded 

chair, 
The world's one vacant throne, — thy place 

is there ! ' 
Ah, fatal dream ! What warning spec- 
tres meet 
In ghastly circle round its shadowy seat ! 50 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



363 



Yet still the Tempter murmurs in his 
ear 

The maddening taunt he cannot choose but 
hear: 

'Meanest of slaves, by gods and men ac- 
curst, 

He who is second when he might be first ! 

Climb with bold front the ladder's topmost 
roimd, 

Or chain thy creeping footsteps to the 
ground ! ' 
Illustrious Dupe ! Have those majestic 
eyes 

Lost their proud fire for such a vulgar 
prize? 

Art thou the last of all mankind to know 

That party-fights are won by aiming low? 

Thou, stamped by Nature with her royal 
sign, 61 

That party-hirelings hate a look like thine? 

Shake from thy sense the wild delusive 
dream ! 

Without the purple, art thou not su- 
preme ? 

And soothed by love unbought, thy heart 
shall own 

A nation's homage nobler than its throne ! 

1850? (1861.) 



AFTER A LECTURE ON WORDS- 
WORTH 1 

Come, spread your wings, as I spread mine, 

And leave the crowded hall 
For where the eyes of twilight shine 

O'er evening's western wall. 

These are the pleasant Berkshire hills, 

Each with its leafy crown; 
Hark ! from their sides a thousand rills 

Come singing sweetly down. 

A thousand rills; they leap and shine, 
Strained through the shadowy nooks, 10 

Till, clasped in many a gathering twine, 
They swell a hundred brooks. 

A hundred brooks, and still they run 
With ripple, shade, and gleam, 

1 This and the following poem were read by Holmes 
as postludes to lectures given by him at the Lowell 
Institute in Boston, in 1853, on English Poetry of the 
Nineteenth Century. Two years later Lowell lectured 
at the same Institute on English Poetry from its Origins 
to Wordsworth. 



Till, clustering all their braids in one, 
They flow a single stream. 

A bracelet spun from mountain mist, 

A silvery sash unwound, 
With ox-bow curve and sinuous twist 

It writhes to reach the Sound. 20 

This is my bark, — a pygmy's ship; 

Beneath a child it rolls; 
Fear not, — one body makes it dip, 

But not a thousand, souls. 

Float we the grassy banks between; 

Without an oar we glide; 
The meadows, drest in living green, 

Unroll on either side. 

Come, take the book we love so well, 
And let us read and dream 30 

We see whate'er its pages tell, 
And sail an English stream. 

Up to the clouds the lark has sprung, 

Still trilling as he flies ; 
The linnet sings as there he sung; 

The unseen cuckoo cries, 

And daisies strew the banks along, 

And yellow kingcups shine, 
With cowslips, and a primrose throng, 

And humble celandine. 40 

Ah foolish dream ! when Nature nursed 

Her daughter in the West, 
The fount was drained that opened first; 

She bared her other breast. 

On the young planet's orient shore 

Her morning hand she tried; 
Then turned the broad medallion o'er 

And stamped the sunset side. 

Take what she gives, her pine's tall stem, 
Her elm with hanging spray; 50 

She wears her mountain diadem 
Still in her own proud way. 

Look on the forests' ancient kings, 
The hemlock's towering pride: 

Yon trunk had thrice a hundred rings, 
And fell before it died. 

Nor think that Nature saves her bloom 
And slights our grassy plain; 



3 6 4 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



For us she wears her court costume, — 
Look on its broidered train; 60 

The lily with the sprinkled dots, 

Brands of the noontide beam; 
The cardinal, and the blood-red spots, 

Its double in the stream, 

As if some wounded eagle's breast, 

Slow throbbing o'er the plain, 
Had left its airy path impressed 

In drops of scarlet rain. 

And hark ! and hark ! the woodland rings ; 

There thrilled the thrush's soul; 70 

And look ! that flash of flamy wings, — 

The fire-plumed oriole ! 

Above, the hen-hawk swims and swoops, 
Flung from the bright, blue sky; 

Below, the robin hops, and whoops 
His piercing Indian cry. 

Beauty runs virgin in the woods 

Robed in her rustic green, 
And oft a longing thought intrudes, 

As if we might have seen 80 

Her every finger's every joint 
Ringed with some golden line, 

Poet whom Nature did anoint ! 
Had our wild home been thine. 

Yet think not so; Old England's blood 

Runs warm in English veins; 
But wafted o'er the icy flood 

Its better life remains: 

Our children know each wildwood smell, 
The bayberry and the fern, 90 

The man who does not know them well 
Is all too old to learn. 

Be patient ! On the breathing page 

Still pants our hurried past; 
Pilgrim and soldier, saint and sage, — 

The p'oet comes the last ! 

Tho\igh still the lark-voiced matins ring 
The world has known so long; 

The wood-thrush of the West shall sing 
Earth's last sweet even-song ! 100 

1S53. (1861.) 



AFTER A LECTURE ON SHELLEY 

One broad, white sail hi Spezzia's treacher- 
ous bay; 
On comes the blast; too daring bark, be- 
ware ! 
The cloud has clasped her; lo ! it melts 
away; 
The wide, waste waters, but no sail is 
there. 

Morning: a woman looking on the sea; 
Midnight: with lamps the long veranda 
burns; 
Come, wandering sail, they watch, they 
burn for thee ! 
Suns come and go, alas ! no bark returns. 

And feet are thronging on the pebbly 
sands, 
And torches flaring in the weedy caves, 10 
Where'er the waters lay with icy hands 
The shapes uplifted from their coral 
graves. 

Vainly they seek; the idle quest is o'er; 
The coarse, dark women, with their hang- 
ing locks, 

And lean, wild children gather from the 
shore 

To the black hovels bedded in the rocks. 

But Love still prayed, with agonizing wail, 

' One, one last look, ye heaving waters, 

yield ! ' 

Till Ocean, clashing in his jointed mail, 

Raised the pale burden on his level 

shield. 20 

Slow from the shore the sullen waves re- 
tire; 
His form a nobler element shall claim ; 
Nature baptized him in ethereal fire, 

And Death shall crown him with a wreath 
of flame. 

Fade, mortal semblance, never to return ; 

Swift is the change within thy crimson 
shroud; 
Seal the white ashes in the peaceful urn ; 

All else has risen in yon silvery cloud. 

Sleep where thy gentle Adonais lies, 

Whose open page lay on thy dying 
heart, 30 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



365 



Both in the smile of those blue-vaulted skies, 
Earth's fairest dome of all divinest art. 

Breathe for his wandering soul one passing 

si S h ' 
O happier Christian, while thine eye 

grows dim, — 

In all the mansions of the house on high, 

Say not that Mercy has not one for him ! 

1853. (1861.) 



THE HUDSON * 

AFTER A LECTURE AT ALBANY 

'T WAS a vision of childhood that came 

with its dawn, 
Ere the curtain that covered life's day-star 

was drawn; 
The nurse told the tale when the shadows 

grew long, 
And the mother's soft lullaby breathed it in 

song. 

' There flows a fair stream by the hills of 

the West,' — 
She sang to her boy as he lay on her breast; 
'Along its smooth margin thy fathers 

have played; 
Beside its deep waters their ashes are laid.' 

I wandered afar from the land of my birth, 
1 saw the old rivers, renowned upon earth, 
But fancy still painted that wide-flowing 

stream 
With the many-hued pencil of infancy's 

dream. 

I saw the green banks of the castle-crowned 

Rhine, 
Where the grapes drink the moonlight and 

change it to wine; 

1 See the notes on Whittier's ' The Last Walk in Au- 
tumn,' p. 292, and on Emerson's ' Written in Naples,' 
p. GO, and compare a recent sonnet on the Hudson by 
Mr. George S. Hellman : — 

Where in its old historic splendor stands 

The home of England's far-famed Parliament, 

And waters of the Thames in calm content 

At Knglund's fame flow slowly o'er their sands ; 

And where the Rhine past vine-entwined lands 

Courses in castled beauty, there I went ; 

And far to Southern rivers, flower-besprent ; 

And to the icy streams of Northern strands. 

Then mine own native shores I trod once more, 

And, gazing on thv waters' majesty, 

The memory, O Hudson, came to me 

Of one who went to seek the wide world o'er 

For Love, but found it not. Then home turned he 

And saw his mother waiting at the door. 



I stood by the Avon, whose waves as they 

glide 
Still whisper his glory who sleeps at their 

side. 

But my heart would still yearn for the 

sound of the waves 
That sing as they flow by my forefathers' 

graves; 
If manhood yet honors my cheek with a tear, 
I care not who sees it, — nor blush for it 

here ! 

Farewell to the deep-bosomed stream of 

the West ! 
I fling this loose blossom to float on its 

breast; 
Nor let the dear love of its children grow 

eold, 
Till the channel is dry where its waters 

have rolled ! 
1854. (1861.) 



TO AN ENGLISH FRIEND 

The seed that wasteful autumn cast 
To waver on its stormy blast, 
Long o'er the wintry desert tost, 
Its living germ has never lost. 
Dropped by the weary tempest's wing, 
It feels the kindling ray of spring, 
And, starting from its dream of death, 
Pours on the air its perfumed breath. 

So, parted by the rolling flood, 

The love that springs from common blood 

Needs but a single sunlit hour 

Of mingling smiles to bud and flower; 

Unharmed its slumbering life has flown, 

From shore to shore, from zone to zone, 

Where summer's falling roses stain 

The tepid waves of Pontchartrain, 

Or where the lichen creeps below 

Katahdin's wreaths of whirling snow. 

Though fiery sun and stiffening cold 
May change the fair ancestral mould, 
No winter chills, no summer drains 
The life-blood drawn from English veins, 
Still bearing wheresoe'er it flows 
The love that with its fountain rose, 
Unchanged by space, unwronged by time, 
From age to age, from clime to clime ! 

(1861.) 



366 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



THE OLD MAN DREAMS 1 

Oh for one hour of youtlif ul joy ! 

Give back iny twentieth spring ! 
I 'd rather laugh, a bright-haired boy, 

Than reign, a gray-beard king. 

Off with the spoils of wrinkled age ! 

Away with Learning's crown ! 
Tear out life's Wisdom-written page, 

And dash its trophies down ! 

One moment let my life-blood stream 
From boyhood's fount of flame ! 

Give me one giddy, reeling dream 
Of life all love and fame ! 



My listening angel heard the prayer, 

And, calmly smiling, said, 
' If I but touch thy silvered hair 

Thy hasty wish hath sped. 

' But is there nothing hi thy track 

To bid thee fondly stay, 
While the swift seasons hurry back 

To find the wished-for day ? ' 20 

• Ah, truest soul of womankind ! 

Without thee what were life ? 
One bliss I cannot leave behind : 

I '11 take — my — precious — wife ! ' 

The angel took a sapphire pen 

And wrote in rainbow dew, 
The man would be a boy again, 

And be a husband too ! 

1 And is there nothing yet unsaid, 

Before the change appears ? 30 

Remember, all their gifts have fled 
With those dissolving years.' 

' Why, yes; ' for memory would recall 

My fond paternal joys; 
4 1 could not bear to leave them all — 

I '11 take — my — girl — and — boys.' 

The smiling angel dropped his pen, — 

1 Why, this will never do ; 
The man would be a boy again, 

And be a father too ! ' 40 



1 Written for a reunion of Holmes's college class. 
See the note on ' The Boys,' p. 374. 



And so I laughed, — my laughter woke 
The household with its noise, — 

And wrote my dream, when morning broke, 
To please the gray-haired boys. 

1854. (1861.) 



BIRTHDAY OF DANIEL WEB- 
STER 

JANUARY l8, 1856 

When life hath run its largest round 
Of toil and triumph, joy and woe, 

How brief a storied page is found 
To compass all its outward show ! 

The world-tried sailor tires and droops ; 

His flag is rent, his keel forgot; 
His farthest voyages seem but loops 

That float from life's entangled knot. 

But when within the narrow space 

Some larger soul hath lived and 
wrought, 10 

Whose sight was open to embrace 

The boundless realms of deed and 
thought, — 

When, stricken by the freezing blast, 

A nation's living pillars fall, 
How rich the storied page, how vast, 

A word, a whisper, can recall ! 

No medal lifts its fretted face, 

Nor speaking marble cheats your eye, 

Yet, while these pictured lines I trace, 
A living image passes by: 20 

A roof beneath the mountain pines; 

The cloisters of a hill-girt plain; 
The front of life's embattled lines; 

A inound beside the heaving main. 

These are the scenes: a boy appears; 

Set life's round dial in the sun, 
Count the swift arc of seventy years, 

His frame is dust; his task is done. 

Yet pause upon the noontide hour, 

Ere the declining sun has laid 30 

His bleaching rays on manhood's power, 
And look upon the mighty shade. 

No gloom that stately shape can hide, 
No change uncrown its brow; behold ! 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



367 



Dark, calm, large-fronted, lightning-eyed, 
Earth has no double from its mould ! 

Ere from the fields by valor won 
The battle-smoke had rolled away, 

And bared the blood-red setting sun, 

His eyes were opened on the day. 40 

His land was but a shelving strip 

Black with the strife that made it free ; 

He lived to see its banners dip 
Their fringes in the Western sea. 

The boundless prairies learned Ins name, 
His words the mountain echoes knew. 

The Northern breezes swept his fame 
From icy lake to warm bayou. 

In toil he lived; in peace he died; 

When life's full cycle was complete 50 
Put off his robes of power and pride, 

And laid them at his Master's feet. 

His rest is by the storm-swept waves 

Whom life's wild tempests roughly tried, 

Whose heart was like the streaming caves 
Of ocean, throbbing at his side. 

Death's cold white hand is like the snow 
Laid softly on the furrowed hill, 

It hides the broken seams below, 

And leaves the summit brighter still. 60 

In vain the envious tongue upbraids ; 

His name a nation's heart shall keep 
Till morning's latest sunlight fades 

On the blue tablet of the deep ! 
1855-56. (1861.) 



FOR THE MEETING OF THE 
BURNS CLUB 

1856 

The mountains glitter in the snow 

A thousand leagues asunder; 
Yet here, amid the banquet's glow, 

I hear their voice of thunder; 
Each giant's ice-bound goblet clinks; 

A flowing stream is summoned; 
Wachusett to Ben Nevis drinks; 

Monadnock to Ben Lomond ! 

Though years have clipped the eagle's 
plume 



That crowned the chieftain's bonnet, 10 
The sun still sees the heather bloom, 

The silver mists lie on it; 
With tartan kilt and philibeg, 

What stride was ever bolder 
Than his who showed the naked leg 

Beneath the plaided shoulder ? • 

The echoes sleep on Cheviot's hills, 

That heard the bugles blowing 
When down their sides the crimson rills 

With mingled blood were flowing; 20 
The hunts where gallant hearts were 
game, 

The slashing on the border, 
The raid that swooped with sword and 
flame, 

Give place to ' law and order.' 

Not while the rocking steeples reel 

With midnight tocsins ringing, 
Not while the crashing war-notes peal, 

God sets his poets singing; 
The bird is silent in the night, 

Or shrieks a cry of warning 30 

While fluttering round the beacon-light, — 

But hear him greet the morning ! 

The lark of Scotia's morning sky ! 

Whose voice may sing his praises ? 
With Heaven's own sunlight in his eye, 

He walked among the daisies, 
Till through the cloud of fortune's wrong 

He soared to fields of glory; 
But left his land her sweetest song 

And earth her saddest story. 40 

'Tis not the forts the builder piles 

That chain the earth together ; 
The wedded crowns, the sister isles, 

Would laugh at such a tether; 
The kindling thought, the throbbing words, 

That set the pulses beating, 
Are stronger than the myriad swords 

Of mighty armies meeting. 

Thus while within the banquet glows, 

Without, the wild winds whistle, 50 

We drink a triple health, — the Rose, 

The Shamrock, and the Thistle ! 
Their blended hues shall never fade 

Till War has hushed his cannon, — 
Close-twined as ocean-currents braid 

The Thames, the Clyde, the Shannon ! 
1856. (1861.) 



368 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



LATTER-DAY WARNINGS 1 

When legislators keep the law, 

When banks dispense with bolts and locks, 
When berries — whortle, rasp, and straw — 

Grow bigger downwards through the 
box, — 

When he that selleth house or land 
Shows leak in roof or flaw in right, 

When haberdashers choose the stand 

Whose window hath the broadest light, — 

When preachers tell us all they think, 
And party leaders all they mean, — 10 

When what we pay for, that we drink, 
Froni real grape and coffee-bean, — 

When lawyers take what they would give, 
And doctors give what they would take, — 

When city fathers eat to live, 

Save when they fast for conscience' 
sake, — 

When one that hath a horse on sale 
Shall bring his merit to the proof, 

Without a lie for every nail 

That holds the iron on the hoof, — 20 

When in the usual place for rips 

Our gloves are stitched with special care, 

And guarded well the whalebone tips 
Where first umbrellas need repair, — 

When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot 
The power of suction to resist, 

And claret-bottles harbor not 

Such dimples as would hold your fist, — 

When publishers no longer steal, 

And pay for what they stole before, — 30 

When the first locomotive's wheel 

Rolls through the Hoosac Tunnel's 
bore ; — 

Till then let dimming blaze away, 
And Miller's saints blow up the globe; 

But when you see that blessed day, 
Then order your ascension robe ! 

1857. 

1 I should have felt more nervous about the late 
comet, if I had thought the world was ripe. But it is 
very green yet, if I am not mistaken ; and besides, 
there is a great deal of coal to use up, which I cannot 
bring myself to think was made for nothing. . . . 
(Holmes, introducing the poem, in the Autocrat of the 
Breakfast Table.) 

This and the six following poems first appeared in 
the Autocrat papers, in the Atlantic Monthly. 



THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS 2 

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 
Sails the unshadowed mam, — 
The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled 

wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, 

And coral reefs lie bare, 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their 
streaming hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; 
Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 
And every chambered cell, 10 

Where its dim dreaming life was wont to 

dwell, 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing 
shell, 
Before thee lies revealed, — 
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt un- 
sealed ! 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 
That spread his lustrous coil; 
Still, as the spiral grew, 
He left the past year's dwelling for the 

new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway 
through, 
Built up its idle door, 20 

Stretched in his last-found home, and knew 
the old no more. 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought 
by thee, 
Child of the wandering sea, 
Cast from her lap, forlorn ! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 

While on mine ear it rings, 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear 
a voice that sings: — 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my 
soul, 
As the swift seasons roll ! 30 

Leave thy low- vaulted past ! 

Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 

2 Suggested by looking at a section of one of those 
chambered shells to which is given the name of Pearly 
Nautilus. . . . If you will look into RogeVs Bridgetvater 
Treatise you will find a figure of one of these shells and 
a section of it. The last will show you the series of en- 
larging compartments successively dwelt in by the ani- 
mal that inhabits the shell, which is built in a widening 
spiral. (Holmes, in the Autocrat.) 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



369 



Shut thee from heaven with a dome more 
vast, 
Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell hy life's un- 
resting sea ! 

1858. 



THE LIVING TEMPLE 1 

Not in the world of light alone, 
Where God has built his blazing throne, 
Nor yet alone in earth below, 
With belted seas that come and go, 
And endless isles of sunlit green, 
Is all thy Maker's glory seen: 
Look in upon thy wondrous frame, — 
Eternal wisdom still the same ! 

The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves 
Flows murmuring through its hidden 
caves, 10 

Whose streams of brightening purple rush, 
Fired with a new and livelier blush, 
While all their burden of decay 
The ebbing current steals away, 
And red with Nature's flame they start 
From tbe warm foim tains of the heart. 

No rest that throbbing slave may ask, 
Forever quivering o'er his task, 
While far and wide a crimson jet 
Leaps forth to fill the woven net 20 

Which in unnumbered crossing tides 
The flood of burning life divides, 
Then, kindling each decaying part, 
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart. 

But warmed with that unchanging flame 

Behold the outward moving frame, 

Its living marbles jointed strong 

With glistening band and silvery thong, 

And linked to reason's guiding reins 

By myriad rings in trembling chains, 30 

Each graven with the threaded zone 

Which claims it as the master's own. 

See how yon beam of seeming white 
Is braided out of seven-hued light, 

1 Having read our company so much of the Profes- 
sor's talk about age and other subjects connected 
with physical life, I took the next Sunday morning to 
repeat to them the following poem of his,"which I have 
had by me for some time. He calls it — I suppose for 
his professional friends — ' The Anatomist's Hymn,' 
but I shall name it ' The Living Temple.' (Holmes, in- 
troducing the poem, in the Autocrat.) 



Yet in those lucid globes no ray 
By any chance shall break astray. 
Hark how the rolling surge of sound, 
Arches and spirals circling round, 
Wakes the hushed spirit through thine 

ear 
With music it is heaven to hear. 4 o 

Then mark the cloven sphere that holds 
All thought in its mysterious folds ; 
That feels sensation's faintest thrill, 
And flashes forth the sovereign will; 
Think on the stormy world that dwells 
Locked in its dim and clustering cells ! 
The lightning gleams of power it sheds 
Along its hollow glassy threads ! 

O Father ! grant thy love divine 
To make these mystic temples thine ! 50 
When wasting age and wearying strife 
Have sapped the leaning walls of life, 
When darkness gathers over all, 
And the last tottering pillars fall, 
Take the poor dust thy mercy warms, 
And mould it into heavenly forms ! 

1858. 



THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE 

OR, THE WONDERFUL ' ONE-HOSS SHAY ' 
A LOGICAL STORY 

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss 

shay, 
That was built in such a logical way 
It ran a hundred years to a day, 
And then, of a sudden, it — ah, but stay, 
I '11 tell you what happened without delay, 
Scaring the parson into fits, 
Frightening people out of their wits, — 
Have you ever heard of that, I say ? 

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. 
Georgius Secundus was then alive, — i 

Snuffy old drone from the German hive. 
That was the year when Lisbon-town 
Saw the earth open and gulp her down, 
And Braddock's army was done so brown, 
Left without a scalp to its crown. 
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day 
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay. 

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, 
There is always somewhere a weakest spot, — 



37° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, 20 

In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, 

In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking 

still, 
Find it somewhere you must and will, — 
Above or below, or within or without, — 
And that 's the reason, beyond a doubt, 
That a chaise breaks down, but does n't wear 

out. 

But the Deacon swore (as deacons do, 
With an ' I dew vum,' or an ' I tell yeou ') 
He would build one shay to beat the taown 
'N' the keounty '11' all the kentry raoun' ; 30 
It should be so built that it could n' break 

daown: 
' Fur,' said the Deacon, ' 't 's mighty plain 
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the 

strain; 
'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, 

Is only jest 
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest.' 

So the Deacon inquired of the village 

folk 
Where he could find the strongest oak, 
That could n't be split nor bent nor broke, — 
That was for spokes and floor and sills ; 40 
He sent for lancewood to make the thills; 
The crossbars were ash, from the straight- 

est trees, 
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like 

cheese, 
But lasts like iron for things like these ; 
The hubs of logs from the 'Settler's el- 

lum,' — 
Last of its timber, — they could n't sell 'em, 
Never an axe had seen their chips, 
And the wedges flew from between their 

Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; 
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, 50 

Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, 
Steel of the finest, bright and blue ; 
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; 
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide 
Found in the pit when the tanner died. 
That was the way he ' put her through.' 
' There ! ' said the Deacon, ' naow she '11 
dew!' 

Do ! I tell you, I rather guess 
She was a wonder, and nothing less ! 
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, 60 
Deacon and deaconess dropped away, 



Children and grandchildren — where were 

they? 
But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay 
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day ! 

Eighteen hundred; — it came and found 
The Deacon's masterpiece strong and 

sound. 
Eighteen hundred increased by ten; — 
' Hahnsum kerridge ' they called it then. 
Eighteen hundred and twenty came ; — 
Running as usual; much the same.. 70 

Thirty and forty at last arrive, 
And then come fifty, and fifty-five. 

Little of all we value here 
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year 
Without both feeling and looking queer. 
In fact, there 's nothing that keeps its youth, 
So far as I know, but a tree and truth. 
(This is a moral that runs at large ; 
Take it. — You 're welcome. — No extra 
charge.) 

First of November, — the earthquake- 
day, — 80 
There are traces of age in the one-hoss 

shay, 
A general flavor of mild decay, 
But nothing local, as one may say. 
There could n't be, — for the Deacon's art 
Had made it so like in every part 
That there wasn't a chance for one to 

start. 
For the wheels were just as strong as the 

thills, 
And the floor was just as strong as the 

sills, 
And the panels just as strong as the floor, 
And the whipple-tree neither less nor more, 
And the back crossbar as strong as the 
fore, 91 

And spring and axle and hub encore. 
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt 
In another hour it will be worn out ! 

First of November, 'Fifty-five ! 
This morning the parson takes a drive. 
Now, small boys, get out of the way ! 
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. 
' Huddup ! ' said the parson. — Off went 

they. 100 

The parson was working his Sunday's 

text, — 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



37i 



Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed 
At what the — Moses — was coming next. 
All at once the horse stood still, 
Close by the meet'n' -house on the hill. 
First a shiver, and then a thrill, 
Then something decidedly like a spill, — 
And the parson was sitting upon a rock, 
At half past nine by the meet'n'-house 

clock, — 
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock ! 1 10 
What do you think the parson found, 
When he got up and stared around ? 
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, 
As if it had been to the mill and ground ! 
You see, of course, if you 're not a dunce, 
How it went to pieces all at once, — 
All at once, and nothing first, — 
Just as bubbles do when they burst. 



End of the wonderful one-hoss shay 
Logic is logic. That 's all I say. 



120 

1858. 



CONTENTMENT 

' Man wants but little here below.' 

Little I ask; my wants are few; 

I only wish a hut of stone 
(A very plain brown stone will do) 

That I may call my own ; — 
And close at hand is such a one, 
In yonder street that fronts the sun. 

Plain food is quite enough for me; 

Three courses are as good as ten ; — 
If Nature can subsist on three, 

Thank Heaven for three. Amen ! 10 

I always thought cold victual nice ; — 
My choice would be vanilla-ice. 

I care not much for gold or land; — 
Give me a mortgage here and there, — 

Some good bank-stock, some note of hand, 
Or trifling railroad share, — 

I only ask that Fortune send 

A little more than I shall spend. 

Honors are silly toys, I know, 

And titles are but empty names; 20 

I would, perhaps, be Plenipo, — 

But only near St. James; 
I 'm very sure I should not care 
To fill our Gubernator's chair. 

Jewels are baubles; 't is a sin 

To care for such unfruitful things; — 



One good-sized diamond in a pin, — 

Some, not so large, in rings, — 
A ruby, and a pearl, or so, 
Will do for me ; — I laugh at show. 30 

My dame should dress in cheap attire 
(Good, heavy silks are never dear) ; — 

I own perhaps I might desire 

Some shawls of true Cashmere, — 

Some marrowy crapes of China silk, 

Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk. 

I would not have the horse I drive 

So fast that folks must stop and stare ; 

An easy gait — two forty-five — 

Suits me ; I do not care ; — 40 

Perhaps, for just a single spurt, 

Some seconds less would do no hurt. 

Of pictures, I should like to own 

Titians and Raphaels three or four, — 

I love so much their style and tone, 
One Turner, and no more 

(A landscape, — foreground golden dirt, — 

The sunshine painted with a squirt). 

Of books but few, — some fifty score 

For daily use, and bound for wear ; 50 

The rest upon an upper floor; — 
Some little luxury there 

Of red morocco's gilded gleam 

And vellum rich as country cream. 

Busts, cameos, gems, — such things as 
these, 

Which others often show for pride, 
/ value for their power to please, 

And selfish churls deride; — 
One Stradivarius, I confess, 
Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess. 60 

Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn, 
Nor ape the glittering upstart fool ; — 

Shall not carved tables serve my turn, 
But all must be of buhl ? 

Give grasping pomp its double share, — 

I ask but one recumbent chair. 

Thus humble let me live and die, 
Nor long for Midas' golden touch; 

If Heaven more generous gifts deny, 
I shall not miss them much, — 70 

Too grateful for the blessing lent 

Of simple tastes and mind content ! 

1858. 



37 2 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY 

OR, THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR 
A MATHEMATICAL STORY 

Facts respecting an old arm-chair, 

At Cambridge. Is kept in the College 

there. 
Seems but little the worse for wear. 
That 's remarkable when I say 
It was old in President Holyoke's day. 
(One of his boys, perhaps you know, 
Died, at one hundred, years ago.) 
He took lodgings for ram or shine 
Under green bed-clothes in '69. 

Know old Cambridge? Hope you do. — 10 
Born there? Don't say so ! I was, too. 
(Born in a house with a gambrel-roof , — 
Standing still, if you must have proof. — 
' Gambrel ? — Gambrel ? ' — Let me beg 
You '11 look at a horse's hinder leg, — 
First great angle above the hoof, — 
That 's the gambrel : hence gambrel- 
roof.) 
Nicest place that ever was seen, — 
Colleges red and Common green, 
Sidewalks brownish with trees between. 20 
Sweetest spot beneath the skies 
When the canker-worms don't rise, — 
When the dust, that sometimes flies 
Into your mouth and ears and eyes, 
In a quiet slumber lies, 
Not in the shape of unbaked pies 
Such as barefoot children prize. 

A kind of harbor it seems to be, 
Facing the flow of a boundless sea. 
Rows of gray old Tutors stand 30 

Ranged like rocks above the sand; 
Rolling beneath them, soft and green, 
Breaks the tide of bright sixteen, — 
One wave, two waves, three waves, four, — 
Sliding up the sparkling floor: 
Then it ebbs to flow no more, 
Wandering off from shore to shore 
With its freight of golden ore ! 
Pleasant place for boys to play; — 
Better keep your girls away ; 40 

Hearts get rolled as pebbles do 
Which countless fingering waves pursue, 
And every classic beach is strown 
With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red 
stone. 



But this is neither here nor there; 

I 'm talking about an old arm-chair. 

You 've heard, no doubt, of Parson Tu- 

rell? 
Over at Medf ord he used to dwell ; 
Married one of the Mathers' folk; 
Got with his wife a chair of oak, — 50 

Funny old chair with seat like wedge, 
Sharp behind and broad front edge, — 
One of the oddest of human things, 
Turned all over with knobs and rings, — 
But heavy, and wide, and deep, and 

grand, — 
Fit for the worthies of the land, — 
Chief Justice Sewall a cause to try in, 
Or Cotton Mather to sit — and lie — 

in. 
Parson Turell bequeathed the same 
To a certain student, — Smith by name; 60 
These were the terms, as we are told: 
' Saide Smith saide Chaire to have and 

holde ; 
When he doth graduate, then to passe 
To y e oldest Youth hi y e Senior Classe. 
On payment of ' — (naming a certain 

sum) — 
' By him to whom y e Chaire shall come ; 
He to y e oldest Senior next, 
And soe forever ' (thus runs the text), — 
' But one Crown lesse than he gave to 

claime, 
That being his Debte for use of same.' 70 

Smith transferred it to one of the Browns, 
And took his money, — five silver crowns. 
Brown delivered it up to Moore, 
Who paid, it is plain, not five, but four. 
Moore made over the chair to Lee, 
Who gave him crowns of silver three. 
Lee conveyed it unto Drew, 
And now the payment, of course, was two. 
Drew gave up the chair to Dunn, — 
All he got, as you see, was one. 80 

Dunn released the chair to Hall, 
And got by the bargain no crown at all. 

And now it passed to a second Brown, 
Who took it and likewise claimed a crown. 
When Brown conveyed it unto Ware, 
Having had one crown, to make it fair, 
He paid him two crowns to take the chair; 
And Ware, being honest (as all Wares be), 
He paid one Potter, who took it, three. 
Four got Robinson; five got Dix; 90 

Johnson primus demanded six; 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



373 



And so the sum kept gathering still 
Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill. 

When paper money became so cheap, 
Folks would n't count it, but said ' a heap,' 
A certain Richards, — the books de- 
clare 
(A. M. in '90 ? I 've looked with care 
Through the Triennial, — name not there), — 
This person, Richards, was offered then 
Eightscore pounds, but would have ten; 100 
Nine, I think, was the sum he took, — 
Not quite certain, — but see the book. 
By and by the wars were still, 
But nothing had altered the Parson's will. 
The old arm-chair was solid yet, 
But saddled with such a monstrous debt ! 
Things grew quite too bad to bear, 
Paying such sums to get rid of the chair ! 
But dead men's fingers hold awful tight, 
And there was the will in black and white, 
Plain enough for a child to spell. m 

What should be done no man could tell, 
For the chair was a kind of nightmare 

curse, 
And every season but made it worse. 

As a last resort, to clear the doubt, 
They got old Governor Hancock out. 
The Governor came with his Lighthorse 

Troop 
And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a- 
hoop; 
Halberds glittered and colors flew, 
French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, 
The yellow fifes whistled between their 

teeth, 121 

And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed 

beneath; 
So he rode with all his band, 
Till the President met him, cap in hand. 
The Governor ' hefted ' the crowns, and 

said, — 
' A will is a will, and the Parson 's dead.' 
The Governor hefted the crowns. Said 

he, — 
' There is your p'int. And here 's my fee. 
These are the terms you must fulfil, — 
On such conditions I break the will ! ', 3 o 
The Governor mentioned what these should 

be. 
(Just wait a minute and then you '11 see.) 
The President prayed. Then all was still, 
And the Governor rose and broke the 

will ! 



' About those conditions ? ' Well, now you 

go 
And do as I tell you, and then you '11 know. 
Once a year, on Commencement day, 
If you '11 only take the pains to stay, 
You '11 see the President in the Chair, 
Likewise the Governor sitting there. i 4 o 
The President rises; both old and young 
May hear his speech in a foreign tongue, 
The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear, 
Is this : Can I keep this old arm-chair ? 
And then his Excellency bows, 
As much as to say that he allows. 
The Vice-Gub. next is called by name; 
He bows like t' other, which means the 

same. 
And all the officers round 'em bow, 
As much as to say that they allow. i 5 o 

And a lot of parchments about the chair 
Are handed to witnesses then and there, 
And then the lawyers hold it clear 
That the chair is safe for another year. 

God bless you, Gentlemen ! Learn to give 

Money to colleges while you live. 

Don't be silly and think you '11 try 

To bother the colleges, when you die, 

With codicil this, and codicil that, 

That Knowledge may starve while Law 

grows fat; 160 

For there never was pitcher that would n't 

spill, 
And there 's always a flaw in a donkey's 

will! 

1858. 



THE VOICELESS 

We count the broken lyres that rest 

Where the sweet wailing singers slum- 
ber, 
But o'er their silent sister's breast 

The wild-flowers who will stoop to num- 
ber ? 
A few can touch the magic string, 

And noisy Fame is proud to win them: — 
Alas for those that never sing, 

But die with all their music in them ! 

Nay, grieve not for the dead alone 

Whose song has told their hearts' sad 
story, — 

Weep for the voiceless, who have known 
The cross without the crown of glory ! 



374 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Not where Leucadian breezes sweep 
O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, 

But where the glistening night-dews weep 
On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow. 

O hearts that break and give no sign 

Save whitening lip and fading tresses, 
Till Death pours out his longed-for wine 

Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing 
presses, — 
If singing breath or echoing chord 

To every hidden pang were given, 
What endless melodies were poured, 

As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven ! 

1858. 

FOR THE BURNS CENTENNIAL 
CELEBRATION 

JANUARY 25, 1859 

His birthday. — Nay, we need not speak 
The name each heart is beating, — 

Each glistening eye and flushing cheek 
In bght and flame repeating ! 

We come in one tumultuous tide, — 

One surge of wild emotion, — 
As crowding through the Frith of Clyde 

Rolls in the Western Ocean; 

As when yon cloudless, quartered moon 
Hangs o'er each storied river, 10 

The swelling breasts of Ayr and Doon 
With sea-green wavelets quiver. 

The century shrivels like a scroll, — 
The past becomes the present, — 

And face to face, and soul to soul, 
We greet the monarch-peasant. 

While Shenstone strained in feeble flights 

With Corydon and Phillis, — 
While Wolfe was climbing Abraham's 
heights 

To snatch the Bourbon lilies, — 20 

Who heard the wailing infant's cry, 
The babe beneath the sheeling, 

Whose song to-night in every sky 
Will shake earth's starry ceiling, — 

Whose passion-breathing voice ascends 
And floats like incense o'er us, 

Whose ringing lay of friendship blends 
With labor's anvil chorus ? 



We love him, not for sweetest song, 

Though never tone so tender; 30 

We love him, even in his wrong, — 
His wasteful self-surrender. 

We praise him, not for gifts divine, — 
His Muse was born of woman, — 

His manhood breathes in every bine, — 
Was ever heart more human ? 

We love him, praise him, just for this: 

In every form and feature, 
Through wealth and want, through woe 
and bliss, 

He saw his fellow-creature ! 40 

No soul could sink beneath his love, — 

Not even angel blasted; 
No mortal power could soar above 

The pride that all outlasted ! 

Ay ! Heaven had set one living man 
Beyond the pedant's tether, — 

His virtues, frailties, He may scan, 
Who weighs them all together ! 



I fling my pebble on the cairn 
Of him, though dead, undying; 

Sweet Nature's nursling, bonniest bairn 
Beneath her daisies lying. 



s° 



The waning suns, the wasting globe, 
Shall spare the minstrel's story, — 

The centuries weave his purple robe, 
The mountain-mist of glory ! 

1859. (1861.) 

THE BOYS 1 

Has there any old fellow got mixed with 

the boys ? 
If there has, take him out, without making 



1 For nearly forty years, from 1851 to 1889, Holmes 
never failed to bring a poem to the annual reunion of 
his college class. These poems, merely ' occasional,' 
and local as they were in origin, form a section in his 
collected works which is perhaps the most important, 
and, except for his best humorous narratives and his 
two finest lyrics, the most likely to survive ; for, with 
all Holmes's characteristic wit and humor, they cele- 
brate feelings that are broadly and typically American 
— class loyalty and college loyalty, and growing out of 
these, the loyalty of man's enduring friendship, and 
loyalty to country. 

The ' famous class of '29 ' counted among its members 
a chief-justice of Massachusetts, George T. Bigelow 
(the ' Judge ' of this poem) ; a justice of the United 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



375 



Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Cata- 
logue's spite ! 

Old Time is a liar ! We 're twenty to- 
night ! 

We 're twenty ! We 're twenty ! Who 

says we are more ? 
He 's tipsy, — young jackanapes ! — show 

him the door ! 
1 Gray temples at twenty ? ' — Yes ! white 

if we please ; 
Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there 's 

nothing can freeze ! 

Was it snowing I spoke of ? Excuse the 

mistake ! 
Look close, — you will see not a sign of a 

flake ! 10 

We want some new garlands for those we 

have shed, — 
And these are white roses in place of the 

red. 

We 've a trick, we young fellows, you may 

have been told, 
Of talking (in public) as if we were old: — 
That boy we call ' Doctor,' and this we call 

' Judge ; ' 
It 's a neat little fiction, — of course it 's all 

fudge. 

That fellow 's the ' Speaker,' 1 — the one on 

the right; 
' Mr. Mayor,' 2 my young one, how are you 

to-night ? 
That 's our ' Member of Congress,' 8 we say 

when we chaff; 
There 's the ' Reverend ' What 's his name ? 

— don't make me laugh. 20 

That boy with the grave mathematical look 
Made believe he had written a wonderful 

book, 
And the Royal Society thought it was 

true ! 
So they chose him right in; a good joke it 

was, too ! 

States Supreme Court, B. R. Curtis (the ' boy with the 
three-decker brain'); the great preacher, James Free- 
man Clarke ; Professor Benjamin Peirce (' that boy 
with the grave mathematical look ') ; and the author 
of ' America,' S. F. Smith. For a full list of members 
of the class, see the Cambridge Edition of Holmes's 
Poetical Works, p. 340. 

1 Hon. Francis B. Crowninshield, Speaker of the 
Massachusetts House of Representatives. 

2 G. W. Richardson, of Worcester, Massachusetts. 
8 Hon. George L. Davis. 



There 's a boy, we pretend, with a three- 
decker brain, 

That could harness a team with a logical 
chain; 

When he spoke for our manhood in syl- 
labled fire, 

We called him ' The Justice,' but now he 's 
1 The Squire.' 

And there 's a nice youngster of excellent 

pith, — 
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him 

Smith; 30 

But he shouted a song for the brave and 

the free, — 
Just read on his medal, ' My country,' ' of 

thee ! ' 

You hear that boy laughing ? — You think 

he 's all fun; 
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he 

has done; 
The children laugh loud as they troop to 

his call, 
And the poor man that knows him laughs 

loudest of all ! 

Yes, we 're boys, — always playing with 

tongue or with pen, — 
And I sometimes have asked, — Shall we 

ever be men ? 
Shall we always be youthful, and laughing, 

and gay, 
Till the last dear companion drops smiling 

away ? 40 

Then here 's to our boyhood, its gold and 
its gray ! 

The stars of its winter, the dews of its 
May! 

And when we have done with our life-last- 
ing toys, 

Dear Father, take care of thy children, 
the Boys ! 

1859. 1859. 



AT A MEETING OF FRIENDS 

AUGUST 29, 1859 * 

I remember — why, yes ! God bless me ! 

and was it so long ago ? 
I fear I 'm growing forgetful, as old folks 

do, you know; 

* Holmes's fiftieth birthday. 



376 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



It must have been in 'forty — I would say 

'thirty-nine — 
We talked this matter over, I and a friend 

of mine. 

He said, ' Well now, old fellow, I 'm 

thinking that you and I, 
If we act like other people, shall be older 

by and by; 
What though the bright blue ocean is 

smooth as a pond can be, 
There is always a line of breakers to fringe 

the broadest sea. 

* We 're taking it mighty easy, but that is 

nothing strange, 
For up to the age of thirty we spend our 

years like change; 10 

But creeping up towards the forties, as fast 

as the old years fill, 
And Time steps in for payment, we seem to 

change a bill.' 

'I know it,' I said, 'old fellow; you speak 

the solemn truth; 
A man can't live to a hundred and likewise 

keep his youth; 
But what if the ten years coming shall 

silver-streak my hair, 
You know I shall then be forty; of course 

I shall not care. 

• At forty a man grows heavy and tired of 

fun and noise; 
Leaves dress to the five-and-twenties and 

love to the silly boys; 
No foppish tricks at forty, no pinching of 

waists and toes, 
But high-low shoes and flannels and good 

thick worsted hose.' 20 

But one fine August morning I found my- 
self awake: 

My birthday: — By Jove, I 'm forty ! Yes, 
forty and no mistake ! 

Why, this is the very milestone, I think I 
used to hold, 

That when a fellow had come to, a fellow 
would then be old ! 

But that is the young folks' nonsense; 

they 're full of their foolish stuff ; 
A man 's in his prime at forty, — I see that 

plain enough; 



At fifty a man as wrinkled, and may be bald 

or gray ; 
I call men old at fifty, in spite of all they 

say. 

At last comes another August with mist 
and rain and shine ; 

Its mornings are slowly counted and creep 
to twenty-nine, 30 

And when on the western summits the fad- 
ing light appears, 

It touches with rosy fingers the last of my 
fifty years. 

There have been both men and women 

whose hearts were firm and bold, 
But there never was one of fifty that loved 

to say ' I'm old;' 
So any elderly person that strives to shirk 

his years, 
Make him stand up at a table and try him 

by his peers. 

Now here I stand at fifty, my jury gathered 

round; 
Sprinkled with dust of. silver, but not yet 

silver-crowned, 
Ready to meet your verdict, waiting to hear 

it told; 
Guilty of fifty summers; speak ! Is the 

verdict old? 40 

No ! say that his hearing fails him; say 

that his sight grows dim ; 
Say that he 's getting wrinkled and weak in 

back and limb, 
Losing his wits and temper, but pleading, 

to make amends, 
The youth of his fifty summers he finds in 

his twenty friends. 
1850. (1877.) 

THE TWO STREAMS 1 

Behold the rocky wall 
That down its sloping sides 
Pours the swift ram-drops, blending, as 
they fall, 
In rushing river-tides ! 

Yon stream, whose sources run 
Turned by a pebble's edge, 

1 This and. the three following poems are from the 
Professor at the Breakfast Table. ' The Boys ' also is 
included in that volume. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



377 



Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun 
Through the cleft mountain-ledge. 

The slender rill had strayed, 
But for the slanting stone, 
To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid 
Of foam-flecked Oregon. 

So from the heights of Will 
Life's parting stream descends, 
And, as a moment turns its slender rill, 
Each widening torrent bends, — 

From the same cradle's side, 
From the same mother's knee, — 
One to long darkness and the frozen tide, 
One to the Peaceful Sea ! 

1859. 

UNDER THE VIOLETS 

Her hands are cold; her face is white; 
No more her pulses come and go; 

Her eyes are shut to life and light; — 
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow, 
And lay her where the violets blow. 

But not beneath a graven stone, 
To plead for tears with alien eyes; 

A slender cross of wood alone 
Shall say, that here a maiden lies 
In peace beneath the peaceful skies. 10 

And gray old trees of hugest limb 

Shall wheel their circling shadows round 

To make the scorching sunlight dim 

That drinks the greenness from the 

ground, 
And drop their dead leaves on her mound. 

When o'er their boughs the squirrels run, 
And through their leaves the robins call, 

And, ripening in the autumn sun, 
The acorns and the chestnuts fall, 
Doubt not that she will heed them all. 20 

For her the morning choir shall sing 
Its matins from the branches high, 

And every minstrel-voice of Spring, 
That trills beneath the April sky, 
Shall greet her with its earliest cry. 

When, turning round their dial-track, 

Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, 
Her little mourners, clad in black, 



The crickets, sliding through the grass, 
Shall pipe for her an evening mass. 30 

At last the rootlets of the trees 

Shall find the prison where she lies, 

And bear the buried dust they seize 
In leaves and blossoms to the skies. 
So may the soul that warmed it rise ! 

If any, born of kindlier blood, 

Should ask, What maiden lies below ? 

Say only this: A tender bud, 

That tried to blossom in the snow, 
Lies withered where the violets blow. 40 

1859. 

HYMN OF TRUST 

Love Divine, that stooped to share 
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear, 

On Thee we cast each earth-born care, 
We smile at pain while Thou art near !* 

Though long the weary way we tread, 
And sorrow crown each lingering year, 

No path we shun, no darkness dread, 

Our hearts still whispering, Thou art 



When drooping pleasure turns to grief, 
And trembling faith is changed to fear, 

The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf, 
Shall softly tell us, Thou art near ! 

On Thee we fling our burdening woe, 

O Love Divine, forever dear, 
Content to suffer while we know, 

Living and dying, Thou art near ! 

1859. 



A SUN-DAY HYMN 

Lord of all being ! throned afar, 
Thy glory flames from sun and star; 
Centre and soul of every sphere, 
Yet to each loving heart how near ! 

Sun of our life, thy quickening ray 
Sheds on our path the glow of day; 
Star of our hope, thy softened light 
Cheers the long watches of the night. 

Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn; 
Our noontide is thy gracious dawn; 



37S 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign; 
All, save the clouds of sin, are thine ! 

Lord of all life, below, above, 

Whose bight is truth, whose warmth is 

love, 
Before thy ever-blazing throne 
We ask no lustre of our own. 

Grant us thy truth to make us free, 
And kindling hearts that burn for thee, 
Till all thy living altars claim 
One holv light, one heavenly flame ! 

1859. 



PROLOGUE TO 'SONGS IN 
MANY KEYS' 

The piping of our slender, peacefid reeds 
Whispers uncared for while the trumpets 

bray; 
Song is thin air; our hearts' exulting play 
Beats time but to the tread of marching 

deeds, 
Following the mighty van that Freedom 

leads, 
Her glorious standard flaming to the day ! 
The crimsoned pavement where a hero 

bleeds 
Breathes nobler lessons than the poet's lay. 
Strong arms, broad breasts, brave hearts, 

are better worth 
Than strains that sing the ravished echoes 

dumb. 
Hark ! 't is the loud reverberating drum 
Rolls o'er the prairied West, the rock-boimd 

North: 
The myriad-handed Future stretches forth 
Its shadowy palms. Bebold, we come, — 

we come ! 

Turn o'er these idle leaves. Such toys as 

these 
Were not unsought for, as, in languid 

dreams, 
We lay beside our lotus-feeding streams, 
And nursed our fancies in forgetful ease. 
It matters little if they pall or please, 
Dropping untimely, while the sudden 

gleams 
Glare from the mustering clouds whose 

blackness seems 
Too swollen to hold its lightning from the 

trees. 



Yet, in some lull of passion, when at last 
These ealni revolving moons that come and 

go- 
Turning our months to years, they creep so 

slow — 
Have brought us rest, the not unwelcome 

past 
May flutter to thee through these leaflets, 

cast 
On the wild winds that all around us blow. 
1S61. 1SG1. 



BROTHER JONATHAN'S LAMENT 
FOR SISTER CAROLINE 

MARCH 25, lS6l 

She has gone, — she has left us in passion 
and pride, — 

Our stormy-browed sister, so long at our 
side ! 

She has torn her own star from our firma- 
ment's glow, 

And turned on her brother the face of a foe ! 

Oh, Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun, 
We can never forget that our hearts have 

been one, — 
Our foreheads both sprinkled in Liberty's 

name, 
From the fountain of blood with the finger 

of flame ! 

You were always too ready to fire at a 

touch; 
But we said, ' She is hasty, — she does not 

mean much.' 10 

We have scowled, when you uttered some 

turbulent threat; 
But Friendship "still whispered, 'Forgive 

and forget ! ' 

Has our love all died out ? Have its altars 

grown cold ? 
Has the curse come at last which the fathers 

foretold ? 
Then Nature must teach us the strength of 

the chain » 

That her petulant children would sever in 

vain. 

They may fight till the buzzards are gorged 

with their spoil, 
Till the harvest grows black as it rots in 

the soilj 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



379 



Till the wolves and the catamounts troop 

from their caves, 
And the shark tracks the pirate, the lord of 

the waves: 20 

In vain is the strife ! When its fury is past, 

Their fortunes must flow in one channel at 
last, 

As the torrents that rush from the moun- 
tains of snow 

Roll mingled in peace through the valleys 
below. 

Our Union is river, lake, ocean, and sky: 
Man breaks not the medal, when God cuts 

the die ! 
Though darkened with sulphur, though 

cloven with steel, 
The blue arch will brighten, the waters will 

heal! 

Oh, Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun, 
There are battles with Fate that can never 

be won ! 30 

The star-flowering banner must never be 

furled, 
For its blossoms of light are the hope of 

the world ! 

Go, then, our rash sister ! afar and aloof, 
Run wild in the sunshine away from our 

roof; 
But when your heart aches and your feet 

have grown sore, 
Remember the pathway that leads to our 

door ! 
March, 1861, May, 1861. 



PARTING HYMN 

'DUNDEE' 

Father of Mercies, Heavenly Friend, 

We seek thy gracious throne; 
To Thee our faltering prayers ascend, 

Our fainting hearts are known ! 

From blasts that chill, from suns that 
smite, 

From every plague that harms; 
In camp and march, in siege and fight, 

Protect our men-at-arms ! 

Though from our darkened lives they take 
What makes our life most dear, 



We yield them for their country's sake 
With no relenting tear. 

Our blood their flowing veins will shed, 
Their wounds our breasts will share; 

Oh, save us from the woes we dread, 
Or grant us strength to bear ! 

Let each unhallowed cause that brings 

The stern destroyer cease, 
Thy flaming angel fold his wings, 

And seraphs whisper Peace ! 

Thine are the sceptre and the sword, 
Stretch forth thy mighty hand, — 

Reign Thou our kingless nation's Lord, 
Rule Thou our throneless land ! 
1861. August, 1861. 



UNION AND LIBERTY 

Flag of the heroes who left us their glory, 
Borne through their battle-fields' thun- 
der and flame, 
Blazoned in song and illumined in story, 
Wave o'er us all who inherit their 
fame! 
Up with our banner bright, 
Sprinkled with starry light, 
Spread its fair emblems from mountain 
to shore, 
While through the sounding sky 
Loud rings the Nation's cry, — 
Union and Liberty ! One ever- 
more ! 10 

Light of our firmament, guide of our Na- 
tion, 
Pride of her children, and honored 
afar, 
Let the wide beams of thy full constella- 
tion 
Scatter each cloud that would darken a 
star ! 
Up with our banner bright, etc. 

Empire unsceptred ! what foe shall assail 
thee, 
Bearing the standard of Liberty's van ? 
Think not the God of thy fathers shall fail 
thee, 
Striving with men for the birthright of 
man ! 
Up with our banner bright, etc. 20 



3 8o 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Yet if, by madness and treachery blighted, 
Dawns the dark hour when the sword 
thou must draw, 
Then with the arms of thy millions united, 
Smite the bold traitors to Freedom and 
Law ! 
Up with our banner bright, etc. 

Lord of the Universe ! shield us and guide 
us, 
Trusting Thee always, through shadow 
and sun ! 
Thou hast united us, who shall divide us ? 
Keep us, oh keep us the Many in One ! 
Up with our banner bright, 30 

Sprinkled with starry light, 
Spread its fair emblems from mountain 
to shore, 
While through the sounding sky 
Loud rings the Nation's cry, — 
Union and Liberty ! One ever- 
more ! 
1861. December, 1861. 



J. D. R. 1 

1862 

The friends that are, and friends that were, 

What shallow waves divide ! 
I miss the form for many a year 

Still seated at my side. 

I miss him, yet I feel him still 

Amidst our faithful band, 
As if not death itself could chill 

The warmth of friendship's hand. 

His story other lips may tell, — 

For me the veil is drawn; 
I only know he loved me well, 

He loved me — and is gone ! 
1862. 1862. 



TO MY READERS 2 

Nay, blame me not; I might have spared 
Your patience many a trivial verse, 

Yet these my earlier welcome shared, 
So, let the better shield the worse. 

1 James D. Russell, a classmate of Holmes. 

2 Written as a prologue to the collected edition of 
Holmes's poems published in 1862. 



And some might say, ' Those ruder songs 
Had freshness which the new have lost; 

To spring the opening leaf belongs, 
The chestnut-burs await the frost.' 

When those I wrote, my locks were brown, 
When these I write — ah, well-a-day ! 10 

The autumn thistle's silvery down 
Is not the purple bloom of May ! 

Go, little book, whose pages hold 

Those garnered years in loving trust; 

How long before your blue and gold 
Shall fade and whiten in the dust ? 

sexton of the alcoved tomb, 

Where soids in leathern cerements lie, 
Tell me each living poet's doom ! 

How long before his book shall die ? 20 

It matters little, soon or late, 

A day, a month, a year, an age, — 

1 read oblivion in its date, 
And Finis on its title-page. 

Before we sighed, our griefs were told; 

Before we smiled, our joys were sung; 
And all our passions shaped of old 

In accents lost to mortal tongue. 

In vain a fresher mould we seek, — 

Can all the varied phrases tell 30 

That Babel's wandering children speak 
How thrushes sing or lilacs smell ? 

Caged in the poet's lonely heart, 

Love wastes unheard its tenderest tone; 

The soul that sings must dwell apart, 
Its inward melodies unknown. 

Deal gently with us, ye who read ! 

Our largest hope is unfulfilled, — 
The promise still outruns the deed, — 

The tower, but not the spire, we build. 40 

Our whitest pearl we never find; 

Our ripest fruit we never reach; 
The flowering moments of the mind 

Drop half their petals in our speech. 

These are my blossoms; if they wear 
One streak of morn or evening's glow, 

Accept them; but to me more fair 
The buds of song that never blow. 

1862. 1862. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



38i 



VOYAGE OF THE GOOD SHIP 
UNION 1 

1862 

'T IS midnight : through my troubled 
dream 
Loud wails the tempest's cry; 
Before the gale, with tattered sail, 

A ship goes plunging by. 
What name ? Where bound ? — The rocks 
around 
Repeat the loud halloo. 

— The good ship Union, Southward bound: 
God help her and her crew ! 

And is the old flag flying still 

That o'er your fathers flew, 10 

With bands of white and rosy light, 

And field of starry blue ? 

— Ay ! look aloft ! its folds full oft 
Have braved the roaring blast, 

And still shall fly when from the sky 
This black typhoon has past ! 

Speak, pilot of the storm-tost bark ! 

May I thy peril share ? 
. — O landsman, there are fearful seas 

The brave alone may dare ! 20 

— Nay, ruler of the rebel deep, 
What matters wind or wave ? 

The rocks that wreck your reeling deck 
Will leave me naught to save ! 

O landsman, art thou false or true ? 
What sign hast thou to show ? 

— The crimson stains from loyal veins 
That hold my heart-blood's flow ! 

— Enough ! what more shall honor claim ? 
I know the sacred sign; 30 

Above thy head our flag shall spread, 
Our ocean path be thine ! 

The bark sails on ; the Pilgrim's Cape 

Lies low along her lee, 
Whose headland crooks its anchor-flukes 

To lock ^he shore and sea. 
No treason here ! it cost too dear 

To win this barren realm ! 
And true and free the hands must be 

That hold the whaler's helm ! 40 

Still on ! Manhattan's narrowing bay 
No rebel cruiser scars; 

1 Written for a reunion of the class of '29. 



Her waters feel no pirate's keel 
That flaunts the fallen stars ! 

— But watch the light on yonder height, — 
Ay, pilot, have a care ! 

Some lingering cloud in mist may shroud 
The capes of Delaware ! 

Say, pilot, what this fort may be, 

Whose sentinels look down 50 

From moated walls that show the sea 

Their deep embrasures' frown ? 
The Rebel host claims all the coast, 

But these are friends, we know, 
Whose footprints spoil the ' sacred soil,' 

And this is ? — Fort Monroe ! 

The breakers roar, — how bears the shore ? 

— The traitorous wreckers' hands 
Have quenched the blaze that poured its 
rays 

Along the Hatteras sands. 60 

— Ha ! say not so ! I see its glow ! 
Again the shoals display 

The beacon light that shines by night, 
The Union Stars by day ! 

The good ship flies to milder skies, 

The wave more gently flows, 
The softening breeze wafts o'er the seas 

The breath of Beaufort's rose. 
What fold is this the sweet winds kiss, 

Fair-striped and many-starred, 70 

Whose shadow palls these orphaned walls, 

The twins of Beauregard ? 

What ! heard you not Port Royal's doom ? 

How the black war-ships came 
And turned the Beaufort roses' bloom 

To redder wreaths of flame ? 
How from Rebellion's broken reed 

We saw his emblem fall, 
As soon his cursed poison-weed 

Shall drop from Sumter's wall ? 80 

On ! on ! Pulaski's iron hail 

Falls harmless on Tybee ! 
The good ship feels the freshening gales, 

She strikes the open sea; 
She rounds the point, she threads the keys 

That guard the Land of Flowers, 
And rides at last where firm and fast 

Her own Gibraltar towers ! 

The good ship Union's voyage is o'er, 
At anchor safe she swings, 9 o 



382 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And loud and clear with cheer on cheer 

Her joyous welcome rings: 
Hurrah ! Hurrah ! it shakes the wave, 

It thunders on the shore, — 
One flag, one land, one heart, one hand, 

One Nation, evermore ! 
1862. March, 1862. 



BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTH- 
DAY 

NOVEMBER 3, 1 864 

even-hajsded Nature ! we confess 
This life that men so honor, love, and bless 
Has filled thine olden measure. Not the 
less 

We count the precious seasons that remain; 
Strike not the level of the golden grain, 
But heap it high with years, that earth 
may gain 

What heaven can lose, — for heaven is rich 

in song: 
Do not all poets, dying, still prolong 
Their broken chants amid the seraph throng, 

Where, blind no more, Ionia's bard is 
seen, 10 

And England's heavenly minstrel sits be- 
tween 

The Mantuan and the wan-cheeked Floren- 
tine? 

This was the first sweet singer in the cage 
Of our close-woven life. A new-born age 
Claims in his vesper song its heritage : 

Spare us, oh spare us long our heart's de- 
sire ! 

Moloch, who calls our children through the 
fire, 

Leaves us the gentle master of the lyre. 

We count not on the dial of the sun 
The hours, the minutes, that his sands have 
run; 20 

Rather, as on those flowers that one by one 

From earliest dawn their ordered bloom 

display 
Till evening's planet with her guiding ray 
Leads in the blind old mother of the day, 



We reckon by his songs, each song a 

flower, 
The long, long daylight, numbering hour 

by hour, 
Each breathing sweetness like a bridal 

bower. 

His morning glory shall we e'er forget ? 
His noontide's full-blown lily coronet ? 
His evening primrose has not opened yet; 30 

Nay, even if creeping Time should hide the 

skies 
In midnight from his century-laden eyes, 
Darkened like his who sang of Paradise, 

Would not some hidden song-bud open 

bright 
As the resplendent cactus of the night 
That floods the gloom with fragrance and 

with light ? 

How can we praise the verse whose music 

flows 
With solemn cadence and majestic close, 
Pure as the dew that filters through the 

rose ? 

How shall we thank him that in evil days 40 
He faltered never, — nor for blame, nor 

praise, 
Nor lure, nor party, shamed his earlier 

lays ? 

But as his boyhood was of manliest hue, 
So to his youth his manly years were 

true, 
All dyed in royal purple through and 

through ! 

He for whose touch the lyre of Heaven is 

strung 
Needs not the flattering toil of mortal 

tongue : 
Let not the singer grieve to die unsung ! 

Marbles forget their message tc mankind: 
In his own verse the poet still we find, 50 
In his own page his memory lives enshrined, 

As in their amber sweets the smothered 

bees, — 
As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze, 
Lies self-embalmed amidst the mouldering 

trees. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



383 



Poets, like youngest children, never grow 
Out of their mother's fondness. Nature so 
Holds their soft hands, and will not let 
them go, 

Till at the last they track with even feet 
Her rhythmic footsteps, and their pulses 

beat 
Twinned with her pulses, and their lips re- 
peat 60 

The secrets she has told them, as their 

own: 
Thus is the inmost soul of Nature known, 
And the rapt minstrel shares her awful 

throne ! 

O lover of her mountains and her woods, 
Her bridal chamber's leafy solitudes, 
Where Love himself with tremulous step 
intrudes, 

Her snows fall harmless on thy sacred 

,fire: 
Far be the day that claims thy sounding 

To join the music of the angel choir ! 

Yet, since life's amplest measure must be 
filled, 70 

Since throbbing hearts must be forever 
stilled, 

And all must fade that evening sunsets gild, 

Grant, Father, ere he close the mortal eyes 
That see a Nation's reeking sacrifice, 
Its smoke may vanish from these blackened 
skies ! 

Then, when his summons comes, since come 

it must, 
And, looking heavenward with unfaltering 

trust, 
He wraps his drapery round him for the 

dust, 

His last fond glance will show him o'er his 

head 
The Northern fires beyond the zenith 

spread 80 

In lambent glory, blue and white and 

red, — 

The Southern cross without its bleeding 
load, 



The milky way of peace all freshly strowed, 
And every white-throned star fixed in its 

lost abode ! 
1864. 1864. 



MY ANNUAL 1 
1866 

How long will this harp which you once 
loved to hear 

Cheat your lips of a smile or your eyes of 
a tear ? 

How long stir the echoes it wakened of old, 

While its strings were unbroken, untar- 
nished its gold ? 

Dear friends of my boyhood, my words do 

you wrong; 
The heart, the heart only, shall throb in 

my song; 
It reads the kind answer that looks from 

your eyes, — 
' We will bid our old harper play on till 

he dies.' 

Though Youth, the fair angel that looked 

o'er the strings, 
Has lost the bright glory that gleamed on 

his wings, 10 

Though the freshness of morning has 

passed from its tone, 
It is still the old harp that was always 

your own. 

I claim not its music, — each note it affords 
I strike from your heart-strings, that lend 

me its chords; 
I know you will listen and love to the last, 
For it trembles and thrills with the voice 

of your past. 

Ah, brothers ! dear brothers ! the harp 

that I hold 
No craftsman could string and no artisan 

mould; 
He shaped it, He strung it, who fashioned 

the lyres 
That ring with the hymns of the seraphim 

choirs. 20 

Not mine are the visions of beauty it brings, 
Not mine the faint fragrance around it that 

clings ; 

1 For a reunion of the class of '29. 



3$4 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Those shapes are the phantoms of years 
that are tied, 

Those sweets breathe from roses your simi- 
liters have shed. 

Each hour of the past lends its tribute to 

this, 
Till it blooms like a bower in the Garden 

of Bliss; 
The thorn and the thistle may grow as they 

will, 
'Where Friendship unfolds there is Paradise 

still. 

The bird wanders careless while summer 
is green, 

The leaf -hidden cradle that rocked him un- 
seen; 30 

When Autumn's rude fingers the woods 
have undressed, 

The boughs may look bare, but they show 
him his nest. 

Too precious these moments ! the lustre 

they fling 
Is the light of our year, is the gem of its 

So brimming with sunshine, we almost for- 
get 
The rays it has lost, and its border of jet. 

While roxmd us the many-hued halo is shed, 

How dear are the living, how near are the 
dead ! 

One circle, scarce broken, these waiting be- 
low, 

Those walking the shores where the aspho- 
dels blow ! 40 

Not life shall enlarge it nor death shall 
divide, — 

No brother new-born finds his place at my 
side ; 

No titles shall freeze, us, no grandeurs in- 
fest, 

His Honor, His Worship, are boys like the 
rest. 

Some won the world's homage, their names 
we hold dear, — 

But Friendship, not Fame, is the counter- 
sign here; 

Make room by the conqueror crowned in 
the strife 

For the comrade that limps from the battle 
of life ! 



What tongue talks of battle ? Too long we 

have heard 
In sorrow, hi anguish, that terrible word; 
It reddened the sunshine, it crimsoned the 

wave, SI 

It sprinkled our doors with the blood of 

our brave. 

Peace, Peace comes at last, with her garland 

of white; 
Peace broods hi all hearts as we gather to- 

night ; 
The blazon of Union spreads full in the sun; 
We echo its words, — We are one! We 

are one ! 
1S66. 1SC6. 

ALL HERE 1 

It is not what we say or sing, 

That keeps our charm so long unbroken, 
Though every lightest leaf we bring 

May touch the heart as f riendsliip's token ; 
Not what we sing or what we say , 

Can make us dearer to each other; 
We love the singer and his lay. 

But love as well the silent brother. 

Yet bring whate'er your garden grows, 

Thrice welcome to our smiles and 
praises ; i 

Thanks for the myrtle and the rose, 

Thanks for the marigolds and daisies; 
One flower ere long we all shall claim, 

Alas ! unloved of Amaryllis — 
Nature's last blossom — need I name 

The wreath of threescore's silver lilies ? 

How many, brothers, meet to-night 

Around our boyhood's covered embers ? 
Go read the treasured names aright 

The old triennial list remembers; 20 

Though twenty wear the starry sign 

That tells a life has broke its tether, 
The fifty-eight of 'twenty-nine — 

God bless The Boys ! — are all together ! 

These come with joyous look and word, 
With friendly grasp and cheerful greet- 
ing, — 
Those smile unseen, and move unheard, 

The angel guests of every meeting; 
They cast no shadow in the flame 

That flushes from the gilded lustre, 30 
1 For the class reunion, 1S67. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



38; 



But count us — we are still the same; 
One earthly band, one heavenly clus- 
ter ! 

Love dies not when he bows his head 

To pass beyond the narrow portals, — 
The light these glowing moments shed 
Wake3 from their sleep our lost immor- 
tals; 
They come as in their joyous prime, 

Before their morning days were num- 
bered, — 
Death stays the envious hand of Time, — 
The eyes have not grown dim that slum- 
bered ! 40 

The paths that loving souls have trod 
Arch o'er the dust where worldlings 
grovel 
High as the zenith o'er the sod, — 

The cross above the sexton's shovel ! 
We rise beyond the realms of day; 

They seem to stoop from spheres of 
glory 
With us one happy hour to stray, 

While youth comes back in song and 
story. 

Ah ! ours is friendship true as steel 

That war has tried in edge and temper ; 
It writes upon its sacred seal 51 

The priest's vbique — omnes — semper 1 
It lends the sky a fairer sun 

That cheers our lives with rays as steady 
As if our footsteps had begun 

To print the golden streets already ! 

The tangling years have clinched its knot 

Too fast for mortal strength to sunder; 
The lightning bolts of noon are shot; 

No fear of evening's idle thunder ! 60 
Too late ! too late ! — no graceless hand 

Shall stretch its cords in vain endeavor 
To rive the close encircling band 

That made and keeps us one forever ! 

So when upon the fated scroll 

The falling stars have all descended, 
And, blotted from the breathing roll, 

Our little page of life is ended, 
We ask but one memorial line 

Traced on thy tablet, Gracious Mother: 
• My children. Boys of '29. 7 i 

In pace. How they loved each other ! ' 
1867. 1867. 



BILL AND JOEi 

Come, dear old comrade, you and I 
Will steal an hour from days gone by, 
The shining days when life was new, 
And all was bright with morning dew, 
The lusty days of long ago, 
When you were Bill and I was Joe. 

Your name may flaunt a titled trail 

Proud as a cockerel's rainbow tail, 

And mine as brief appendix wear 

As Tam O'Shanter's luckless mare; ic 

To-day, old friend, remember still 

That I am Joe and you are Bill. 

You 've won the great world's envied prize, 
And grand you look in people's eyes, 
With H O N. and L L. D. 
In big brave letters, fair to see, — 
Your fist, old fellow ! off they go ! — 
How are you, Bill ? How are you, Joe ? 

You 've worn the judge's ermined robe; 
You 've taught your name to half the globe ; 
You 've sung mankind a deathless strain; 21 
You 've made the dead past live again: 
The world may call you what it will, 
But you and I are Joe and Bill. 

The chaffing young folks stare and say 
' See those old buffers, bent and gray, — 
They talk like fellows in their teens ! 
Mad, poor old boys ! That 's what it 

means,' — 
And shake their heads; they little know 
The throbbing hearts of Bill and Joe ! — 30 

How Bill forgets his hour of pride, 
While Joe sits smiling at his side ; 
How Joe, in spite of time's disguise, 
Finds the old schoolmate in his eyes, — 
Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill 
As Joe looks fondly up at Bill. 

Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame ? 

A fitful tongue of leaping flame ; 

A giddy whirlwind's fickle gust, 

That lifts a pinch of mortal dust; 40 

A few swift years, and who can show 

Which dust was Bill and which was Joe ? 

The weary idol takes his stand, 
Holds out his bruised and aching hand, 

1 For the class reunion, 1868. 



386 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



While gaping thousands come and go, — 
How vain it seems, this empty show ! 
Till all at once his pidses thrill ; — 
'T is poor old Joe's ' God bless you, Bill ! ' 

And shall we breathe in happier spheres 
The names that pleased our mortal ears; 50 
In some sweet lull of harp and song 
For earth-born spirits none too long, 
Just whispering of the world below 
Where this was Bill and that was Joe ? 

No matter; while our home is here 
No sounding name is half so dear; 
When fades at length our lingering day, 
Who cares what pompous tombstones say ? 
Read on the hearts that love us still, 
Hicjacet Joe. Hie jacet Bill. 60 

1868. 1868. 

NEARING THE SNOW-LINE 

Slow toiling upward from the misty vale, 
I leave the bright enamelled zones below; 
No more for me their beauteous bloom shall 

glow, 
Their lingering sweetness load the morning 

gale; 
Few are the slender flowerets, scentless, pale, 
That on their ice-clad stems all trembling 

blow 
Along the margin of unmelting snow; 
Yet with unsaddened voice thy verge I hail, 
White realm of peace above the flowering 

line; 
Welcome thy frozen domes, thy rocky 



spires 



O'er thee undimmed the moon-girt planets 
shine, 

On thy majestic altars fade the fires 

That filled the air with smoke of vain de- 
sires, 

And all the unclouded blue of heaven is 
thine ! 

1870. 1870. 

DOROTHY Qi 

A FAMILY PORTRAIT 

Grandmother's mother: her age, I guess, 
Thirteen summers, or something less; 

1 I cannot tell the story of Dorothy Q. more simply 
in prose than I have told it in verse, but I can add 
something to it. 



Girlish bust, but womanly air; 

Smooth, square forehead with uprolled 

hair; 
Lips that lover has never kissed; 
Taper fingers and slender wrist; 
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade ; 
So they painted the little maid. 

On her hand a parrot green 

Sits unmoving and broods serene. 10 

Hold up the canvas full in view, — 

Look ! there 's a rent the light shines 

through, 
Dark with a century's fringe of dust, — 
That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust ! 
Such is the tale the lady old, 
Dorothy's daughter's daughter, told. 

Who the painter was none may tell, — 
One whose best was not over well; 
Hard and dry, it must be confessed, 
Flat as a rose that has long been pressed; 20 
Yet in her cheek the hues are bright, 
Dainty colors of red and white, 
And hi her slender shape are seen 
Hint and promise of stately mien. 

Look not on her with eyes of scorn, — 

Dorothy Q. was a lady born ! 

Ay ! since the galloping Normans came, 

England's annals have known her name; 

And still to the three-hilled rebel town 

Dear is that ancient name's renown, 30 

For many a civic wreath they won, 

The youthful sire and the gray-haired son. 

O Damsel Dorothy ! Dorothy Q. ! 
Strange is the gift that I owe to you ; 
Such a gift as never a king 
Save to daughter or son might bring, — 
All my tenure of heart and hand, 
All my title to house and land,; 
Mother and sister and child and wife 
And joy and sorrow and death and life ! 40 

Dorothy was the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy, 
and the niece of Josiah Quincy, junior, the young 
patriot and orator who died just before the American 
Revolution, of which he was one of the most eloquent 
and effective promoters. The son of the latter, Josiah 
Quincy, the first mayor of Boston bearing that name, 
lived to a great age, one of the most useful and honored 
citizens of his time. 

The canvas of the painting was so much decayed that 
it had to be replaced by a new one, in doing which the 
rapier thrust was of course filled up. (Holmes.) 

See Morse's Life of Holmes, vol. i, pp. 17 and 231- 
232. 

For a reproduction of the portrait, see Scribner's 
Magazine, May, 1S79. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



387 



What if a hundred years ago 

Those close-shut lips had answered No, 

When forth the tremulous question came 

That cost the maiden her Norman name, 

And under the folds that look so still 

The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill ? 

Should I be I, or would it be 

One tenth another, to nine tenths me ? 

Soft is the breath of a maiden's Yes: 
Not the light gossamer stirs with less ; 50 
But never a cable that holds so fast 
Through all the battles of wave and blast, 
And never an echo of speech or song 
That lives in the' babbling air so long ! 
There were tones in the voice that whis- 
pered then 
You may hear to-day in a hundred men. 

lady and lover, how faint and far 
Your images hover, — and here we are, 
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone, — 
Edward's and Dorothy's — all their own, — 
A goodly record for Time to show 61 
Of a syllable spoken so long ago ! — 
Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive 

For the tender whisper that bade me hive ? 

It shall be a blessing, my little maid ! 

1 will heal the stab of the Red-Coat's blade, 
And freshen the gold of the tarnished 

frame, 
And gild with a rhyme your household 

name; 
So you shall smile on us brave and bright 
As first you greeted the morning's light, 70 
And live untroubled by woes and fears 
Through a second youth of a hundred 

years. 

1871. 



EPILOGUE TO THE BREAK- 
FAST-TABLE SERIES 

AUTOCRAT — PROFESSOR — POET 
AT A BOOKSTORE 

Anno Domini 1972 

A crazy bookcase, placed before 
A low-price dealer's open door; 
Therein arrayed in broken rows 
A ragged crew of rhyme and prose, 
The homeless vagrants, waifs, and strays 
Whose low estate this line betrays 



(Set forth the lesser birds to lime) 
Your choice among these books 
1 dime ! 

Ho ! dealer; for its motto's sake 
This scarecrow from the shelf I take; 10 
Three starveling volumes bound in one, 
Its covers warping in the sun. 
Methinks it hath a musty smell, 
I hke its flavor none too well, 
But Yorick's brain was far from dull, 
Though Hamlet pah ! 'd, and dropped his 
skull. 

Why, here comes rain ! The sky grows 

dark, — 
Was that the roll of thunder ? Hark ! 
The shop affords a safe retreat, 
A chair extends its welcome seat, 20 

The tradesman has a civil look 
(I 've paid, impromptu, for my book), 
The clouds portend a sudden shower, — 
I '11 read my purchase for an hour. 



What have I rescued from the shelf ? 

A Boswell, writing out himself ! 

For though he changes dress and name, 

The man beneath is still the same, 

Laughing or sad, by fits and starts, 

One actor in a dozen parts, 30 

And whatsoe'er the mask may be, 

The voice assures us, This is he. 

I say not this to cry him down; 
I find my Shakespeare in his clown, 
His rogues the selfsame parent own; 
Nay ! Satan talks in Milton's tone ! 
Where'er the ocean inlet strays, 
The salt sea wave its source betrays; 
Where'er the queen of summer blows, 
She tells the zephyr, ' I 'm the rose ! ' 40 

And his is not the playwright's page; 
His table does not ape the stage ; 
What matter if the figures seen 
Are only shadows on a screen, 
He finds in them his lurking thought, 
And on their lips the words he sought, 
Like one who sits before the keys 
And plays a tune himself to please. 

And was he noted in his day ? 
Read, flattered, honored ? Who shall say ? 
Poor wreck of time the wave has cast 51 
To find a peaceful shore at last, 



388 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Once glorying in thy gilded name 
And freighted deep with hopes of fame, 
Thy leaf is moistened with a tear, 
The first for many a long, long year ! 

For be it more or less of art 

That veils the lowliest human heart 

Where passion throbs, where friendship 

glows, 
Where pity's tender tribute flows, 60 

Where love has lit its fragrant fire, 
And sorrow quenched its vain desire, 
For me the altar is divine, 
Its flame, its ashes, — all are mine ! 

And thou, my brother, as I look 
And see thee pictured in thy book, 
Thy years on every page confessed 
In shadows lengthening from the west, 
Thy glance that wanders, as it sought 
Some freshly opening flower of thought, 70 
Thy hopeful nature, light and free, 
I start to find myself in thee ! 



Come, vagrant, outcast, wretch forlorn 
In leather jerkin stained and torn, 
Whose talk has filled my idle hour 
And made me half forget the shower, 
I '11 do at least as much for you, 
Your coat I '11 patch, your gilt renew, 
Read you — perhaps — some other time. 
Not bad, my bargain ! Price one dime ! 80 
1872. 1872. 



PROGRAMME 1 

OCTOBER 7, 1874 

Reader — gentle — if so be 
Such still live, and live for me, 
Will it please you to be told 
What my tenscore pages hold ? 

Here are verses that in spite 

Of myself I needs must write, 

Like the wine that oozes first 

When the unsqueezed grapes have burst. 

Here are angry lines, • too hard ! ' 

Says the soldier, battle-scarred. 10 

1 Written to introduce the Songs of Many Seasons, 
which contained a large number of Holmes's ' occa- 
sional ' poems. 



Could I smile his scars away 
I would blot the bitter lay, 

Written with a knitted brow, 
Read with placid wonder now. 
Throbbed such passion in my heart ? 
Did his wounds once really smart ? 

Here are varied strains that sing 
All the changes lif e can bring, 
Songs when joyous friends have met, 
Songs the mourner's tears have wet. 20 

See the banquet's dead bouquet, 
Fair and fragrant in its day; 
Do they read the selfsame lines, — 
He that fasts and he that dines ? 

Year by year, like milestones placed, 
Mark the record Friendship traced. 
Prisoned in the walls of time 
Life has notched itself in rhyme : 

As its seasons slid along, 

Every year a notch of song, 30 

From the June of long ago, 

When the rose was full in blow, 

Till the scarlet sage has come 
And the cold chrysanthemum. 
Read, but not to praise or blame ; 
Are not all our hearts the same ? 

For the rest, they take their chance, — 
Some may pay a passing glauce; 
Others, — well, they served a turn, — 
Wherefore written, would you learn ? 40 

Not for glory, not for pelf, 
Not, be sure, to please myself, 
Not for any meaner ends, — 
Always ' by request of friends.' 

Here 's the cousin of a king, — 
Would I do the civil thing ? 
Here 's the first-born of a queen: 
Here 's a slant-eyed Mandarin. 

Would I polish off Japan ? 

Would I greet this famous man, 50 

Prince or Prelate, Sheik or Shah ? — 
Figaro qi and Figaro Ik ! 

Would I just this once comply ? — 
So they teased and teased till I 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



339 



(Be the truth at once confessed) 
Wavered — yielded — did my best. 

Turn my pages, — never mind 
If you like not all you find; 
Think not all the grains are gold 
Sacramento's sand-banks hold. 

Every kernel has its shell, 
Every chime its harshest bell, 
Every face its weariest look, 
Every shelf its emptiest book, 

Every field its leanest sheaf, 
Every book its dullest leaf, 
Every leaf its weakest hue, — 
Shall it not be so with mine ? 

Best for worst shall make amends, 
Find us, keep us, leave us friends 
Till, perchance, we meet again. 
Benedicite. — Amen ! 



1874. 



GRANDMOTHER'S 
BUNKER-HILL 



1874. 



STORY 
BATTLE 1 



OF 



AS SHE SAW IT FROM THE BELFRY 

'T IS like stirring living embers when, at 
eighty, one remembers m 

All the achings and the quakings of ' the 
times that tried men's souls; ' 2 

1 The story of Bunker Hill battle is told as literally 
in accordance with the best authorities as it would have 
been if it had been written in prose instead of in verse. 
I have often been asked what steeple it was from which 
the little group I speak of looked upon the conflict. 
To this I answer that I am not prepared to speak 
authoritatively, but that the reader may take his choice 
among all the steeples standing at that time in the 
northern part of the city. Christ Church in Salem 
Street is the one I always think of, but I do not insist 
upon its claim. As to the personages who made up the 
small company that followed the old corporal, it would 
be hard to identify them, but by ascertaining where 
the portrait by Copley is now to be found, some light 
may be thrown on their personality. 

Daniel Malcolm's gravestone, splintered by British 
bullets, may be Been in the Copp's Hill burial-ground. 
(Holmes.) 

This poem was first published in 1875, in connection 
with the centenary of the battle of Bunker Hill. The 
belfry could hardly have been that of Chri6t Church, 
since tradition says that General Gage was stationed 
there watching the battle, and we may make it to be 
what was known as the New Brick Church, built in 
1721, on Hanover, corner of Richmond Street, Boston, 
rebuilt of stone in 1845, and pulled down at the widen- 
ing of Hanover Street in 1871. There are many narra- 
tives of the battle of Bunker Hill. Frothinghara's 
History of the Siege of Boston is one of the most com- 



When I talk of Whig and Tory, when I tell 

the Rebel story, 
To you the words are ashes, but to me 

they 're burning coals. 

I had heard the muskets' rattle of the 

April running battle; 
Lord Percy's hunted soldiers, I can see 

their red coats still; 
But a deadly chill comes o'er me, as the 

day looms up before me, 
When a thousand men lay bleeding on the 

slopes of Bunker's Hill. 

'T was a peaceful summer's morning, when 

the first thing gave us warning 
Was the booming of the cannon from the 

river and the shore: 10 

' Child,' says grandma, ' what 's the matter, 

what is all this noise and clatter ? 
Have those scalping Indian devils come to 

murder us once more ? ' 

Poor old soul ! my sides were shaking in 

the midst of all my quaking, 
To hear her talk of Indians when the guns 

began to roar: 
She had seen the burning village, and the 

slaughter and the pillage, 
When the Mohawks killed her father with 

their bullets through his door. 

Then I said, ' Now, dear old granny, don't 

you fret and worry any, 
For I '11 soon come back and tell you 

whether this is work or play; 
There can't be mischief in it, so I won't 

be gone a minute ' — 
For a minute then I started. I was gone 

the livelong day. 20 

No time for bodice-lacing or for looking- 
glass grimacing; 

prehensive accounts, and has furnished material for 
many popular narratives. (Riverside Literature Series.) 
- In December, 1776, Thomas Paine, whose Common 
Sense had so remarkable a popularity as the first 
homely expression of public opinion on Independence, 
began issuing a series of tracts called The Crisis, 
eighteen numbers of which appeared. The familiar 
words quoted by the grandmother must often have 
been heard and used by her. They begin the first num- 
ber of The Crisis : ' These are the times that try 
men's souls : the Bummer soldier and the sunshine 
patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of 
his country ; but he that stands it now deserves the 
love and thanks of man and woman.' (Riverside 
Literature Series.) 



39° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Down my hair went as I hurried, tumbling 

half-way to my heels; 
God forbid your ever knowing, when 

there 's blood around her flowing, 
How the lonely, helpless daughter of a 

quiet household feels ! 

In the street I heard a thumping; and I 
knew it was the stumping 

Of the Corporal, our old neighbor, on that 
wooden leg he wore, 

With a knot of women round him, — it was 
lucky I had found him, 

So I followed with the others, and the Cor- 
poral marched before. 

They were making for the steeple, — the 

old soldier and his people; 
The pigeons circled round us as we climbed 

the creaking stair. 30 

Just across the narrow river — oh, so close 

it made me shiver ! — 
Stood a fortress on the hill-top that but 

yesterday was bare. 

Not slow our eyes to find it; well we knew 

who stood behind it, 
Though the earthwork hid them from lis, 

and the stubborn walls were dumb: 
Here were sister, wife, and mother, looking 

wild upon each other, 
And their lips were white with terror as 

they said, The hour has come ! 

The morning slowly wasted, not a morsel 

had we tasted, 
And our heads were almost splitting with 

the cannon's deafening thrill, 
When a figure tall and stately round the 

rampart strode sedately; 
It was Prescott, one since told me; he 

commanded on the hill. 40 

Every woman's heart grew bigger when we 
saw his manly figure, 

With the banian buckled round it, standing 
up so straight and tall; 

Like a gentleman of leisure who is strolling 
out for pleasure, 

Through the storm of shells and cannon- 
shot he walked around the wall. 

At eleven the streets were swarming, for 
the redcoats' ranks were forming; 



At noon in marching order they were mov- 
ing to the piers ; 

How the bayonets gleamed and glistened, 
as we looked far down, and listened 

To the trampling and the drum-beat of the 
belted grenadiers ! 

At length the men have started, with a 

cheer (it seemed faint-hearted), 
In their scarlet regimentals, with their 

knapsacks on their backs, 5 o 

And the reddening, rippling water, as after 

a sea-fight's slaughter, 
Round the barges gliding onward blushed 

like blood along their tracks. 

So they crossed to the other border, and 

again they formed in order; 
And the boats came back for soldiers, 

came for soldiers, soldiers still: 
The time seemed everlasting to us women 

faint and fasting, — 
At last they 're moving, marching, marching 

proudly up the hill. 

We can see the bright steel glancing all 

along the lines advancing, — 
Now the front rank fires a volley, — they 

have thrown away their shot; 
For behind their earthwork lying, all the 

balls above them flying, 
Our people need not hurry; so they wait 

and answer not. 60 

Then the Corporal, our old cripple (he would 

swear sometimes and tipple) — 
He had heard the bullets whistle (in the 

old French war) before — 
Calls out in words of jeering, just as if they 

all were hearing, — 
And his wooden leg thumps fiercely on the 

dusty belfry floor: — 

• Oh ! fire away, ye villains, and earn King 

George's shillin's, 
But ye '11 waste a ton of powder afore a 

'rebel' falls; 
You may bang the dirt and welcome, 

they 're as safe as Dan'l Malcolm, 
Ten foot beneath the gravestone that 

you 've splintered with your balls ! ' 1 

1 The following epitaph is still to be read on a tall 
gravestone, standing as yet undisturbed among the 
transplanted monuments of the dead in Copp's Hill 
Burial Ground, one of the three city [Boston] ceme- 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



39i 



In the hush of expectation, in the awe and 

trepidation 
Of the dread approaching moment, we are 

well-nigh breathless all; 70 

Though the rotten bars are failing on the 

rickety belfry railing, 
We are crowding up against them like the 

waves against a wall. 

Just a glimpse (the air is clearer), they are 

nearer, — nearer, — nearer, 
When a flash — a curling smoke- wreath — 

then a crash — the steeple shakes — 
The deadly truce is ended; the tempest's 

shroud is rended; 
Like a morning mist it gathered, like a 

thundercloud it breaks ! 

Oh the sight our eyes discover as the blue- 
black smoke blows over ! 

The red-coats stretched in windrows as a 
mower rakes his hay ; 

Here a scarlet heap is lying, there a head- 
long crowd is flying 

Like a billow that has broken and is shiv- 
ered into spray. „ 80 

Then we cried, ' The troops are routed ! 

they are beat — it can't be doubted ! 
God be thanked, the fight is over ! ' — Ah ! 

the grim old soldier's smile ! 
' Tell us, tell us why you look so ? ' (we 

could hardly speak, we shook so), — 
' Are they beaten ? Are they beaten? 

Are they beaten ? ' — ' Wait a 

while.' 

Oh the trembling and the terror ! for too 

soon we saw our error: 
They are baffled, not defeated; we have 

driven them back in vain ; 
And the columns that were scattered, round 

the colors that were tattered, 
Toward the sullen, silent fortress turn their 

belted breasts again. 

teriea which have been desecrated and ruined within 
my own remembrance : — 

Here lies buried in a 
Stone Grave 10 feet deep 

Capt. Daniel Malcolm Mercht 
Who departed this Life 
October 23, 1769, 
Aged 44 years, 
A true son of Liberty, 
A Friend to the Publick, 
An Enemy to oppression, 
And one of the foremost 

In opposing the Revenue Acts 
On America. 

(Holmes.) 



All at once, as we are gazing, lo the roofs 

of Charlestown blazing ! 
They have fired the harmless village ; in an 

hour it will be down ! QO 

The Lord in heaven confound them, rain 

his fire and brimstone round them, — 
The robbing, murdering red-coats, that 

would burn a peaceful town ! 

They are marching, stern and solemn; we 

can see each massive column 
As they near the naked earth-mound with 

the slanting walls so steep. 
Have our soldiers got faint-hearted, and in 

noiseless haste departed ? 
Are they panic-struck and helpless ? Are 

they palsied or asleep ? 

Now ! the walls they 're almost under ! 

scarce a rod the foes asunder ! 
Not a firelock flashed against them ! up 

the earthwork they will swarm ! 
But the words have scarce been spoken, 

wl n the ominous calm is broken, 
And a beli> ■ wing crash has emptied all the 

vengeance of the storm ! ioo 

So again, with murderous slaughter, pelted 
backwards to the water, 

Fly Pigot's running heroes and the fright- 
ened braves of Howe; 

And we shout, ' At last they 're done for, 
it 's their barges they have run for : 

They are beaten, beaten, beaten; and the 
battle 's over now ! ' 

And we looked, poor timid creatures, on 

the rough old soldier's features, 
Our lips afraid to question, but he knew 

what we would ask: 
'Not sure,' he said; 'keep quiet, — once 

more, I guess, they '11 try it — 
Here 's damnation to the cut-throats ! ' — 

then he handed me his flask, 

Saying, ' Gal, you 're looking shaky ; have 

a drop of old Jamaiky; 
I 'm af eard there '11 be more trouble afore 

the job is done; ' no 

So I took one scorching swallow; dreadful 

faint I felt and hollow, 
Standing there from early morning when 

the firing was begun. 

All through those hours of trial I had 
watched a calm clock dial, 



39 2 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



As the hands kept creeping, creeping,— 
they were creeping round to four, 

When the old man said, ' They 're forming 
with their bagonets fixed for storm- 
ing: 

It 's the death-grip that 's a-coming, — they 
will try the works once more.' 

With brazen trumpets blaring, the flames 

behind them glaring, 
The deadly wall before them, in close array 

they come; 
Still onward, upward toiling, like a dragon's 

fold uncoiling, — 
Like the rattlesnake's shrill warning the 

reverberating drum ! 120 

Over heaps all torn and gory — shall I tell 
the fearful story, 

How they surged above the breastwork, as 
a sea breaks over a deck; 

How, driven, yet scarce defeated, our worn- 
out men retreated, 

With their powder-horns all emptied, like 
the swimmers from a wreck ? 

It has all been told and painted; as for me, 
they say I fainted, 

And the wooden - legged old Corporal 
stumped with me down the stair: 

When I woke from dreams affrighted the 
evening lamps were lighted, — 

On the floor a youth was lying; his bleed- 
ing breast was bare. 

And I heard through all the flurry, ' Send 

for Warren ! hurry ! hurry ! 
Tell him here 's a soldier bleeding, and he '11 

come and dress his wound ! ' 130 

Ah, we knew not till the morrow told its 

tale of death and sorrow, 
How the starlight, found him stiffened on 

the dark and bloody ground. 

Who the youth was, what his name was, 

where the place from which he came 

was, 
Who had brought him from the battle, and 

had left him at our door, 
He could not speak to tell us; but 't was 

one of our brave fellows, 
As the homespun plainly showed us which 

the dying soldier wore. 

For they all thought he was dying, as they 
gathered round him crying, — 



And they said, ' Oh, how they '11 miss him ! ' 
and, ' What mil his mother do ? ' 

Then, his eyelids just unclosing like a child's 
that has been dozing, 

He faintly murmured, ' Mother ! ' — and 
— I saw his eyes were blue. 140 

' Why, grandma, how you 're winking ! ' Ah, 
my child, it sets me thinking 

Of a story not like this one. Well, he some- 
how lived along; 

So we came to know each other, and I 
nursed him like a — mother, 

Till at last he stood before me, tall, and 
rosy-cheeked, and strong. 

And we sometimes walked together in the 
pleasant summer weather, — 

' Please to tell us what his name was ? ' 
Just your own, my little dear, — 

There 's his picture Copley painted: we be- 
came so well acquainted, 

That — in short, that 's why I 'm grandma, 
and you children all are here ! 

1875. 

HOW THE OLD HORSE WON 
THE BET 

DEDICATED BY A CONTRIBUTOR TO THE 
COLLEGIAN, 1830, TO THE EDITORS OF 
THE HARVARD ADVOCATE, 1876 l 

'T WAS on the famous trotting-ground, 
The betting men were gathered round 
From far and near; the ' cracks ' were there 
Whose deeds the sporting prints declare: 
The swift g. m., Old Hiram's nag, 
The fleet s. h., Dan Pfeiffer's brag, 
With these a third — and who is he 
That stands beside his fast b. g. ? 
Budd Doble, whose catarrhal name 
So fills the nasal trump of fame. 10 

There too stood many a noted steed 
Of Messenger and Morgan breed; 
Green horses also, not a few; 
Unknown as yet what they could do; 
And all the hacks that know so well 
The scourgings of the Sunday swell. 

Blue are the skies of opening day; 
The bordering turf is green with May; 

1 The poem was read at a dinner of the editors of the 
Harvard Advocate, a literary magazine published by 
undergraduates. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



393 



The sunshine's golden gleam is thrown 
On sorrel, chestnut, bay, and roan; 20 

The horses paw and prance and neigh, 
Fillies and colts like kittens play, 
And dance and toss their rippled manes 
Shining and soft as silken skeins; 
Wagons and gigs are ranged about, 
And fashion flaunts her gay turn-out; 
Here stands — each youthful Jehu's 

dream — 
The jointed tandem, ticklish team ! 
And there in ampler breadth expand 
The splendors of the four-in-hand; 30 

On faultless ties and glossy tiles 
The lovely bonnets beam their smiles; 
(The style 's the man, so books avow; 
The style 's the woman, anyhow) ; 
From flounces frothed with creamy lace 
Peeps out the pug-dog's smutty face, 
Or spaniel rolls his liquid eye, 
Or stares the wiry pet of Skye, — 

woman, in your hours of ease 

So shy with us, so free with these ! 40 

* Come on ! I '11 bet you two to one 

1 '11 make him do it ! ' ' Will you ? 

Done ! ' 

What was it who was bound to do? 

I did not hear and can't tell you, — 

Pray listen till my story 's through. 

Scarce noticed, back behind the rest, 

By cart and wagon rudely prest, 

The parson's lean and bony bay 

Stood harnessed in his one-horse shay — 

Lent to his sexton for the day 50 

(A funeral — so the sexton said ; 

His mother's uncle's wife was dead). 

Like Lazarus bid to Dives' feast, 
So looked the poor forlorn old beast; 
His coat was rough, his tail was bare, 
The gray was sprinkled in his hair; 
Sportsmen and jockeys knew him not, 
And yet they say he once could trot 
Among the fleetest of the town, 
Till something cracked and broke him 

down, — 60 

The steed's, the statesman's, common 

lot! 
1 And are we then so soon forgot ? 
Ah me ! I doubt if one of you 
Has ever heard the name ' Old Blue,' 
Whose fame through all this region rung 
In those old days when I was young ! 



' Bring forth the horse ! ' Alas ! he showed 
Not like the one Mazeppa rode ; 
Scant-maned, sharp-backed, and shaky- 
kneed, 
The wreck of what was once a steed, 70 
Lips thin, eyes hollow, stiff in joints; 
Yet not without his knowing points. 
The sexton laughing in his sleeve, 
As if 't were all a make-believe, 
Led forth the horse, and as he laughed 
Unhitched the breeching from a shaft, 
Unclasped the rusty belt beneath, 
Drew forth the snaffle from his teeth, 
Slipped off his head-stall, set him free 
From strap and rein, — a sight to see ! 80 

So worn, so lean in every limb, 

It can't be they are saddling him ! 

It is ! his back the pig-skin strides 

And flaps his lank, rheumatic sides; 

With look of mingled scorn and mirth 

They buckle round the saddle-girth; 

With horsy wink and saucy toss 

A youngster throws his leg across, 

And so, his rider on his back, 

They lead him, limping, to the track, 90 

Far up behind the starting-point, 

To limber out each stiffened joint. 

As through the jeering crowd he past, 
One pitying look Old Hiram cast; 
' Go it, ye cripple, while ye can ! ' 
Cried out unsentimental Dan; 
' A Fast-Day dinner for the crows ! ' 
Budd Doble's scoffing shout arose. 

Slowly, as when the walking-beam 

First feels the gathering head of steam, 100 

With warning cough and threatening 

wheeze 
The stiff old charger crooks his knees; 
At first with cautious step sedate, 
As if he dragged a coach of state; 
He 's not a colt; he knows full well 
That time is weight and sure to tell; 
No horse so sturdy but he fears 
The handicap of twenty years. 

As through the throng on either hand 
The old horse nears the judges' stand, no 
Beneath his jockey's feather-weight 
He warms a little to his gait, 
And now and then a step is tried 
That hints of something like a stride. 



394 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



• Go ! ' — Through his ear the summons stung 
As if a battle-trump had rung; 

The slumbering instincts long unstirred 

Start at the old familiar word; 

It thrills like flame through every limb, — 

What mean his twenty years to him ? 120 

The savage blow his rider dealt 

Fell on his hollow Hanks unfelt; 

The spur that pricked his staring hide 

Unheeded tore his bleeding side; 

Alike to him are spur and rein, — 

He steps a hve-year-old again ! 

Before the quarter pole was past, 

Old Hiram said, ' lie 's going fast.' 

Long ere the quarter was a half, 

The chuckling crowd had ceased to laugh; 

Tighter his frightened jockey clung 131 

As in a mighty stride he swung, 

The gravel flying in his track, 

His neck stretched out, his ears laid back, 

His tail extended all the while 

Behind him like a rat-tail file ! 

Off went a shoe, — away it spun, 

Shot like a ludlet from a gun; 

The quaking jockey shapes a prayer 

From scraps of oaths he used to swear; 140 

He drops his whip, he drops his rein, 

He clutches fiercely for a mane; 

He '11 lose his hold — he sways and reels — 

He '11 slide beneath those trampling heels ! 

The knees of many a horseman quake, 

The dowers on many a bonnet shake, 

And shouts arise from left and right, 

' Stick on ! Stick on ! ' < Hould tight ! 

Hould tight!' 
4 Cling round his neck and don't let go — 
That pace can't hold — there 1 steady ! 

whoa ! ' 150 

But like the sable steed that bore 
The spectral lover of Lenore, 
His nostrils snorting foam and fire, 
No stretch his bony limbs can tire; 
And now the stand he rushes by, 
And ' Stop him ! — stop him ! ' is the cry. 
Stand back ! he 's only just begun — 
He 's having out three heats in one ! 

• Don't rush in front ! he '11 smash your 

brains; 
But follow up and grab the reins ! ' 160 

Old Hiram spoke. Dan Pfeiffer heard, 
And sprang impatient at the word; 
Budd Doble started on his bay, 
Old Hiram followed on his gray, 



And off they spring, and round they go, 
'The fast ones doing 'all they know.' 
Look ! twice they follow at his heels, 
As round the circling course he wheels, 
And whirls with him that clinging boy 
Like Hector round the walls of Troy; 170 
Still on, and on, the third time round ! 
They 're tailing off ! they 're losing ground ! 
Budd Doblc's nag begins to fail ! 
Dan Pfeiffer's sorrel whisks his tail ! 
And see ! in spite of whip and shout, 
Old Hiram's mare is giving out ! 
Now for the finish ! at the turn, 
The old horse — all the rest astern — 
Comes swinging in, with easy trot; 
By Jove ! he 's distanced all the lot ! 1S0. 

That trot no mortal could explain; 
Some said, ' Old Dutchman come again !' 
Some took his time, — at least they tried, 
Bid. what it was could none decide; 
One said he could n't understand 
What happened to his second hand; 
One said 2.10; that OOuld n't be — 
More like two twenty-two or three; 
Old Hiram settled it at last; 
' The time was two — too dee-vel-ish fast ! ' 

The parson's horse had won the bet; 191 

It cost him something of a sweat; 

Back in the one-horse shay he went; 

The parson wondered what it meant, 

And murmured, with a mild surprise 

And pleasant twinkle of the eyes, 

' That funeral must have been a trick, 

Or corpses drive at double-quick; 

I should n't wonder, I declare. 

If brother — Jehu — made the prayer ! ' 200 

And this is all I have to say 
About that tough old trotting bay, 
Huddup ! Huddup ! G'lang ! Good day I 



Moral for which this tale is told : 
A horse can trot, for all he 's old. 



1876. 



FOR WHITTIER'S SEVENTIETH 
BIRTHDAY 

DECEMBER I 7, 1 877 

I believe that the copies of verses I 've 

spun, 
Like Seheherezade's tales, are a thousand 

and one; 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



395 



You remember the story, — those mornings 

in bed, — 
'T wjis the turn of a copper, — a tale or a 

head. 

A doom like Schcherczade's falls upon me 

Jn a mandate as stern as the Sultan's 
decree: 

I 'in a florist in verse, and what would peo- 
ple say 

1 f I came to a banquet without my bou- 
quet ? 

It is trying, no doubt, when the company 

knows 
dust the look and the smell of each lily and 

rose, 10 

The green of each leaf in the sprigs that I 

bring, 
And the shape of the bunch and the knot 

of the string. 

Yes, — ' the style is the man,' and the nib 
of one's pen 

Makes the same mark at twenty, and three- 
score and ten ; 

It is BO in all matters, if truth maybe told; 

Let one look iit the cast, he can tell you 
the mould. 

llow we all know each other ! no use in 

disguise;; 
Through the holes in the mask comes the 

Hash of the eyes; 
We can tell by his — somewhat — each one 

of our tribe, 
As we know the old hat which we cannot 

describe. 20 

Though in Hebrew, in Sanscrit, in Choctaw 

you write, 
Sweet singer who gave us the ' Voices of 

Night,' 
Though in buskin or slipper your song may 

be shod, 
Or the velvety verse that Evangeline trod, 

We shall say, ' You can't cheat us, — we 
know it is you,' 

There is one voice like that, but there can- 
not be two, 

Maiixtro, whose chant like the dulcimer 
rings: 

And the woods will be hushed while the 
nightingale sings. 



And he, so serene, so majestic, so true, 

Whose temph; hyptethral the planets shine 
through, 30 

Let us catch but five words from that mys- 
tical pen, 

We should know our one sage from all 
children of men. 

And he whose bright image no distance can 
dim, 

Through a hundred disguises we can't mis- 
take him, 

Whose play is all earnest, whose wit is the 
edge 

(With a beetle behind) of a sham-splitting 
wedge. 

Do you know whom we send you, Hidalgos 

of Spain ? 
Do you know your old friends when you 

see them again ? 
Hosea was Sancho ! you Dons of Madrid, 
But Sancho that wielded the lance of the 

Cid ! 40 

And the wood-thrush of Essex, — you know 

whom I mean, 
Whose song echoes round us while he sits 

unseen, 
Whose heart-throbs of verse through our 

memories thrill 
Like a breath from the wood, like a breeze 

from the hill, 

So fervid, so simple, so loving, so pure, 
We hear but one strain and our verdict is 

sure, — 
Thee cannot elude us, — no further we 

search, — 
'T is Holy George Herbert cut loose from 

his church ! 

We think it the voice of a seraph that 

sings, — 
Alas ! we remember that angels have 

wings, — 50 

What story is this of the day of his 

birth ? 
Let him live to a hundred ! we want him 

on earth ! 

One life has been paid him (in gold) by 

the sun; 
One account has been squared and another 

begun; 



39 6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



But he never will die if he lingers below 
Till we 've paid him in love half the bal- 
ance we owe ! 

1877. 1877. 

VERITAS 1 

Truth: So the frontlet's older legend ran, 
On the brief record's opening page dis- 
played; 
Not yet those clear-eyed scholars were 

afraid 
Lest the fair fruit that wrought the woe of 

man 
By far Euphrates — where our sire began 
His search for truth, and, seeking, was 

betrayed — 
Might work new treason in their forest 

shade, 
Doubling the curse that brought life's 

shortened span. 
Nurse of the future, daughter of the past, 
That stern phylactery best becomes thee 

now : 
Lift to the morning star thy marble 

brow ! 
Cast thy brave truth on every warring 

blast ! 
Stretch thy white hand to that forbidden 

bough, 
And let thine earliest symbol be thy last ! 

1878. 1878. 



THE SILENT MELODY 

* Bring me my broken harp,' he said; 

' We both are wrecks, — but as ye 
will, — 
Though all its ringing tones have fled, 

Their echoes linger round it still; 
It had some golden strings, I know, 
But that was long — how long ! — ago. 

1 The original motto on the seal of Harvard College, 
adopted in 1643. In a letter enclosing this sonnet and 
another entitled ' Christo et Ecclesiae,' to be read at a 
meeting of the New York Harvard Club, Holmes says : 
' At the first meeting of the Governors of the College 
under the Charter of 1642, held in the year 1643, it was 
" ordered that there shall be a College seale in forme 
following," namely, a shield with three open books 
bearing the word Veritas. This motto was soon ex- 
changed for In Christi gloriam; and this again shortly 
superseded by the one so long used, Christo et Ecclesiae.'' 

Holmes's sonnet was meant as a plea that the older 
and broader motto, Veritas, be restored. ( See Morse's 
Life of Holmes, vol. i, pp. 236-240. This has now been 
done, but without displacing the other motto, Christo 
ct Ecclesiae. 



' I cannot see its tarnished gold, 
I cannot hear its vanished tone, 

Scarce can my trembling fingers hold 
The pillared frame so long their own; io 

We both are wrecks, — awhile ago 

It had some silver strings, I know, 

' But on them Time too long has played 
The solemn strain that knows no change, 

And where of old my fingers strayed 
The chords they find are new and 
strange, — 

Yes ! iron strings, — I know, — I know, — 

We both are wrecks of long ago. 

' We both are wrecks, — a shattered 
pair, — 
Strange to ourselves in time's dis- 
guise ... 20 
What say ye to the lovesick air 

That brought the tears from Marian's 
eyes ? 
Ay ! trust me, — under breasts of snow 
Hearts could be melted long ago ! 

' Or will ye hear the storm-song's crash 

That from his dreams the soldier woke, 
And bade him face the lightning flash 
When battle's cloud in thimder 
broke? . . . 
Wrecks, — nought but wrecks ! — the time 

was when 
We two were worth a thousand men ! ' 30 

And so the broken harp they bring 

With pitying smiles that none could 
blame ; 

Alas ! there 's not a single string 

Of all that filled the tarnished frame ! 

But see ! like children overjoyed, 

His fingers rambling through the void f 

' I clasp thee ! Ay . . . mine ancient 
lyre ... 
Nay, guide my wandering fingers. . . . 
There ! 
They love to dally with the wire 

As Isaac played with Esau's hair. ... 40 
Hush ! ye shall hear the famous tune 
That Marian called the Breath of June ! ' 

And so they softly gather round : 
Rapt in his tuneful trance he seems: 

His fingers move : but not a sound ! 
A silence like the song of dreams. . . . 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



397 



' There ! ye have heard the air,' he cries, 
' That brought the tears from Marian's 
eyes ! ' 

Ah, smile not at his fond conceit, 

Nor deem his fancy wrought in vain; 50 

To him the unreal soimds are sweet, — 
No discord mars the silent strain 

Scored on life's latest, starlit page — 

The voiceless melody of age. 

Sweet are the lips of all that sing, 

When Nature's music breathes unsought, 

But never yet could voice or string 
So truly shape our tenderest thought 

As when by life's decaying fire 

Our fingers sweep the stringless lyre ! 60 

1878. 

THE IRON GATE 1 

Where is this patriarch you are kindly 
greeting ? 
Not unfamiliar to my ear his name, 
Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meet- 
ing 
In days long vanished, — is he still the 
same, 

Or changed by years, forgotten and for- 
getting, 
Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech 
and thought, 
Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fret- 
ting, 
Where all goes wrong, and nothing as it 
ought ? 

Old age, the graybeard ! Well, indeed, I 
know him, — 
Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills 
the prey; 10 

In sermon, story, fable, picture, poem, 
Oft have I met him from my earliest 
day: 

In my old iEsop, toiling with his bundle, — 
His load of sticks, — politely asking 
Death, **. 

Who comes when called for, — would he 
lug or trundle 
His fagot for him ? — he was scant of 
breath. 

1 Read by Holmes at the celebration of his seventieth 
birthday. 



And sad ' Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher,' — 

Has he not stamped the image on my 

soul, 

In that last chapter, where the worn-out 

Teacher 

Sighs o'er the loosened cord, the broken 

bowl? 20 

Yes, long, indeed, I 've known him at a dis- 
tance, 
And now my lifted door-latch shows him 
here ; 
I take his shrivelled hand without resist- 
ance, 
And find him smiling as his step draws 
near. 

What though of gilded baubles he bereaves 
us, 
Dear to the heart of youth, to manhood's 
prime ; 
Think of the calm he brings, the wealth he 
leaves us, 
The hoarded spoils, the legacies of time ! 

Altars once flaming, still with incense fra- 
grant, 
Passion's uneasy nurslings rocked asleep, 
Hope's anchor faster, wild desire less va- 
grant, 3I 
Life's flow less noisy, but the stream 
how deep ! 

Still as the silver cord gets worn and 
slender, 
Its lightened task-work tags with lessen- 
ing strain, 
Hands get more helpful, voices, grown more 
tender, 
Soothe with their softened tones the 
slumberous brain. 

Youth longs and manhood strives, but age 
remembers, 
Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past, 
Spreads its thin hands above the whitening 
embers 
That warm its creeping life-blood till 
the last. 40 

Dear to its heart is every loving token 
That comes unbidden ere its pulse grows 
cold, 

Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken, 
Its labors ended and its story told. 



39§ 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Ah, while around us rosy youth rejoices, 
For us the sorrow-laden breezes sigh, 
And through the chorus of its jocund 
voices 
Throbs the sharp note of misery's hope- 
less cry. 

As on the gauzy wings of fancy flying 
From some far orb I track our watery 
sphere, 50 

Home of the struggling, suffering, doubt- 
ing, dying, 
The silvered globule seems a glistening 
tear. 

But Nature lends her mirror of illusion 
To win from saddening scenes our age- 
dimmed eyes, 
And misty day-dreams blend in sweet con- 
fusion 
The wintry landscape and the summer 
skies. 

So when the iron portal shuts behind us, 
And life forgets us in its noise and 
whirl, 
Visions that shunned the glaring noonday 
find us, 
And glimmering starlight shows the 
gates of pearl. 60 

I come not here your morning hour to sad- 
den, 
A limping pilgrim, leaning on his staff, - — 
I, who have never deemed it sin to glad- 
den 
This vale of sorrows with a wholesome 
laugh. 

If word of mine another's gloom has 
brightened, 
Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent 
message came; 
If hand of mine another's task has light- 
ened, 
It felt the guidance that it dares not 
claim. 

But, O my gentle sisters, my brothers, 
These thick-sown snow-flakes hint of 
toil's release; 7 o 

These feebler pulses bid me leave to oth- 
ers 
The tasks once welcome; evening asks 
for peace. 



Time claims his tribute; silence now is 
golden ; 
Let me not vex the too long suffering 
lyre; 
Though to your love untiring still beholden, 
The curfew tells me — cover up the fire. 

And now with grateful smile and accents 
cheerfid, 
And warmer heart than look or word 
can tell, 
In simplest phrase — these traitorous eyes 
are tearful — 
Thanks, Brothers, Sisters, — Children, 
— and farewell ! So 

1S79. 1879. 



THE SHADOWS 1 

' How many have gone ? ' was the question 
of old 
Ere Time our bright ring of its jewels 
bereft; 
Alas ! for too often the death-bell has tolled, 
And the question we ask is, ' How many 
are left?' 

Bright sparkled the wine ; there were fifty 
that quaffed; 
For a decade had slipped and had taken 
but three. 
How they frolicked and simg, how they 
shouted and laughed, 
Like a school full of boys from their 
benches set free ! 

There were speeches and toasts, there were 
stories and rhymes, 
The hall shook its sides with their mer- 
riment's noise; 10 
As they talked and lived over the college- 
day times, — 
No wonder they kept their old name of 
« The Boys ' ! 

The seasons moved on in their rhythmical 
flow 
With mornings like maidens that pouted 
or smiled, 
With the bud and the leaf and the fruit 
and the snow, 
And the year-books of Time in his al- 
coves were piled. 

1 For the class reunion, 1880. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



399 



There were forty that gathered where fifty 

had met; 
Some locks had got silvered, some lives 

had grown sere, 
But the laugh of the laughers was lusty as 

yet, 

And the song of the singers rose ringing 
and clear. 20 

Still flitted the years; there were thirty that 
came; 
• The Boys ' they were still, and they an- 
swered their call; 
There were foreheads of care, but the smiles 
were the same, 
And the chorus rang loud through the 
garlanded hall. 

The hour-hand moved on, and they gath- 
ered again; 
There were twenty that joined in the 
hymn that was sung; 
But ah ! for our song-bird we listened in 
vain, — 
The crystalline tones like a seraph's that 
rung ! 

How narrow the circle that holds us to- 
night ! 
How many the loved ones that greet us 
no more, 30 

As we meet like the stragglers that come 
from the fight, 
Like the mariners flung from a wreck 
on the shore ! 

We look through the twilight for those we 
have lost; 
The stream rolls between us, and yet 
they seem near; 
Already outnumbered by those who have 
crossed, 
Our band is transplanted, its home is not 
here ! 

They smile on us still — is it only a 
dream ? — 
While fondly or proudly their names we 
recall ; 
They beckon — they come — they are cross- 
ing the stream — 
Lo ! the Shadows ! the Shadows ! room 
— room for them all ! 4 o 

1880. 1880. 



AT THE SATURDAY CLUB 1 

This is our place of meeting; opposite 
That towered and pillared building: look 

at it; 
King's Chapel in the Second George's day, 
Rebellion stole its regal name away, — 
Stone Chapel sounded better; but at last 
The poisoned name of our provincial past 
Had lost its ancient venom ; then once more 
Stone Chapel was King's Chapel as before. 
(So let rechristened North Street, when it 

can, 
Bring back the days of Marlborough and 

Queen Anne !) 10 

1 About the time when these papers {The Autocrat] 
were published, the Saturday Club was founded, or, 
rather, found itself in existence, without any organiza- 
tion, almost without parentage. It was natural enough 
that such men as Emerson, Longfellow, Agassiz, Peirce, 
with Hawthorne, Motley, Sumner, when within reach, 
and others who would be good company for them, 
should meet and dine together once in a while, as they 
did, in point of fact, every month, and as some who are 
still living, with other and newer members, still meet 
and dine. If some of them had not admired each other 
they would have been exceptions in the world of letters 
and science. [Holmes here alludes to the fact that the 
profane sometimes called this club ' The Mutual Ad- 
miration Society.' It is related that when a book by 
one of its members was reviewed by another member 
in the 'North American Review,' some outsider wrote 
below the heading of the article, ' Insured in the Mu- 
tual.'] The club deserves being remembered for hav- 
ing no constitution or by-laws, for making no speeches, 
reading no papers, observing no ceremonies, coming 
and going at will without remark, and acting out, 
though it did not proclaim the motto, ' Shall I not take 
mine ease in mine inn ? ' (Holmes.) 

Outside the sacred penetralia which were shut within 
his own front door, nothing else in Dr. Holmes's life 
gave him so much pleasure as did this Club. He loved 
it ; he hugged the thought of it. When he was writing 
to Lowell and Motley in Europe, he seemed to think 
that merely to name ' The Club ' was enough to give a 
genial flavor to his page. He would tell who were pre- 
sent at the latest meeting, and where they sat. He 
would recur to those who used to come, and mention 
their habitual seats, — matters which his correspond- 
ents already knew perfectly well. But the names were 
sweet things in his mouth ; and, in fact, he was doing 
one of the deepest acts of intimacy in thus touching the 
chord of the dearest reminiscence which their memo- 
ries held in common. By this he seemed sure that he 
would make his letter welcome, however little else of 
news or interest it might convey. In the later days 
there came to be something pathetic about his attach- 
ment to that which still had existence and yet for him 
was almost all a memory. In 1883 he wrote to Lowell : 
' I go to the Saturday Club quite regularly, but the com- 
pany is more of ghosts than of flesh and blood for me. 
I carry a stranger there now and then, introduce him 
to the members who happen to be there, and then say : 
There at that end used to sit Agassiz ; here at this 
end Longfellow ; Emerson used to be there, and 
Lowell often next him ; on such an occasion Haw- 
thorne was with us, at another time Motley, and Sum- 
ner, and smaller constellations, — nebulae if you will, 
but luminous more or less in the provincial firmament.' 
(Morse's Life of Holmes, vol. i, pp. 243, 244.) 

Cf . Lowell's ' Agassiz,' and Holmes's Life of Emerson. 



400 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Next the old church your wandering eye 

will meet — 
A granite pile that stares upon the street — 
Our eivie temple; slanderous tongues have 

.said 
Its shape was modelled from St. Potolph's 

head, 
Lofty, but narrow; jealous passers-by 
Say Boston always held her head too high. 
Turn hall-way round, and let your look 

survey 
The white facade that gleams across the 

way, — - 
The many-windowed building, tall and 

wide, 
The palace-inn that shows its northern 

side 20 

In grateful shadow when the sunbeams 

beat 
The granite wall in summer's scorching 

heat. 
This is the place; whether its name you 

s J h ■ 1 1 
Tavern, or earavansera, or hotel. 
Would I could steal its echoes ! you should 

find 
Such store of vanished pleasures brought 

to mind: 
Such feasts ! the laughs of many a jocund 

hour 
That shook the mortar from King George's 

tower ; 
Such guests ! What famous names its re- 
cord boasts, 
Whoso owners wander in the mob of 

ghosts ! 30 

Such stories ! Every beam and plank is 

filled 
With juicy wit the joyous talkers spilled, 
Heady to ooze, as once the mountain pine 
The floors are laid with oozed its turpen- 
tine I 

A month had flitted since The Club had 

met; 
The day came round ; I found the table set, 
The waiters lounging round the marble 

stairs, 
Empty as yet the double row of chair^. 
I was a full half hour before the rest, 
Alone, the banquet-chamber's single guest. 
So from the table's side a chair I took, 41 
And having neither company nor book 
To keep me waking, by degrees there crept 
A torpor over me, — in short, I slept. 

/ 



Loosed from its chain, along the wreck- 

strown track 
Of the dead years my soul goes travelling 

back ; 
My ghosts take on their robes of flesh; it 

seems 
Dreaming is life; nay, life less life than 

dreams, 
So real are the shapes that meet my eyes. 
They bring no sense of wonder, no sur- 
prise, 50 
No hint of other than an earth-born source; 
All seems plain daylight, everything of 

course. 
How dim the colors are, how poor and 

faint 
This palette of weak words with which I 

paint ! 
Here sit my friends; if I could fix them so 
As to my eyes they seem, my page would 

glow 
Liko a queen's missal, warm as if the 

brush 
Of Titian or Velasquez brought the flush 
Of life into their features. Ay de mi! 
If syllables were pigments, you should 

see , 60 

Such breathing portraitures as never man 
Found in the Pitti or the Vatican. 

Here sits our Poet, Laureate, if you will. 
Long has he worn the wreath, and wears it 

still. 
Dead? Nay, not so; and yet they say his 

bust 
Looks down on marbles covering royal dust, 
Kings by the (Trace of God, or Nature's 

grace; 
Dead ! No ! Alive ! I see him in his place, 
Full-featured, with the bloom that heaven 

denies 
Her children, pinched by cold New England 

skies, 70 

Too often, while the mirsery's happier few 
Win from a summer cloud its roseate hue. 
Kind, soft-voiced, gentle, in his eye there 

shines 
The ray serene that filled Evangeline's. 
Modest he seems, not shy; content to 

wait 
Amid the noisy clamor of debate 
The looked-for moment when a peaceful 

word 
Smooths the rough ripples louder tongues 

have stirred. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



401 



In every tone I mark his tender grace 
And all his poems hinted in his face; 80 
What tranquil joy his friendly presence 

gives ! 
How could I think him dead ? He lives ! 

He lives I 

There, at the table's further end I see 
In his old place our Poet's vis-a-vis, 
The great PROFESSOR, strong, broad-shoul- 
dered, square," 
In life's rich noontide, joyous, debonair. 
His social hour no leaden care alloys, 
His laugh rings loud and mirthful as a 

boy's, — 
That lusty laugh the Puritan forgot, — 
What ear has heard it and remembers 
not ? 90 

How often, halting at some wide crevasse 
Amid the windings of his Alpine pass, 
High up the cliffs, the climbing moun- 
taineer, 
Listening the far-off avalanche to hear, 
Silent, and leaning on his steel-shod staff, 
Has heard that cheery voice, that ringing 

laugh, 
From the rude cabin whose nomadic walls 
Creep with the moving glacier as it crawls ! 
How does vast Nature lead her living 
train 
In ordered sequence through that spacious 
brain, 100 

As in the primal hour when Adam named 
The new-born tribes that young creation 

claimed ! — 
How will her realm be darkened, losing 

thee, 
Her darling, whom we call our Agassiz ! 

But who is he whose massive frame belies 
The maiden shyness of his downcast eyes ? 
Who broods in silence till, by questions 

pressed, 
Some answer struggles from his laboring 

breast ? 
An artist Nature meant to dwell apart, 109 
Locked in his studio with a human heart, 
Tracking its caverned passions to their lair, 
And all its throbbing mysteries laying bare. 

Count it no marvel that he broods alone 
Over the heart lie studies, — 't is his own; 
So in his page, whatever shape it wear, 
The Essex wizard's shadowed self is there, — 
The great Romanckk, hid beneath his veil 
Like the stern preacher of his sombre tale; 



Virile in strength, yet bashful as a girl, 
Prouder than Hester, sensitive as Pearl. 120 

From his mild throng of worshippers 

released, 
Our Concord Delphi sends its chosen priest, 
Prophet or poet, mystic, sage, or seer, 
By every title always welcome here. 
Why that ethereal spirit's frame describe ? 
You know the race-marks of the Brahmin 

tribe, — 
The spare, slight form, the sloping shoul- 
der's droop, 
The calm, scholastic mien, the clerkly 

stoop, 
The lines of thought the sharpened features 

wear, 
Carved by the edge of keen New England 

air. 130 

List ! for he speaks ! As when a king 

would choose 
The jewels for his bride, he might refuse 
This diamond for its flaw, — find that less 

bright 
Than those, its fellows, and a pearl less 

white 
Than fits her snowy neck, and yet at last, 
The fairest gems are chosen, and made fast 
In golden fetters; so, with light delays 
He seeks the fittest word to fill his phrase; 
Nor vain nor idle his fastidious quest, 
His chosen word is sure to prove the best. 
Where in the realm of thought, whoso 

air is song, 141 

Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong ? 
He seems a winged Franklin, sweetly wise, 
Born to unlock the secrets of the skies; 
And which the nobler calling, — if 't is fair 
Terrestrial with celestial to compare, — 
To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame, 
Or walk the chambers whence the light- 
ning came, 
Amidst the sources of its subtile fire, 
And steal their effluence for his lips and 

lyre ? 1 50 

If lost at times in vague aerial flights, 
None treads with firmer footstep when ho 

lights; 
A soaring nature, ballasted with sense, 
Wisdom without her wrinkles or pretence, 
In every Bible he has faith to read, 
And every altar helps to shape his creed. 
Ask you what name this prisoned spirit bears 
While with ourselves this fleeting breath it 

shares? 158 



402 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Till angels greet him with a sweeter one 
In heaven, on earth we call him Emerson. 

I start; I wake; the vision is withdrawn; 

Its figures fading like the stars at dawn; 

Crossed from the roll of life their cher- 
ished names, 

And memory's pictures fading in their 
frames ; 

Yet life is lovelier for these transient 
gleams 

Of buried friendships; blest is he who 
dreams ! 

1884. 

THE GIRDLE OF FRIENDSHIP * 

She gathered at her slender waist 
The beauteous robe she wore; 

Its folds a golden belt embraced, 
One rose-hued gem it bore. 

The girdle shrank; its lessening round 
Still kept the shming gem, 
| But now her flowing locks it bound, 
A lustrous diadem. 

And narrower still the circlet grew; 

Behold ! a glittering band, 
Its roseate diamond set anew, 

Her neck's white column spamied. 

Sims rise and set; the straining clasp 

The shortened links resist, 
Yet flashes in a bracelet's grasp 

The diamond, on her wrist. 

At length, the round of changes past 
The thieving years could bring, 

The jewel, glittering to the last, 
Still sparkles hi a ring. 

So, link by link, our friendships part, 

So loosen, break, and fall, 
A narrowing zone; the loving heart 

Lives changeless through them all. 
1884. 1884. 

TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 2 

This is your month, the month of ' perfect 

days,' 
Birds in full song and blossoms all ablaze. 

1 For the class reunion, 1884. 

2 On his return from England. 



Nature herself your earliest welcome 

breathes, 
Spreads every leaflet, every bower in- 

wreathes ; 
Carpets her paths for your returning feet, 
Puts forth her best your coming steps to 

greet; 
And Heaven must surely find the earth in 

tune 
When Home, sweet Home, exhales the 

breath of June. 

These blessed days are waning all too fast, 
And June's bright visions mingling with 

the past; i 

Lilacs have bloomed and faded, and the rose 
Has dropped its petals, but the clover blows, 
And fills its slender tubes with honeyed 

sweets; 
The fields are pearled with milk-white 

margarites; 
The dandelion, which you sang of old, 
Has lost its pride of place, its crown of gold, 
But still displays its feathery-mantled 

globe, 
Which children's breath or wandering 

winds unrobe. 
These were your humble friends; your 

opened eyes 
Nature had trained her common gifts to 

prize; 20 

Not Cam nor Isis taught you to despise 
Charles, with his muddy margin and the 

harsh, 
Plebeian grasses of the reeking marsh. 
New England's home-bred scholar, well 

you knew 
Her soil, her speech, her people, through 

and through, 
And loved them ever with the love that 

holds 
All sweet, fond memories in its fragrant 

folds. 
Though far and wide your winged words 

have flown, 
Your daily presence kept you all our own, 
Till, with a sorrowing sigh, a thrill of 

pride, 3 o 

We heard your summons, and you left our 

side 
For larger duties and for tasks untried. 

How pleased the Spaniards for a while to 

claim 
This frank Hidalgo with the liquid name, 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



403 



Who stored their classics on his crowded 

shelves 
And loved their Calderon as they did 

themselves ! 
Before his eyes what changing pageants 

pass ! 
The bridal feast how near the funeral 

mass ! 
The death-stroke falls, — the Misereres 

wail; 
The joy - bells ring, — the tear-stained 

cheeks unveil, 40 

While, as the playwright shifts his pictured 

scene, 
The royal mourner crowns his second 

queen. 

From Spain to Britain is a goodly stride, — 
Madrid and London long-stretched leagues 

divide. 
What if I send him, ' Uncle S., says he,' 
To my good cousin whom he calls ' J. B.' ? 
A nation's servants go where they are 

sent, — 
He heard his Uncle's orders, and he went. 
By what enchantments, what alluring 

arts, 
Our truthful James led captive British 

hearts, — 50 

Whether his shrewdness made their states- 
men halt, 
Or if his learning found their Dons at fault, 
Or if his virtue was a strange surprise, 
Or if his wit flung star-dust in their eyes, — 
Like honest Yankees we can simply guess ; 
But that he did it all must needs confess. 
England herself without a blush may 

claim 
Her only conqueror since the Norman 

came. 
Eight years an exile ! What a weary 

while 
Since first our herald sought the mother 

isle ! 60 

His snow-white ,fiag no churlish wrong has 

soiled, — 
He left unchallenged, he returns unspoiled. 

Here let us keep him, here he saw the 

light, — 
His genius, wisdom, wit, are ours by right; 
And if we lose him our lament will be 
We have ' five hundred ' — not 'as good 

as he.' 
1885. (1888.) 



THE LYRE OF ANACREON x 

The minstrel of the classic lay 

Of love and wine who sings 
Still found the fingers run astray 

That touched the rebel strings. 

Of Cadmus he would fain have sung, 

Of Atreus and his line; 
But all the jocund echoes rung 

With songs of love and wine. 

Ah, brothers ! I would fain have caught 
Some fresher fancy's gleam; 1 

My truant accents find, unsought, 
The old familiar theme. 

Love, Love ! but not the sportive child 
With shaft and twanging bow, 

Whose random arrows drove us wild 
Some threescore years ago; 

Not Eros, with his joyous laugh, 

The urchin blind and bare, 
But Love, with spectacles and staff, 

And scanty, silvered hair. 2 

Our heads with frosted locks are white, 
Our roofs are thatched with snow, 

But red, in chilling winter's spite, 
Our hearts and hearthstones glow. 

Our old acquaintance, Time, drops in, 

And while the running sands 
Their golden thread unheeded spin, 

He warms his frozen hands. 

Stay, winged hours, too swift, too sweet, 
And waft this message o'er 3. 

To all we miss, from all we meet 
On life's fast-crumbling shore: 

Say that, to old affection true, 

We hug the narrowing chain 
That binds our hearts, — alas, how few 

The links that yet remain ! 

The fatal touch awaits them all 

That turns the rocks to dust; 
From year to year they break and fall, — 

They break, but never rust. 41 

Say if one note of happier strain 
This worn-out harp afford, — 

1 For the class reunion, 1885. 



404 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



One throb that trembles, not in vain, — 
Their memory lent its chord. 

Say that when Fancy closed her wings 
And Passion quenched his fire, 

Love, Love, still echoed from the strings 
As from Anacreou's lyre ! 

1885. (1888.) 



AFTER THE CURFEW i 

The Play is over. While the light 
Yet lingers in the darkening hall, 

I come to say a last Good-night 
Before the final Exeunt all. 

We gathered once, a joyous throng: 
The jovial toasts went gayly round; 

With jest, and laugh, and shout, and song, 
We made the floors and walls resound. 

We come with feeble steps and slow, 

A little band of four or five, io 

Left from the wrecks of long ago, 
Still pleased to find ourselves alive. 

Alive ! How living, too, are they 
Whose memories it is ours to share ! 

Spread the long table's full array, — 
There sits a ghost in every chair ! 

One breathing form no more, alas ! 

Amid our slender group we see ; 3 
With him we still remained ' The Class,' — 

Without his presence what are we ? 20 

The hand we ever loved to clasp, — 

That tireless hand which knew no rest, — 

Loosed from affection's clinging grasp, 
Lies nerveless on the peaceful breast. 

1 The last of the poems written for the class of '29. 
See the letter from Samuel May to F. J. Garrison, 
quoted in Morse's Life of Holmes, vol. i, p. 78 : ' " After 
the Curfew " was positively (he last. " Farewell ! I let 
the curtain fall." The curtain never rose again for 
" "29." We met once more — a year later — at Parker's. 
But three were present, Smith, Holmes, and myself. 
No poem — very quiet — something very like tears. 
The following meetings — all at Dr. H.'s house — were 
quiet, social, talking meetings — the Doctor of course 
doing the live talking. ... At one of these meetings 
four were present, all the survivors but one ; and there 
was more general talk. But never another Class 
Poem.'' 

This poem, and the three following, appeared in Over 
the Teacups. 

■ The personal reference is to our greatly beloved 
and honored classmate, James Freeman Clarke. 
(Holmbs.) 



The beaming eye, the cheering voice, 
That lent to life a generous glow, 

Whose every meaning said ' Rejoice,' 
We see, we hear, no more below. 

The air seems darkened by his loss, 

Earth's shadowed features look less fair, 

And heavier weighs the daily cross 31 

His willing shoulders helped us bear. . 



Why mourn that we, the favored few 
Whom grasping Time so long has spared 

Life's sweet illusions to pursue, 

The common lot of age have shared ? 

In every pulse of Friendship's heart 
There breeds unfelt a throb of pain, — 

One hour must rend its links apart, 

Though years on years have forged the 
chain. 40 

So ends • The Boys,' — a lifelong play. 

We too must hear the Prompter's call 
To fairer scenes and brighter day: 

Farewell ! I let the curtain fall. 
1S89. 1890. 



LA MAISON D'OR 
(bar harbor) 

From this fair home behold on either side 
The restful mountains or the restless sea: 

So the warm sheltering walls of life divide 
Time and its tides from still eternity. 

Look on the waves: their stormy voices 
teach 
That not on earth may toil and struggle 
cease. 
Look on the mountains: better far than 
speech 
Their silent promise of eternal peace. 
1S90. 1890. 

TOO YOUNG FOR LOVE 

Too young for love ? 

Ah, say not so ! 
Tell reddening rosebuds not to blow ! 
Wait not for spring to pass away, — 
Love's summer months begin with May ! 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



405 



Too young for love ? 
Ah, say not so ! 
Too young ? Too young ? 
Ah, no ! no ! no ! 

Too young for love ? 

Ah, say not so, 
While daisies bloom and tulips glow ! 
June soon will come with lengthened day 
To practise all love learned in May. 

Too young for love ? 

Ah, say not so ! 

Too young ? Too young ? 

Ah, no ! no ! no ! 
1890. 1890. 



THE BROOMSTICK TRAIN; OR, 
THE RETURN OF THE WITCHES 1 

Look out ! Look out, boys ! Clear the 

track ! 
The witches are here ! They 've all come 

back ! 
They hanged them high, — No use ! No 

use ! 
What cares a witch for a hangman's noose ? 
They buried them deep, but they would n't 

lie still, 
For cats and witches are hard to kill; 
They swore they should n't and would n't 

die, — 
Books said they did, but they lie ! they lie ! 

A couple of hundred years, or so, 
They had knocked about in the world 
below, 10 

When an Essex Deacon dropped in to call, 
And a homesick feeling seized them all; 

1 Look here ! There are crowds of people whirled 
through our streets on these new-fashioned cars, with 
their witch-broomsticks overhead, — if they don't 
come from Salem, they ought to, — and not more than 
one in a dozen of these fish-eyed bipeds thinks or cares 
a nickel's worth about the miracle which is wrought 
for their convenience. They know that without hands 
or feet, without horses, without steam, so far as they 
can see, they are transported from place to place, and 
that there is nothing to account for it except the witch- 
broomstick and the iron or copper cobweb which they 
see stretched above them. What do they know or care 
about this last revelation of the omnipresent spirit of 
the material universe ? We ought to go down on our 
knees when one of these mighty caravans, car after 
car, spins by us, under the mystic impulse which seems 
to know not whether its train is loaded or empty. 
(Holmes, in Over the Teacups.) The first electric 
trolley-cars had just been introduced when this poem 
was written, in 1890. 



For he came from a place they knew full 

well, 
And many a tale he had to tell. 
They longed to visit the haunts of men, 
To see the old dwellings they knew again, 
And ride on their broomsticks all around 
Their wide domain of unhallowed ground. 

In Essex county there 's many a roof 
Well known to him of the cloven hoof; 20 
The small square windows are full in view 
Which the midnight hags went sailing 

through, 
On their well-trained broomsticks mounted 

high, 
Seen like shadows against the sky; 
Crossing the track of owls and bats, 
Hugging before them their coal-black cats. 

Well did they know, those gray old wives, 
The sights we see in our daily drives: 
Shimmer of lake and shine of sea, 
Browne's bare hill with its lonely tree, 30 
(It was n't then as we see it now, 
With one scant scalp-lock to shade its 

brow ;) 
Dusky nooks in the Essex woods, 
Dark, dim, Dante-like solitudes, 
Where the tree-toad watches the sinuous 

snake 
Glide through his forests of fern and 

brake ; 
Ipswich River; its old stone bridge; 
Far off Andover's Indian Ridge, 
And many a scene where history tells 
Some shadow of bygone terror dwells, — 40 
Of ' Norman's Woe ' with its tale of dread, 
Of the Screeching Woman of Marblehead, 
(The fearful story that turns men pale: 
Don't bid me tell it, — my speech would 

fail.) 

Who would not, will not, if he can, 
Bathe in the breezes of fair Cape Ann, — 
Rest in the bowers her bays enfold, 
Loved by the sachems and squaws of old ? 
Home where the white magnolias bloom, 
Sweet with the bayberry's chaste perfume, 
Hugged by the woods and kissed by the 
sea ! 5 i 

Where is the Eden like to thee ? 
For that ' couple of hundred years, or so,' 
There had been no peace in the world below; 
The witches still grumbling, ' It is n't fair; 
Come, give us a taste of the upper air ! 



406 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Wc 've had enough of your sulphur springs, 
And the evil odor that round them clings; 
We long for a drink that is cool and 

nice, — 
Great buckets of water with Wenham ice; 
Wo 've served you well up-stairs, you 

know; 61 

You 're a good old — fellow — come, let us 

go!' 

I don't feel sure of his being good, 

But he happened to be in a pleasant 

mood, — 
As fiends with their skins full sometimes 

are 
(He 'd been drinking with ' roughs ' at a 

Boston bar). 
So what does he do but up and shout 
To a graybeard turnkey, ' Let 'em out ! ' 

To mind his orders was all he knew; 

The gates swung open, and out they dew. 70 

' Where are our broomsticks ? ' the beldams 
cried. 

'Here are your broomsticks,' an imp re- 
plied. 

' They 've been in — the place you know — 
so long 

They smell of brimstone uncommon strong; 

But they 've gained by being left alone, — 

Just look, and you '11 see how tall they 've 
grown.' 

' And where is my cat ? ' a vixen squalled. 

' Yes, where are our cats ? ' the witches 
bawled, 

And began to call them all by name: 

As fast as they called the cats, they came: 

There was bob-tailed Tommy and long- 
tailed Tim, 81 

And wall-eyed Jaeky and green-eyed Jim, 

And splay-foot Benny and slim-legged 
Beau, 

And Skinny and Squally, and Jerry and 
Joe, 

And many another that came at call, — 

It would take too long to count them all. 

All black, — one could hardly tell which 
was which, 

But every cat knew his own old witch; 

And she knew hers as hers knew her, — 

Ah, did n't they curl their tails and purr ! 90 

No sooner the withered hags were free 
Than out they swarmed for a midnight 
spree; 



I could n't tell all they did in rhymes, 

But the Essex people had dreadful times. 

The Swampscott fishermen still relate 

How a strange sea-monster stole their bait; 

How their nets were tangled in loops and 
knots, 

And they found dead crabs in their lobster- 
pots. 

Poor Danvers grieved for her blasted crop's, 

And Wilmington mourned over mildewed 
hops. 100 

A blight played havoc with Beverly 
beans, — 

It was all the work of those hateful queans ! 

A dreadful panic began at ' Pride's,' 

Where the witches stopped in their mid- 
night rides, 

And there rose strange rumors and vague 
alarms 

'Mid the peaceful dwellers at Beverly 
Farms. 

Now when the Boss of the Beldams found 
That without his leave they were ramping 

round, 
He called, — they could hear him twenty 

miles, 109 

From Chelsea beach to the Misery Isles; 
The deafest old granny knew his tone 
Without the trick of the telephone. 
' Come here, you witches ! Come here ! ' 

says he, — 
1 At your games of old, without asking me ! 
I '11 give you a little job to do 
That will keep you stirring, you godless 

crew 1 ', 

They came, of course, at their master's call, 
The witches, the broomsticks, the cats, and 

all; 
He led the hags to a railway train 
The horses were trying to drag in vain. 120 
' Now, then,' says he, • you 've had your 

fun, 
And here are the cars you 've got to run. 
The driver may just unhitch his team, 
We don't want horses, we don't want 

steam ; 
You may keep your old black cats to hug, 
But the loaded train you 've got to lug.' 

Since then on many a car you '11 see 

A broomstick plain as plain can be; 

On every stiok there 's a witch astride, — 

The string you see to her leg is tied. 130 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



407 



She will do a mischief if she can, 

But the string is held by a careful man, 

And whenever the evil-minded witch 

Would cut some caper, he gives a twitch. 

As for the hag, you can't see her, 

But hark ! you can hear her black cat's 

purr, 
And now and then, as a car goes by, 
You may catch a gleam from her wicked 

eye. 
Often you 've looked on a rushing train, 
But just what moved it was not so plain. 
It could n't be thoso wires above, 141 

For they could neither pull nor shove; 
Where was the motor that made it go 
You could n't guess, but now you know. 

Remember my rhymes when you ride again 
On the rattling rail by the broomstick 

train ! 
1890. 1890. 



INVITA MINERVA 1 

Vex not the Muse with idle prayers, — 

She will not hear thy call; 
She steals upon thee unawares, 

Or seeks thee not at all. 

Soft as the moonbeams when they sought 

Endymion's fragrant bower, 
She parts the whispering leaves of thought 

To show her full-blown flower. 

For thee her wooing hour has passed, 

The singing birds have flown, 
And winter comes with icy blast 

To chill thy buds unblown. 

Yet, though the woods no longer thrill 
As once their arches rung, 

1 I find the burden and restrictions of rhyme more 
and more troublesome as I grow older. There are 
times when it seems natural enough to employ that 
form of expression, but it is only occasionally ; and the 
Use of it as a vehicle of the commonplace is so preva- 
lent that one is not much tempted to select it as the 
medium for his thoughts and emotions. The art of 
rhyming has almost become a part of a high-school 
education, and its practice is far from being an evi- 
dence of intellectual distinction. Mediocrity is as 
much forbidden to the poet in our days as it was in 
those of Horace, and the immense majority of the 
verses written are stamped with hopeless mediocrity. 

When one of the ancient poets found he was trying 
to grind out verses which came unwillingly, he said he 
was writing Invito, Minerva. (Holmes, in Over the 
Tea-Cups, introducing the poem.) 



Sweet echoes hover round thee still 
Of songs thy summer sung. 

Live in thy past; await no more 
The rush of heaven-sent wings; 

Earth still has music left in store 
While Memory sighs and sings. 
1890. 1800. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

1819-1891 

Thou shouldst have sung the swan-song 
for the choir 
That filled our groves with music till the 
day 
Lit the last hilltop with its reddening fire, 
And evening listened for thy lingering 
lay. 

But thou hast found thy voice in realms 
afar 
Where strains celestial blend their notes 
with thine; 
Some cloudless sphere beneath a happier 
star 
Welcomes the bright-winged spirit we 
resign. 

How Nature mourns thee in the still re- 
treat 
Where passed in peace thy love-enchanted 
hours ! 10 

Where shall she find an eye like thine to 
greet 
Spring's earliest footprints on her open- 
ing flowers ? 

Have the pale wayside weeds no fond re- 
gret 
For him who read the secrets they en- 
fold ? 
Shall the proud spangles of the field forget 
The verse that lent now glory to their 
gold ? 

And ye whose carols wooed his infant 
ear, 
Whose chants with answering woodnotes 
he repaid, 
Have ye no song his spirit still may hear 
From Elmwood's vaults of overarching 
shade ? 20 



4o8 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Friends of his studious hours, who thronged 
to teach 
The deep-read scholar all your varied 
lore, 
Shall he no longer seek your shelves to 
reach 
The treasure missing from his world- 
wide store ? 



This singer whom we long have held so dear 
Was Nature's darling, shapely, strong, 
and fair; 

Of keenest wit, of judgment crystal-clear, 
Easy of converse, courteous, debonair, 

Fit for the loftiest or the lowliest lot, 
Self-poised, imperial, yet of simplest 
ways; 30 

At home alike in castle or in cot, 

True to his aim, let others blame or 
praise. 

Freedom he found an heirloom from his 
sires; 
Song, letters, statecraft, shared his years 
in turn; 
All went to feed the nation's altar-fires 
Whose mourning children wreathe his 
funeral urn. 

He loved New England, — people, lan- 
guage, soil, 
Unweaned by exile from her arid breast. 
Farewell awhile, white-handed son of toil, 
Go with her brown-armed laborers to thy 
rest. 40 

Peace to thy slumber in the forest shade ! 
Poet and patriot, every gift was thine; 
Thy name shall live while summers bloom 
and fade, 
And grateful Memory guard thy leafy 
shrine ! 
1891. 1891. 



IN MEMORY OF JOHN GREEN- 
LEAF WHITTIER 

DECEMBER 1 7, 1807-SEPTEMBER 7, 1 892 

Thou, too, hast left us. While with heads 
bowed low, 
And sorrowing hearts, we mourned our 
summer's dead, 



The flying season bent its Parthian bow, 
And yet again our mingling tears were 
shed. 

Was Heaven impatient that it could not 

wait 

The blasts of winter for earth's fruits to 

fall? 

Were angels crowding round the open gate 

To greet the spirits coming at their call ? 

Nay, let not fancies, born of old be- 
liefs, 
Play with the heart-beats that are throb- 
bing still, 10 
And waste their outworn phrases on the 
griefs, 
The silent griefs that words can only 
chill. 

For thee, dear friend, there needs no high- 
wrought lay, 
To shed its aureole round thy cherished 
name, — 
Thou whose plain, home-born speech of 
Yea and Nay 
Thy truthful nature ever best became. 

Death reaches not a spirit such as thine, — 

It can but steal the robe that hid thy 

wings; 

Though thy warm breathing presence we 

resign, 

Still in our hearts its loving semblance 

clings. 20 

Peaceful thy message, yet for struggling 
right,— 
When Slavery's gauntlet in our face was 
flung,— 
While timid weaklings watched the dubi- 
ous fight 
No herald's challenge more defiant rung. 

Yet was thy spirit tuned to gentle themes 
Sought in the haunts thy humble youth 
had known. 
Our stern New England's hills and vales 
and streams, — 
Thy tuneful idyls made them all their own. 

The wild flowers springing from thy native 
sod 
Lent all their charms thy new-world 
song to fill, — 30 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



409 



Gave thee the mayflower and the golden- 
rod 
To match the daisy and the daffodil. 

In the brave records of our earlier time 
A hero's deed thy generous soul inspired, 

And many a legend, told in ringing rhyme, 
The youthful soul with high resolve has 
fired. 

Not thine to lean on priesthood's broken 
reed; 

No barriers caged thee in a bigot's fold; 
Did zealots ask to syllable thy creed, 

Thou saidst ' Our Father,' and thy creed 



was told. 



40 



Best loved and saintliest of our singing 
train, 
Earth's noblest tributes to thy name be- 
long. 
A lifelong record closed without a stain, 
A blameless memory shrined in deathless 
song. 

Lift from its quarried ledge a flawless 
stone ; 
Smooth the green tiu'f and bid the tablet 
rise, 
And on its snow-white surface carve alone 
These words, — he needs no more, — 
Here Whittier lies. 
1892. 1892. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



'FOR THIS TRUE NOBLENESS I 
SEEK IN VAIN ' 

' For this true nobleness I seek in vain, 

In woman and in man I find it not; 

I almost weary of my earthly lot, 

My life-springs are dried up with burning 

pain.' 
Tbou find'st it not ? I pray thee look 

again, 
Look inward through the depths of thine 

own soul. 
How is it with thee ? Art thou sound and 

whole ? 
Doth narrow search show thee no earthly 

stain ? 
Be noble ! and the nobleness that lies 
In other men, sleeping, but never dead, 
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own; 
Then wilt thou see it gleam in many 

eyes, 
Then will pure light around thy path be 

shed, 
And thou wilt nevermore be sad and lone. 
1S40. 1840. 



MY LOVE 1 

Not as all other women are 
Is she that to my soul is dear; 
Her glorious fancies come from far, 
Beneath the silver evening- star, 
And yet her heart is ever near. 

Great feelings hath she of her own, 
Which lesser souls may never know; 
God giveth them to her alone, 
And sweet they are as any tone 
Wherewith the wind may choose to blow. 10 

Yet in herself she dwelleth not, 
Although no home were half so fair; 
No simplest duty is forgot, 

1 On the poems of 1840 and 1841, see Scudder's Life 
of Lowell, vol. i, pp. 70-OT. 



Life hath no dim and lowly spot 
That doth not in her sunshine share. 

She doeth little kindnesses, 

Which most leave undone, or despise: 

For naught that sets one heart at ease, 

And giveth happiness or peace, 

Is low-esteemed in her eyes. 20 

She hath no scorn of common things, 
And, though she seem of other birth, 
Round us her heart intwines and clings, 
And patiently she folds her wings 
To tread the humble paths of earth. 

Blessing she is: God made her so, 

And deeds of week-day holiness 

Fall from her noiseless as the snow, 

Nor hath she ever chanced to know 

That aught were easier than to bless. 30 

She is most fair, and thereunto 
Her life doth rightly harmonize; 
Feeling or thought that was not true 
Ne'er made less beautiful the blue 
Unclouded heaven of her eyes. 

She is a woman: one in whom 
The spring-time of her childish years 
Hath never lost its fresh perfume, 
Though knowing well that life hath room 
For many blights and many tears. 40 

I love her with a love as still 
As a broad river's peaceful might, 
Which, by high tower and lowly mill, 
Seems following its own wayward will, 
And yet doth ever flow aright. 



And, on its full, deep breast serene, 
Like quiet isles my duties lie; 
It flows around them and between, 
And makes them fresh and fair 

green, 
Sweet homes wherein to live and die. 
1840. 



and 



5° 
1840. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



411 



'MY LOVE, I HAVE NO FEAR 
THAT THOU SHOULDST DIE' 

My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst 

die; 
Alheit I ask no fairer life than this, 
Whose numbering-clock is still thy gentle 

kiss, 
While Time and Peace with hands en- 
locked fly; 
Yet care I not where in Eternity 
We live and love, well knowing that there is 
No backward step for those who feel the 

bliss 
Of Faith as their most lofty yearnings 

high: 
Love hath so purified my being's core, 
Meseems 1 scarcely should be startled, even, 
To find, some morn, that thou hadst gone 

before ; 
Since, with thy love, this knowledge too 

was given, 
Which each calm day doth strengthen 

more and more, 
That they who love are but one step from 

Heaven. 
1841. (1843.) 



<I ASK NOT FOR THOSE 
THOUGHTS, THAT SUDDEN 
LEAP' 

I ask not for those thoughts, that sudden 

leap 
From being's sea, like the isle-seeming 

Kraken, 
With whose great rise the ocean all is 

shaken 
And a heart-tremble quivers through the 

deep; 
Give me that growth which some perchance 

deem sleep, 
Wherewith the steadfast coral-stems uprise, 
Which, by the toil of gathering energies, 
Their upward way into clear sunshine keep, 
Until, by Heaven's sweetest influences, 
Slowly and slowly spreads a speck of green 
Into a pleasant island in the seas, 
Where, 'mid tall palms, the cane-roofed 

honie is seen, 
And wearied men shall sit at sunset's hour, 
Hearing the leaves and loving God's dear 

power. 
1841. (1843.) 



1 GREAT TRUTHS ARE PORTIONS 
OF THE SOUL OF MAN' 

Great Truths are portions of the soul of 

man; 
Great souls are portions of Eternity; 
Each drop of blood that e'er through true 

heart ran 
With lofty message, ran for thee and 

me; 
For God's law, since the starry song 

began, 
Hath been, and still forevermore must 

be, 
That every deed which shall outlast Time's 

span 
Must spur the soul to be erect and free ; 
Slave is no word of deathless lineage 

sprung; 
Too many noble souls have thought and 

died, 
Too many mighty poets lived and sung, 
And our good Saxon, from lips purified 
With martyr-fire, throughout the world 

hath rung 
Too long to have God's holy cause denied. 
1841. 1842. 



TO THE SPIRIT OF KEATS 

Great soul, thou sittest with me in my 
room, 

Uplifting me with thy vast, quiet eyes, 

On whose full orbs, with kindly lustre, 
lies 

The twilight warmth of ruddy ember- 
gloom: 

Thy clear, strong tones will oft bring sud- 
den bloom 

Of hope secure, to him who lonely cries, 

Wrestling with the young poet's agonies, 

Neglect and scorn, which seem a certain 
doom : 

Yes ! the few words which, like great 
thunder-drops, 

Thy large heart down to earth shook doubt- 
fully, 

Thrilled by the inward lightning of its 
might, 

Serene and pure, like gushing joy of light, 

Shall track the eternal chords of Des- 
tiny, 

After the moon-led pulse of ocean stops. 

1841. 1842. 



412 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



'OUR LOVE IS NOT A FADING 
EARTHLY FLOWER' 

Ouk love is not a fading earthly flower: 
Its winged seed dropped down from Para- 
dise, 
And, nursed by day and night, by sun and 

shower, 
Doth momently to fresher beauty rise : 
To us the leafless autumn is not bare, 
Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty 

green. 
Our summer hearts make summer's ful- 
ness, where 
No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen: 
For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie, 
Love, — whose forgetf ulness is beauty's 

death, 
Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I 
Into the infinite freedom openeth, 
And makes the body's dark and narrow 

grate 
The wide-flung leaves of Heaven's own 

palace-gate. 
1842. 1843. 



'BELOVED, IN THE NOISY CITY 
HERE' 

Beloved, in the noisy city here, 

The thought of thee can make all turmoil 

cease; 
Around my spirit, folds thy spirit clear 
Its still, soft arms, and circles it with peace ; 
There is no room for any doubt or fear 
In souls so overfilled with love's increase, 
There is no memory of the bygone year 
But growth in heart's and spirit's perfect 

ease: 
How hath our love, half nebulous at first, 
Rounded itself into a full-orbed sun ! 
How have our lives and wills (as haply erst 
They were, ere this forgetfulness begun) 
Through all their earthly distances out- 
burst, 
And melted, like two rays of light in one ! 
1842. (1843.) 

SONG 

O moonlight deep and tender, 

A year and more agone, 
Your mist of golden splendor 

Round my betrothal shone ! 



O elm-leaves dark and dewy, 

The very same ye seem. 
The low wind trembles through ye, 

Ye murmur in my dream ! 

O river, dim with distance, 

Flow thus forever by, 
A part of my existence 

Within your heart doth lie ! 

O stars, ye saw our meeting, 
Two beings and one soul, 

Two hearts so madly beating 
To mingle and be whole ! 

O happy night, deliver 

Her kisses back to me, 
Or keep them all, and give her 

A blissful dream of me ! 



1842. 



(1843.) 



THE SHEPHERD OF KING AD- 
METUS 

There came a youth upon the earth, 

Some thousand years ago, 
Whose slender hands were nothing worth, 
Whether to plough, or reap, or sow. 

Upon an empty tortoise-shell 

He stretched some chords, and drew 
Music that made men's bosoms swell 
Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew. 

Then King Admetus, one who had 

Pure taste by right divine, io 

Decreed his singing not too bad 
To hear between the cups of wine: 

And so, well pleased with being soothed 

Into a sweet half -sleep, 
Three times his kingly beard he smoothed, 
And made him viceroy o'er his sheep. 

His words were simple words enough, 

And yet he used them so, 
That what in other mouths was rough 
In his seemed musical and low. 20 

Men called him but a shiftless youth, 

In whom no good they saw; 
And yet, unwittingly, in truth, 
They made his careless words their law. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



4i3 



They knew not how he learned at all, 

For idly, hour by hour, 
He sat and watched the dead leaves fall, 
Or mused upon a common flower. 

It seemed the loveliness of things 

Did teach him all their use, 30 

For, in mere weeds, and stones, and springs, 
He found a healing power profuse. 

Men granted that his speech was wise, 

But, when a glance they caught 
Of his slim grace and woman's eyes, 
They laughed, and called him good-for- 
naught. 

Yet after he was dead and gone, 

And e'en his memory dim, 
Earth seemed more sweet to live upon, 
More full of love, because of him. 40 

And day by day more holy grew 

Each spot where he had trod, 

Till after-poets only knew 

Their first-born brother as a god. 



AN 



1842. 

INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD 
CAR 



He spoke of Burns: men rude and rough 
Pressed round to hear the praise of one 
Whose heart was made of manly, simple 
stuff, 
As homespun as their own. 

And, when he read, they forward leaned, 
Drinking, with thirsty hearts and ears, 
His brook-like songs whom glory never 
weaned 
From humble smiles and tears. 

Slowly there grew a tender awe, 
Sun-like, o'er faces brown and hard, 10 
As if in him who read they felt and saw 
Some presence of the bard. 

It was a sight for sin and wrong 
And slavish tyranny to see, 
A sight to make our faith more pure and 
strong 
In high humanity. 

I thought, these men will carry hence 
Promptings their former life above, 



And something of a finer reverence 

For beauty, truth, and love. 20 

God scatters love on every side 
Freely among his children all, 
And always hearts are lying open wide, 
Wherein some grains may fall. 

There is no wind but soweth seeds 
Of a more true and open life, 
Which burst, unlooked for, into high-souled 
deeds, 
With wayside beauty rife. 

We find within these souls of ours 
Some wild germs of a higher birth, 30 

i Which in the poet's tropic heart bear flowers 
Whose fragrance fills the earth. 

Within the hearts of all men lie 
These promises of wider bliss, 
Which blossom into hopes that cannot die, 
In sunny hours like this. 

All that hath been majestical 
In life or death, since time began, 
Is native in the simple heart of all, 

The angel heart of man. 40 

And thus, among the untaught poor, 
Great deeds and feelings find a home, j 
That cast in shadow all the golden lore { 
Of classic Greece and Rome. 

O mighty brother-soul of man, 
Where'er thou art, in low or high, 
Thy skyey arches with exulting span 
O'er-roof infinity ! 

All thoughts that mould the age begin 
Deep down within the primitive soul, 50 
And from the many slowly upward win 
To one who grasps the whole: 

In his wide brain the feeling deep 
That struggled on the many's tongue 
Swells to a tide of thought, whose surges 
leap 
O'er the weak thrones of wrong. 

All thought begins in feeling, — wide 
In the great mass its base is hid, 
And, narrowing up to thought, stands 
glorified, 
A moveless pyramid. 60 



414 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Nor is he far astray, who deems 
That every hope, which rises and grows 
broad 
the world's heart, by ordered impulse , 
streams 
From the great heart of God. 

God wills, man hopes: in common souls 
Hope is but vague and undefined, 
Till from the poet's tongue the message 
rolls 
A blessing to his kind. 

Never did Poesy appear 
So full of heaven to me, as when 7 o 

I saw how it would pierce through pride 
and fear 
To the lives of coarsest men. 

It may be glorious to write 
Thoughts that shall glad the two or 
three 
High souls, like those far stars that come 
in sight 
Once in a century; — 



But better far it is to speak 
One simple word, which now and then 
Shall waken their free nature in the weak 
And friendless sons of men; 



So 



To write some earnest verse or line, 
Which, seeking not the praise of art, 
Shall make a clearer faith and manhood 
shine 
In the untutored heart. 

He who doth this, in verse or prose, 
May be forgotten in his day, 
But surely shall be crowned at last with 
those 
Who live and speak for aye. 
1842, 1842. 

STANZAS ON FREEDOM i 

Men ! whose boast it is that ye 
Come of fathers brave and free, 

1 It is to be remembered that in publicly espousing 
the cause of abolition so early as 1843 Lowell made per- 
sonal and social sacrifices even greater than Whittier's. 
See his passage on Whittier, and that on himself, in the 
' Fable for Critics ; ' and Scudder's Life of Lowell, 
vol. i, pp. 105, 168-175, 211 and following, and especially 
183, 184, where Lowell speaks in particular of these 
' Stanzas on Freedom,' which were written for an anti- 



If there breathe on earth a slave, 
Are ye truly free and brave ? 
If ye do not feel the chain, 
When it works a brother's pain, 
Are ye not base slaves indeed, 
Slaves unworthy to be freed ? 

Women ! who shall one day bear 

Sons to breathe New England air, io 

If ye hear, without a blush, 

Deeds to make the roused blood rush 

Like red lava through your veins, 

For your sisters now in chains, — 

Answer ! are ye fit to be 

Mothers of the brave and free ? 

Is true Freedom but to break 
Fetters for our own dear sake, 
And, with leathern hearts, forget 
That we owe mankind a debt ? so 

No ! true freedom is to share 
All the chains our brothers wear, 
And, with heart and hand, to be 
Earnest to make others free ! 

They are slaves who fear to speak 
For the fallen and the weak ; 
They are slaves who will not choose 
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, 
Rather than in silence shrink 
From the truth they needs must think ; 
They are slaves who dare not be 3 1 

In the right with two or three. 
1843. 1843. 



WENDELL PHILLIPS 

He stood upon the world's broad thresh- 
old; wide" 
The din of battle and of slaughter rose; 

slavery reunion held on the anniversary of West Indian 
Emancipation, and were first printed under the title 
given in this letter : ' This puts me in mind of Long- 
fellow's suppression of his anti-slavery pieces. [These 
had been omitted in one edition of Longfellow's poems, 
published at Philadelphia.] Sydney Gay wishes to 
know whether I think he spoke too harshly of the af- 
fair. I think he did . . . and this not because I agree 
with what he tells me is your notion of the matter . . . 
— for I do not think that an author has a right to 
suppress anything that God has given him — but be- 
cause I believe that Longfellow esteemed them of in- 
ferior quality to his other poems. For myself, when I 
was printing my second volume of poems, Owen wished 
to suppress a certain " Song sung at an Anti-Slavery 
Picnic." I never saw him, buc he urged me with I 
know not what worldly arguments. My only answer 
was : " Let all the others be suppressed if you will — 
that I will never suppress." ' 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



4i5 



He saw God stand upon the weaker side, 
That sank in seeming loss before its foes: 
Many there were who made great haste 

and sold 
Unto the cunning enemy their swords, 
He scorned their gifts of fame, and power, 

and gold, 
And, underneath their soft and flowery 

words, 
Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he 

went 
And humbly joined him to the weaker 

part, 
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content 
So he could be the nearer to God's heart, 
And feel its solemn pulses sending blood 
Through all the widespread veins of end- 
less good. 

(1843.) 

RHCECUS 1 

God sends his teachers unto every age, 
To every clime, and every race of men, 
With revelations fitted to their growth 
And shape of mind, nor gives the realm of 

Truth 
Into the selfish rule of one sole race: 
Therefore each form of worship that hath 

swayed 
The life of man, and given it to grasp 
The master-key of knowledge, reverence, 
Infolds some germs of goodness and of 

right; 
Else never had the eager soul, which 

loathes IO 

The slothful down of pampered ignorance, 
Found in it even a moment's fitful rest. 

There is an instinct in the human heart 
Which makes that all the fables it hath 

coined, 
To justify the reign of its belief 
And strengthen it by beauty's right divine, 
Veil in their inner cells a mystic gift, 
Which, like the hazel twig, in faithful 

hands, 
Points surely to the hidden springs of truth. 
For, as in nature naught is made in vain, 20 
But all things have within their hull of 

use 
A wisdom and a meaning which may speak 
Of spiritual secrets to the ear 
Of spirit; so, in whatso'er the heart 
1 Compare Landor's ' The Hamadryad.' 



Hath fashioned for a solace to itself, 
To make its inspirations suit its creed, 
And from the niggard hands of falsehood 

wring 
Its needful food of truth, there ever is 
A sympathy with Nature, which reveals, 
Not less than her own works, pure gleams 

of light 30 

And earnest parables of inward lore. 
Hear now this fairy legend of old Greece, 
As full of gracious youth, and beauty still 
As the immortal freshness of that grace 
Carved for all ages on some Attic frieze. 

A youth named Rhcecus, wandering in 

the wood, 
Saw an old oak just trembling to its fall, 
And, feeling pity of so fair a tree, 
He propped its gray trunk with admiring 

care, 
And with a thoughtless footstep loitered 

on. 40 

But, as he turned, he heard a voice behind 
That murmured ' Rhcecus ! ' 'T was as if 

the leaves, 
Stirred by a passing breath, had murmured 

And, while he paused bewildered, yet again 
It murmured ' Rhcecus ! ' softer than a 

breeze. 
He started and beheld with dizzy eyes 
What seemed the substance of a happy 

dream 
Stand there before him, spreading a warm 

glow 
Within the green glooms of the shadowy 

oak. 
It seemed a woman's shape, yet far too 

fair 50 

To be a woman, and with eyes too meek 
For any that were wont to mate with gods. 
All naked like a goddess stood she there, 
And like a goddess all too beautiful 
To feel the guilt-born earthliness of shame. 
' Rhcecus, I am the Dryad of this tree,' 
Thus she began, dropping her low-toned 

words 
Serene, and full, and clear, as drops of 

dew, 
' And with it I am doomed to live and die ; 
The rain and sunshine are my caterers, 60 
Nor have I other bliss than simple life; 
Now ask me what thou wilt, that I can 

give, 
And with a thankful joy it shall be thine.' 



416 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Then Rhcecus, with a nutter at the heart, 
Yet by the prompting of such beauty bold, 
Answered: ' What is there that can satisfy 
The endless craving of the soul but love ? 
Give me thy love, or but the hope of that 
Which must be evermore my nature's goal.' 
After a little pause she said again, 70 

But with a glimpse of sadness in her tone, 
'I give it, Rhcecus, though a perilous gift; 
An hour before the sunset meet me here.' 
And straightway there was nothing he 

could see 
But the green glooms beneath the shadowy 

oak, 
And not a sound came to his straining ears 
But the low trickling rustle of the leaves, 
And far away upon an emerald slope 
The falter of an idle shepherd's pipe. 

Now, in those days of simpleness and 

faith, 80 

Men did not think that happy things were 

dreams 
Because they overstepped the narrow bourn 
Of likelihood, but reverently deemed 
Nothing too wondrous or too beautiful 
To be the guerdon of a daring heart. 
So Rhcecus made no doubt that he was blest, 
And all along unto the city's gate 
Earth seemed to spring beneath him as he 

walked, 
The clear, broad sky looked bluer than its 

wont, 
And he could scarce believe he had not 

wings, 90 

Such sunshine seemed to glitter through 

his veins 
Instead of blood, so light he felt and 

strange. 

Young Rhcecus had a faithful heart 
enough, 

But one that in the present dwelt too 
much, 

And, taking with blithe welcome whatso- 
e'er 

Chance gave of joy, was wholly bound in 
that, 

Like the contented peasant of a vale, 

Deemed it the world, and never looked 
beyond. 

So, haply meeting in the afternoon 

Some comrades who were playing at the 
dice, 100 

He joined them, and forgot all else beside. 



The dice were rattling at the merriest, 
And Rhcecus, who had met but sorry luck, 
Just laughed in triumph at a happy throw, 
When through the room there hummed a 

yellow bee 
That buzzed about his ear with down- 
dropped legs 
As if to light. And Rhcecus laughed and 

said, 
Feeling how red and flushed he was with 

loss, 
' By Venus ! does he take me for a rose ? ' 
And brushed him off with rough, impatient 

hand. no 

But still the bee came back, and thrice 

again 
Rhcecus did beat him off with growing 

wrath. 
Then through the window flew the wounded 

bee, 
And Rhcecus, tracking him with angry 

eyes, 
Saw a sharp mountain-peak of Thessaly 
Against the red disk of the setting sun, — 
And instantly the blood sank from his 

heart, 
As if its very walls had caved away. v 
Without a word he turned, and, rushing 

forth, 
Ran madly through the city and the gate, 
And o'er the plain, which now the wood's 

long shade, 121 

By the low sun thrown forward broad and 

dim, 
Darkened wellnigh unto the city's wall. 

Quite spent and out of breath he reached 
the tree, 

And, listening fearfully, he heard once 
more 

The low voice murmur ' Rhcecus ! ' close at 
hand: 

Whereat he looked around him, but could 
see 

Naught but the deepening glooms beneath 
the oak. 

Then sighed the voice, ' O Rhcecus ! never- 
more 

Shalt thou behold me or by day or night, 

Me, who would fain have blessed thee with 
a love 131 

More ripe and bounteous than ever yet 

Filled up with nectar any mortal heart: 

But thou didst scorn my humble mes- 
senger, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



4i7 



And sent'st him back to me with bruised 

wings. 
We spirits only show to gentle eyes, 
We ever ask an undivided love, 
And he who scorns the least of Nature's 

works 
Is thenceforth exiled and shut out from all. 
Farewell ! for thou canst never see me 

more.' 140 

Then Rhcecus beat his breast, and 
groaned aloud, 
And cried, ' Be pitiful ! forgive me yet 
This once, and I shall never need it more ! ' 
' Alas ! ' the voice returned, ' 't is thou art 

blind, 
Not I unmerciful; I can forgive, 
But have no skill to heal thy spirit's eyes; 
Only the soul hath power o'er itself.' 
With that again there murmured ' Never- 
more ! ' 
And Rhcecus after heard no other sound, 
Except the rattling of the oak's crisp 
leaves, 150 

Like the long surf upon a distant shore, 
Raking the sea-worn pebbles up and down. 
The night had gathered round him: o'er 

the plain 
The city sparkled with its thousand lights, 
And sounds of revel fell upon his ear 
Harshly and like a curse; above, the sky, 
With all its bright sublimity of stars, 
Deepened, and on his forehead smote the 

breeze : 
Beauty was all around him and delight, 
But from that eve he was alone on earth. 160 

(1843.) 

TO THE DANDELION 

Dear common flower, that grow'st be- 
side the way, 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless 
gold, 
First pledge of blithesome May, 
Which children pluck, and full of pride 
uphold, 
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that 
they 
An Eldorado in the grass have found, 

Which not the rich earth's ample round 
May match in wealth, thou art more dear 

to me 
Than all the prouder summer-blooms 
may be. 



Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Span- 
ish prow 10 
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, 

Nor wrinkled the lean brow 
Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease; 
'T is the Spring's largess, which she scat- 
ters now 
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand, 
Though most hearts never understand 
To take it at God's value, but pass by 
The offered wealth with unrewarded eye. 

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; 
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime ; 20 

The eyes thou givest me 
Are in the heart, and heed not space or 
time: 
Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee 
Feels a more summer-like warm ravish- 
ment 
In the white lily's breezy tent, 
His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first 
From the dark green thy yellow circles 
burst. 

Then think I of deep shadows on the 

grass, 

Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, 

Where, as the breezes pass, 30 

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, 

Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, 

Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue 

That from the distance sparkle through 
Some woodland gap, and of a sky above, 
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb 
doth move. 

My childhood's earliest thoughts are 
linked with thee; 
The sight of thee calls back the robin's 
song, 
Who, from the dark old tree 
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, 40 

And I, secure in childish piety, 
Listened as if I heard an angel sing 

With news from heaven, which he 
could bring 
Fresh every day to my untainted ears 
When birds and flowers and I were 
happy peers. 

How like a prodigal doth nature seem, 
When thou, for all thy gold, so common 
art! 
Thou teachest me to deem 



4i8 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



More sacredly of every human heart, 
Since each reflects in joy its scanty 
gleam 50 

Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret 
show, 
Did we but pay the love we owe, 
And with a child's undoubting wisdom 

look 
On all these living pages of God's book. 
1844 f 1845. 



COLUMBUS 

The cordage creaks and rattles in the 

wind, 
With whims of sudden hush; the reeling 

sea 
Now thumps like solid rock beneath the 

stern, 
Now leaps with clumsy wrath, strikes 

short, and falling, 
Crumbled to whispery foam, slips rustling 

down 
The broad backs of the waves, which jostle 

and crowd 
To fling themselves upon that unknown 

shore, 
Their used familiar since the dawn of 

time, 
Whither this foredoomed life is guided on 
To sway on triumph's hushed, aspiring 

poise 10 

One glittering moment, then to break ful- 
filled. 

How lonely is the sea's perpetual swing, 
The melancholy wash of endless waves, 
The sigh of some grim monster undescried, 
Fear-painted on the canvas of the dark, 
Shifting on his uneasy pillow of brine ! 
Yet night brings more companions than the 

day 
To this drear waste; new constellations 

burn, 
And fairer stars, with whose calm height 

my soul 
Finds nearer sympathy than with my herd 20 
Of earthen souls, whose vision's scanty ring 
Makes me its prisoner to beat my wings 
Against the cold bars of their unbelief, 
Knowing in vain my own free heaven be- 
yond. 
O God ! this world, so crammed with eager 
life, 



That comes and goes and wanders back to 

silence 
Like the idle wind, which yet man's shap- 
ing mind 
Can make his drudge to swell the longing 

sails 
Of highest endeavor, — this mad, unthrif t 

world, 
Which, every hour, throws life enough 

away so 

To make her deserts kind and hospitable, 
Lets her great destinies be waved aside 
By smooth, lip-reverent, formal infidels, 
Who weigh the God they not believe with 

gold, 
And find no spot in Judas, save that he, 
Driving a duller bargain than he ought, 
Saddled his guild with too cheap precedent. 
O Faith ! if thou art strong, thine opposite 
Is mighty also, and the dull fool's sneer 
Hath ofttimes shot chill palsy through the 

arm 40 

Just lifted to achieve its crowning deed, 
And made the firm-based heart, that would 

have quailed 
The rack or fagot, shudder like a leaf 
Wrinkled with frost, and loose upon its 

stem. 
The wicked and the weak, by some dark 

law, 
Have a strange power to shut and rivet 

down 
Their own horizon round us, to unwing 
Our heaven-aspiring visions, and to blur 
With surly clouds the Future's gleaming 

peaks, 
Far seen across the brine of thankless 

years. 50 

;!lf the chosen soul could never be alone 
In deep mid-silence, open-doored to God, 
No greatness ever had been dreamed 01 

done; 
Among dull hearts a prophet never grew; 
The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude. 

The old world is effete; there man with 

man 
Jostles, and, in the brawl for means to live, 
Life is trod underfoot, — Life, the one 

block 
Of marble that 's vouchsafed wheref rom to 

carve 
Our great thoughts, white and godlike, to 

shine down 60 

The future, Life, the irredeemable block, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



419 



Which one o'er-hasty chisel-dint oft mars, 
Scanting our room to cut the features out 
Of our full hope, so forcing us to crown 
With a mean head the perfect limbs, or 

leave 
The god's face glowing o'er a satyr's trunk, 
Failure's brief epitaph. 

Yes, Europe's world 
Reels on to judgment; there the common 

need, 
Losing God's sacred use, to be a bond 
'Twixt Me and Thee, sets each one scowl- 

mglj 7 o 

O'er his own selfish hoard at bay; no state, 
Knit strongly with eternal fibres up 
Of all men's separate and united weals, 
Self-poised and sole as stars, yet one as 

light, 
Holds up a shape of large Humanity 
To which by natural instinct every man 
Pays loyalty exulting, by which all 
Mould their own lives, and feel their pulses 

filled 
With the red, fiery blood of the general 

life, 
Making them mighty in peace, as now in 

war 80 

They are, even in the flush of victory, 

weak, 
Conquering that manhood which should 

them subdue. 
And what gift bring I to this untried 

world ? 
Shall the same tragedy be played anew, 
And the same lurid curtain drop at last 
On one dread desolation, one fierce crash 
Of that recoil which on its makers God 
Lets Ignorance and Sin and Hunger make, 
Early or late ? Or shall that common- 
wealth 
Whose potent unity and concentric force 
Can draw these scattered joints and parts 

of men 9 i 

Into a whole ideal man once more, 
Which sucks not from its limbs the life 

away, 
But sends it flood-tide and creates itself 
Over again in every citizen, 
Be there built up ? For me, I have no 

choice ; 
I might turn back to other destinies, 
For one sincere key opes all Fortune's doors; 
But whoso answers not God's earliest call 
Forfeits or dulls that faculty supreme IO o 



Of lying open to his genius 
Which makes the wise heart certain of its 
ends. 

Here am I; for what end God knows, not I; 
Westward still points the inexorable soul: 
Here am I, with no friend but the sad sea, 
The beating heart of this great enterprise, 
Which, without me, would stiffen in swift 

death; 
This have I mused on, since mine eye could 

first 108 

Among the stars distinguish and with joy 
Rest on that God-fed Pharos of the north, 
On some blue promontory of heaven lighted 
That juts far out into the upper sea; 
To this one hope my heart hath clung for 

years, 
As would a foundling to the talisman 
Hung round his neck by hands he knew 

not whose; 
A poor, vile thing and dross to all beside, 
Yet he therein can feel a virtue left 
By the sad pressure of a mother's hand, 
And unto him it still is tremulous 1 19 

With palpitating haste and wet with tears, 
The key to him of hope and humanness, 
The coarse shell of life's pearl, Expectancy. 
This hope hath been to me for love and 

fame, 
Hath made me wholly lonely on the earth, 
Building me up as in a thick-ribbed tower, 
Wherewith enwalled my watching spirit 

burned, 
Conquering its little island from the Dark, 
Sole as a scholar's lamp, and heard men's 

steps, 
In the far hurry of the outward world, 
Pass dimly forth and back, sounds heard in 

dream. 130 

As Ganymede by the eagle was snatched 

up 
From the gross sod to be Jove's cup-bearer, 
So was I lifted by my great design: 
And who hath trod Olympus, from his eye 
Fades not that broader outlook of the gods ; 
His life's low valleys overbrow earth's 

clouds, 
And that Olympian spectre of the past 
Looms towering up in sovereign memory, 
Beckoning his soul from meaner heights of 

doom. 
Had but the shadow of the Thunderer's 

bird, 140 

Flashing athwart my spirit, made of me 



420 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



A swift-betraying vision's Ganymede, 
Yet to have greatly dreamed precludes low 

ends; 
Great days have ever such a morning-red, 
On such a base great futures are built up, 
And aspiration, though not put in act, 
Comes back to ask its plighted troth again, 
Still watches round its grave the unlaid 

ghost 
Of a dead virtue, and makes other hopes, 
Save that implacable one, seem thin and 

bleak 150 

As shadows of bare trees upon the snow, 
Bound freezing there by the unpitying 

moon. 

While other youths perplexed their mando- 
lins, 
Praying that Thetis would her fingers twine 
In the loose glories of her lover's hair, 
And wile another kiss to keep back day, 
1, stretched beneath the many-centuried 

shade 
Of some writhed oak, the wood's Laocoon, 
Did of my hope a dryad mistress make, 
Whom I would woo to meet me privily, 160 
Or underneath the stars, or when the moon 
Flecked all the forest floor with scattered 
pearls. 

days whose memory tames to fawning 

down 
The surly fell of Ocean's bristled neck ! 

1 know not when this hope enthralled me 

first, 
But from my boyhood up I loved to hear 
The tall pine-forests of the Apennine 
Murmur their hoary legends of the sea, 
Which hearing, I in vision clear beheld 
The sudden dark of tropic night shut 

down 170 

O'er the huge whisper of great watery 

wastes, 
The while a pair of herons trailingly 
Flapped inland, where some league-wide 

river hurled 
The yellow spoil of unconjectured realms 
Far through a gulf's green silence, never 

scarred 
By any but the North-wind's hurrying 

keels. 
And not the pines alone ; all sights and 

sounds 
To my world-seeking heart paid fealty, 
And catered for it as the Cretan bees 



Brought honey to the baby Jupiter, iSo 

Who in his soft hand crushed a violet, 
Godlike foremusing the rough thunder's 

gripe; 
Then did I entertain the poet's song, 
My great Idea's guest, and, passing o'er 
That iron bridge the Tuscan built to hell, 
I heard Ulysses tell of moimtain-chains 
Whose adamantine links, his manacles, 
The western main shook growling, and still 

gnawed. 
I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale 
Of happy Atlantis, and heard Bj time's 

keel 1 go 

Crunch the gray pebbles of the Vinland 

shore : 
I listened, musing, to the prophecy 
Of Nero's tutor-victim; lo, the birds 
Sing darkling, conscious of the climbing 

dawn. 
And I believed the poets; it is they 
Who utter wisdom from the central deep, 
And, listening to the inner flow of tilings, 
Speak to the age out of eternity. 

Ah me ! old hermits sought for solitude 
In caves and desert places of the earth, 206 
Where their own heart-beat was the onl 

stir 
Of living thing that comforted the year; 
But the bald pillar-top of Simeon, 
In midnight's blankest waste, were pop 

lous, 
Matched with the isolation drear and deep 
Of him who pines among the swarm Of 

men, 

At once a new thought's king and pris- 
oner, 
Feeling the truer life within his life, 
The foxuitain of his spirit's prophecy, 
Sinking away and wasting, drop by drop, 210 
In the ungrateful sands of sceptic ears. 
He in the palace-aisles of untrod woods 
Doth walk a king ; for him the pent-up 

cell 
Widens beyond the circles of the stars: 
And all the sceptred spirits of the past 
Come thronging in to greet him as their 

peer; 
But hi the market-place's glare and throng 
He sits apart, an exile, and his brow 
Aches with the mocking memory of its 

crown. 
Yet to the spirit select there is no choice ; 
He caimot say, This will I do, or that, 221 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



421 



For the cheap means putting Heaven's ends 

in pawn, 
And bartering his bleak rocks, the freehold 

stern 
Of destiny's first-born, for smoother fields 
That yield no crop of self-denying will; 
A hand is stretched to him from out the 

dark, 
Which grasping without question, he is led 
Where there is work that he must do for 

God. 
The trial still is the strength's complement, 
And the uncertain, dizzy path that scales 230 
The sheer heights of supremest purposes 
Is steeper to tbe angel than the child. 
Chances have laws as fixed as planets have, 
And disappointment's dry and bitter root, 
Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool 
Of the world's scorn, are the right mother- 
milk 
To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind, 
And break a pathway to those unknown 

realms 
That in the earth's broad shadow lie en- 
thralled; 
Endurance is the crowning quality, 240 

And patience all the passion of great hearts ; 
These are their stay, and when the leaden 

world 
Sets its hard face against their fateful 

thought, 
And brute strength, like the Gaulish con- 
queror, 
Clangs his huge glaive down in the other 

scale, 
The inspired soul but flings his patience in, 
And slowly that outweighs the ponderous 

globe, — 
One faith against a whole earth's unbelief, 
One soul against the flesh of all mankind. 

Thus ever seems it when my soul can hear 
The voice that errs not; then my triumph 

gleams, 251 

O'er the blank ocean beckoning, and all 

night 
My heart flies on before me as I sail; 
Far on I see my lifelong enterprise, 
That rose like Ganges 'mid the freezing 

snows 
Of a world's solitude, sweep broadening 

down, 
And, gathering to itself a thousand streams, 
Grow sacred ere it mingle with the sea; 
I see the ungated wall of chaos old, 



With blocks Cyclopean hewn of solid night, 
Fade like a wreath of unreturning mist 261 
Before the irreversible feet of light ; — 
And lo, with what clear omen in the east 
On day's gray threshold stands the eager 

dawn, 
Like young Leander rosy from the sea 
Glowing at Hero's lattice ! 

One day more 
These muttering shoalbrains leave the 

helm to me: 
God, let me not in their dull ooze be 

stranded ; 
Let not this one frail bark, to hollow 

which 
I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart 
Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so 271 
Cast up to warp and blacken in the sun, 
Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off 
His cheek-swollen pack, and from the lean- 
ing mast 
Fortune's full sail strains forward ! 

One poor day ! — 
Remember whose and not how short it is ! 
It is God's day, it is Columbus's. 
A lavish day ! One day, with life and 
heart, 278 

Is more than time enough to find a world. 
1844. (1847.) » 



THE PRESENT CRISIS 2 

When a deed is done for Freedom, through 
the broad earth's aching breast 

Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling 
on from east to west, 

1 Lowell's Poems, Second Series, dated 1848, was 
really published in 1847. 

2 Written when the annexation of Texas was being 
discussed, but universal in its application. 

For twenty years the solemn monitory music of this 
poem never ceased to reecho in public halls. In the 
Lowell Memorial Address which George William Curtis 
delivered before the Brooklyn Institute, February 22, 
1892, he said in his heightened way of some passages 
of 'The Present Crisis : ' 'Wendell Phillips winged 
with their music and tipped with their flame the dart 
of his fervid appeal and manly scorn. As he quoted 
them with suppressed emotion in his low, melodious, 
penetrating voice, the white plume of the resistless 
Navarre of eloquence gained a loftier grace, that re- 
lentless sword of invective a more flashing edge.' And 
the stanza of ' The Present Crisis' beginning 'For hu- 
manity sweeps onward ' was made by Sumner the text 
and motif of that famous ' Crime against Speech ' ora- 
tion that provoked the assault of Preston Brooks. 
(Greenslet'3 Lowell, pp. 79, 80.) 



422 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels 
the soul within him climb 

To the awful verge of manhood, as the 
energy sublime 

Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the 
thorny stem of Time. 

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots 
the instantaneous throe, 

When the travail of the Ages wrings 
earth's systems to and fro; 

At the birth of each new Era, with a recog- 
nizing start, 

Nation wildly looks at nation, standing 
with mute lips apart, 

And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child 
leaps beneath the Future's heart. 10 

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a ter- 
ror and a chill, 

Under continent to continent, the sense of 
coming ill, 

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels 
his sympathies with God 

In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be 
drunk up by the sod, 

Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delv- 
ing in the nobler clod. 

For mankind are one in spirit, and an in- 
stinct bears along, 

Round the earth's electric circle, the swift 
flash of right or wrong; 

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Hu- 
manity's vast frame 

Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the 
gush of joy or shame ; — 

In the gam or loss of one race all the rest 
have equal claim. 20 

Once to every man and nation comes the 

moment to decide, 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for 

the good or evil side; 
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, 

offering each the bloom or blight, 
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the 

sheep upon the right, 
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that 

darkness and that light. 

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose 

party thou shalt stand, 
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes 

the dust against our land ? 



Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is 

Truth alone is strong, 
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see 

around her throng 
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield 

her from all wrong. 30 

Backward look across the ages and the 

beacon-moments see, 
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, 

jut through Oblivion's sea; 
Not an ear in court or market for the low 

foreboding cry 
Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, 

from whose feet earth's chaff must 

%; 

Never shows the choice momentous till the 
judgment hath passed by. 

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's 
pages but record 

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt 
old systems and the Word; 

Truth forever on the soaffold, Wrong for- 
> _^__eyeronthe throne, — 

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, be- 
hind the dim unknown, 

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping 
watch above his own. 40 

We see dimly in the Present what is small 

and what is great, 
Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn 

the iron helm of fate, 
But the soul is still oracular; amid the 

market's din, 
List the ominous stern whisper from the 

Delphic cave within, — 
' They enslave their children's children who 

make compromise with sin.' 

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of 

the giant brood, 
Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who 

have drenched the earth with blood, 
Famished in his self-made desert, blinded 

by our purer day, 
Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his 

miserable prey; — 
Shall we guide his gory fingers where our 

helpless children play ? 50 

Then to side with Truth is noble when we 
share her wretched crust, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



423 



Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 
't is prosperous to be just; 

Tben it is the brave man chooses, while the 
coward stands aside, 

Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord 
is crucified, 



Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all vir- 
tue was the Past's; 

But we make their truth our falsehood, 
thinking that hath made us free, 

Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while 
our tender spirits flee 



And the multitude make virtue of the faith The rude grasp of that great Impulse which 



they had denied. 

Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, — 

they were souls that stood alone, 
While the men they agonized for hurled 

the contumelious stone, 
Stood serene, and down the future saw the 

golden beam incline 
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by 

their faith divine, 
By one man's plain truth to manhood and 

to God's supreme design. 60 

By the light of burning heretics Christ's 

bleeding feet I track, 
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the 

cross that turns not back, 
And these mounts of anguish number how 

each generation learned 
One new word of that grand Credo which 

in prophet-hearts hath burned 
Since the first man stood God-conquered 

with his face to heaven upturned. 

For Humanity sweeps onward: where to- 
day the martyr stands, 

On the morrow crouches Judas with the 
silver in his hands; 

Far in front the cross stands ready and the 
crackling fagots burn, 

While the hooting mob of yesterday in 
silent awe return 

To glean up the scattered ashes into His- 
tory's golden urn. 7 o 

'T is as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle 

slaves 
Of a legendary virtue carved upon our 

father's graves, 
Worshippers of light ancestral make the 

present light a crime ; — 
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, 

steered by men behind their time ? 
Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, 

that make Plymouth Rock sublime? 

They were men of present valor, stalwart 
old iconoclasts, 



drove them across the sea. 

They have rights who dare maintain them ; 

we are traitors to our sires, 
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's 

new-lit altar-fires; 
Shall we make their creed our jailer ? 

Shall we, in our haste to slay, 
From the tombs of the old prophets steal 

the funeral lamps away 
To light up the martyr-fagots round the 

prophets of to-day ? 

New,, occasions teach new duties; Time 

makes ancient good uncouth; 
They must upward still, and onward, who 

would keep abreast of Truth; 
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires ! we 

ourselves must Pilgrims be, 
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly 

through the desperate winter sea, 
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the 

Past's blood-rusted key. 90 

December, 1844. 1845. 



A CONTRAST 

Thy love thou sentest oft to me, 
And still as oft I thrust it back; 

Thy messengers I could not see 
In those who everything did lack, 
The poor, the outcast and the black. 

Pride held his hand before mine eyes, 
The world with flattery stuffed mine 
ears; 
I looked to see a monarch's guise, 

Nor dreamed thy love would knock for 

years, 
Poor, naked, fettered, full of tears. 

Yet, when I sent my love to thee, 
Thou with a smile didst take it in, 

And entertain'dst it royally, 

Though grimed with earth, with hunger 

thin, 
And leprous with the taint of sin. 



424 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Now every day thy love I meet, 
As o'er the earth it wanders wide, 

With weary step and bleeding feet, 
Still knocking at the heart of pride 
And offering grace, though still denied. 

1845. 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE » 

What visionary tints the year puts on, 
When falling leaves falter through mo- 
tionless air 
Or humbly cling and shiver to be gone ! 
How shimmer the low flats and pastures 
bare, 
As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 
The bowl between me and those distant 
hills, 
And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, 
tremulous hair ! 

No more the landscape holds its wealth 
apart, 
Making me poorer in my poverty, 

But mingles with my senses and my 
heart; 10 

My own projected spirit seems to me 
In her own reverie the world to steep; 
'T is she that waves to sympathetic sleep, 
Moving, as she is moved, each field and hill 
and tree. 

How fuse and mix, with what unfelt 
degrees, 
Clasped by the faint horizon's languid arms, 

Each into each, the hazy distances ! 
The softened season all the landscape 
charms ; 
Those hills, my native village that embay, 
In waves of dreamier purple roll away, 20 
And floating in mirage seem all the glim- 
mering farms. 

Ear distant sounds the hidden chickadee 
Close at my side; far distant sound the 
leaves; 

1 The reader familiar with Lowell's life will readily 
recognize the local references which occur in this 
poem. To others it may be worth while to point out 
that the village smithy is the same as that commemo- 
rated by Longfellow, that Allston lived in the section 
of Cambridge known as Cambridgeport, that some of 
the old willows at the causey's end still stand, and that 
the group is the one which gave the name to Under the 
Willows. {Cambridge Edition of Lowell's Poetical 
Works.) 



The fields seem fields of dream, where 
Memory 
Wanders like gleaning Ruth; and as the 
sheaves 
Of wheat and barley wavered in the eye 
Of Boaz as the maiden's glow went by, 
So tremble and seem remote all things the 
sense receives. 

The cock's shrill trump that tells of 
scattered corn, 
Passed breezily on by all his flapping 
mates, 30 

Faint and more faint, from barn to barn 
is borne, 
Southward, perhaps to far Magellan's 
Straits ; 
Dimly I catch the throb of distant flails ; 
Silently overhead the hen-hawk sails, 
With watchful, measuring eye, and for his 
quarry waits. 

The sobered robin, hunger-silent now, 
Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer; 
The chipmunk, on the shingly shagbark's 
bough 
Now saws, now lists with downward eye 
and ear, 
Then drops his nut, and, cheeping, with 
a bound 40 

Whisks to his winding fastness under- 
ground; 
The clouds like swans drift down the 
streaming atmosphere. 

O'er yon bare knoll the pointed cedar 
shadows 
Drowse on the crisp, gray moss ; the 
ploughman's call 
Creeps faint as smoke from black, fresh- 
furrowed meadows; 
The single crow a single caw lets fall; 
And all around me every bush and tree 
Says Autumn 's here, and Winter soon 
will be, 
Who snows his soft, white sleep and silence 
over all. 

The birch, most shy and ladylike of 
trees, 50 

Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, 

And hints at her foregone gentilities 
With some saved relics of her wealth of 
leaves ; 
The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

4 — t 



425 



Glares red as blood across the sinking 
sun, 
As one who proudlier to a falling fortune 
cleaves. 

He looks a sachem, in red blanket wrapt, 
Who, 'mid some council of the sad-garbed 
whites, 
Erect and stern, in his own memories 
lapt, 
With distant eye broods over other 
sights, 60 

Sees the hushed wood the city's flare re- 
place, 
The woimded turf heal o'er the railway's 
trace, 
And roams the savage Past of his un- 
dwindled rights. 

The red-oak, softer-grained, yields all for 
lost, 
And, with his crumpled foliage stiff and 
dry, 
After the first betrayal of the frost, 
Rebuffs the kiss of the relenting sky; 
The chestnuts, lavish of their long-hid 

gold, 
To the faint Summer, beggared now and 
old, 
Pour back the sunshine hoarded 'neath her 
favoring eye. 70 

The ash her purple drops forgivingly 
And sadly, breaking not the general hush; 
The maple-swamps glow like a sunset 
sea, 
Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; 
All round the wood's edge creeps the 

skirting blaze 
Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, 
Ere the rain fall, the cautious farmer burns 
his brush. 

O'er yon low wall, which guards one un- 
kempt zone, 
Where vines and weeds and scrub-oaks 
intertwine 
Safe from the plough, whose rough, dis- 
cordant stone 80 
Is massed to one soft gray by lichens fine, 
The tangled blackberry, crossed and re- 
crossed, weaves 
A prickly network of ensanguined leaves ; 
Hard by, with coral beads, the prim black- 
alders shine. 



Pillaring with flame this crumbling bound- 
ary, 
Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the plough- 
boy's foot, 
Who, with each sense shut fast except 
the eye, 
Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to 
shoot, 
The woodbine up the elm's straight stem 

aspires, 
Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal 
fires ; 90 

In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr oak 
stands mute.- 

Below, the Charles, a stripe of nether 
sky, 
Now hid by rounded apple-trees between, 
Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps 
bellying by, 
Now flickering golden through a woodland 
screen, 
Then spreading out, at his next turn be- 

. y° nd >. 

A silver circle like an inland pond — 
Slips seaward silently through marshes 
purple and green. 

Dear marshes ! vain to him the gift of 
sight 
Who cannot in their various incomes 
share, 100 

From every season drawn, of shade and 
light, 
Who sees in them but levels brown and 
bare; 
Each change of storm or sunshine scatters 

free 
On them its largess of variety, 
For Nature with cheap means still works 
her wonders rare. 

In Spring they lie one broad expanse of 
green, 
O'er which the light winds run with glim- 
mering feet: 
Here, yellower stripes track out the creek 
unseen, 
There, darker growths o'er hidden ditches 
meet; 
And purpler stains show where the blos- 
soms crowd, no 
As if the silent shadow of a cloud 
Hung there becalmed, with the next breath 
to fleet. 



426 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



All round, upon the river's slippery edge, 
Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, 
Whispers and leans the breeze-entangling 
sedge ; 
Through emerald glooms the lingering 
waters slide, 
Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the 

sun, 
And the stiff banks in eddies melt and run 
Of dimpling light, and with the current 
seem to glide. 

In Summer 't is a blithesome sight to 
see, < 120 

As, step by step, with measured swing, they 
pass, 
The wide-ranked mowers wading to the 
knee, 
Their sharp scythes panting through the 
wiry grass; 
Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade in 

a ring, 
Their nooning take, while one begins to 
sing 
A stave that droops and dies 'neath the 
close sky of brass. 

Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobo- 
link, 
Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops 
Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremu- 
lous brink, 
And 'twixt the winrows most demurely 
drops, 130 

A decorous bird of business, who provides 
For his brown mate and fledglings six 
besides, 
And looks from right to left, a farmer 'mid 
his crops. 

Another change subdues them in the Fall, 
But saddens not;, they still show merrier 
tints, 
Though sober russet seems to cover all ; 
When the first sunshine through their dew- 
drops glints, 
Look how the yellow clearness, streamed 

across, 
Redeems with rarer hues the season's 
loss, 
As Dawn's feet there had touched and left 
their rosy prints. 140 

Or come when sunset gives its freshened 

zest, 



Lean o'er the bridge and let the ruddy 
thrill, 
While the shorn sun swells down the hazy 
west, 
Glow opposite ; — the marshes drink their 
fill 
And swoon with purple veins, then slowly 

fade 
Through pink to brown, as eastward 
moves the shade, 
Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Si- 
mond's darkening hill. 



Later, and yet ere Winter wholly shuts, 

Ere through the first dry snow the runner 

grates, 

And the loath cart-wheel screams in 

slippery ruts, 150 

While firmer ice the eager boy awaits, 

Trying each buckle and strap beside the 

fire, 
And until bedtime plays with his desire, 
Twenty times putting on and off his new- 
bought skates; — 

Then, every morn, the river's banks shine 
bright 
With smooth plate-armor, treacherous and 
frail, 
By the frost's clinking hammers forged 
at night, 
'Gainst which the lances of the sun prevail, 
Giving a pretty emblem of the day 
When guiltier arms in light shall melt 
away, 160 

And states shall move free-limbed, loosed 
from war's cramping mail. 

And now those waterfalls the ebbing 
river 
Twice every day creates on either side 
Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred 
grots they shiver 
In grass-arched cbannels to the sun denied; 
High flaps in sparkling blue the far- 
heard crow, 
The silvered flats gleam frostily below, 
Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the 
glassy tide. 

But crowned hi turn by vying seasons 
three, 
Their winter halo hath a fuller ring; 170 
This glory seems to rest immovably, — 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



427 



The others were too fleet and vanishing; 
When the hid tide is at its highest flow, 
O'er marsh and stream one breathless 
trance of snow 
With brooding fulness awes and hushes 
everything. 

The sunshine seems blown off by the bleak 
wind, 
As pale as formal candles lit by day; 

Gropes to the sea the river dumb and 
blind; 
The brown ricks, snow-thatched by the 
storm in play, 
Show pearly breakers combing o'er their 
lee, 180 

White crests as of some just enchanted 
sea, 
Checked in their maddest leap and hanging 
poised midway. 

But when the eastern blow, with rain 
aslant, 
From mid-sea's prairies green and rolling 
plains 
Drives hi his wallowing herds of billows 
gaunt, 
And the roused Charles remembers in his 
veins 
Old Ocean's blood and snaps his gyves of 

frost, 
That tyrannous silence on the shores is 
tost 
In dreary wreck, and crumbling desolation 
reigns. 

Edgewise or flat, in Druid-like device, 190 
With leaden pools between or gullies 
bare, 
The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge 
of ice; 
No life, no sound, to break the grim de- 
spair, 
Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges 

stiff 
Down crackles riverward some thaw- 
sapped cliff, 
Or when the close-wedged fields of ice 
crunch here and there. 

But let me turn from fancy -pictured 
scenes 
To that whose pastoral calm before me lies: 

Here nothing harsh or rugged inter- 
venes ; 



The early evening with her misty dyes 200 
Smooths off the ravelled edges of the 

nigh, 
Relieves the distant with her cooler sky, 
And tones the landscape down, and soothes 
the wearied eyes. 

There gleams my native village, dear to 
me, 
Though higher change's waves each day 
are seen, 
Whelming fields famed in boyhood's his- 
tory, 
Sanding with houses the diminished 
green; 
There, in red brick, which softening time 

defies, 
Stand square and stiff the Muses' fac- 
tories ; — 
How with my life knit up is every well- 
known scene ! 210 

Flow on, dear river ! not alone you flow 
To outward sight, and through your marshes 
wind; 
Fed from the mystic springs of long- 
ago, 
Your twin flows silent through my world 
of mind : * 
Grow dim, dear marshes, in the evening's 

gray ! 
Before my inner sight ye stretch away, 
And will forever, though these fleshly eyes 
grow blind. 

Beyond the hillock's house-bespotted 
swell, 
Where Gothic chapels house the horse and 
chaise, 
Where quiet cits in Grecian temples 
dwell, 220 

Where Coptic tombs resound with prayer 
and praise, 
Where dust and mud the equal year di- 
vide, 
There gentle Allston lived, and wrought, 
and died, 
Transfiguring street and shop with his illu- 
mined gaze. 

Virgilium vidi tantum, — I have seen 
But as a boy, who looks alike on all, 

That misty hair, that fine Undine-like 
mien, 
1 Compare Emerson's ' Two Rivers,' p. 87. 



428 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Tremulous as down to feeling's faintest 

call; — 
Ah, dear old homestead ! count it to thy 

fame 
That thither many times the Painter 

came ; — 230 

One elm yet bears his name, a feathery tree 

and tall. 

Swiftly the present fades in memory's 
glow, — 
Our only sure possession is the past; 

The village blacksmith died a month ago, 
And dim to me the forge's roaring blast; 
Soon fire-new medisevals we shall see 
Oust the black smithy from its chestnut- 
tree, 
And that hewn down, perhaps, the beehive 
green and vast. L 

How many times, prouder than king on 
throne, 
Loosed from the village school-dame's A's 
and B's, 240 

Panting have I the creaky bellows blown, 
And watched the pent volcano's red in- 
crease, 
Then paused to see the ponderous sledge, 

brought down 
By that hard arm voluminous and brown, 
From the white iron swarm its golden van- 
ishing bees. 

Dear native town ! whose choking elms 
each year 
With eddying dust before their time turn 

Pining for rain, — to me thy dust is dear ; 
It glorifies the eve of summer day, 

And when the westering sun half sunken 

burns, 250 

The mote-thick air to deepest orange 

turns, 

The westward horseman rides through 

clouds of gold away, 

So palpable, I 've seen those unshorn few, 
The six old willows at the causey's end 
(Such trees Paul Potter never dreamed 
nor drew), 
Through this dry mist their checkering 
shadows send, 

1 The tree was cut down by the city authorities in 
1876. See the note on Longfellow's ' Village Black- 
smith,' p. 108. 



Striped, here and there, with many a 
long-drawn thread, 

Where streamed through leafy chinks the 
trembling red, 
Past which, in one bright trail, the hang- 
bird's flashes blend. 

Yes, dearer far thy dust than all that 
e'er, 260 

Beneath the awarded crown of victory, 

Gilded the blown Olympic charioteer; 
Though lightly prized the ribboned parch- 
ments three, 
Yet collegisse juvat, I am glad 
That here what colleging was mine I 
had, — 
It linked another tie, dear native town, with 
thee! 

Nearer art thou than simply native earth, 
My dust with thine concedes a deeper tie ; 
A closer claim thy soil may well put 
forth, 
Something of kindred more than sympa- 
thy; _ 270 
For in thy bounds I reverently laid away 
That blinding anguish of forsaken clay, 
That title I seemed to have in earth and 
sea and sky, 

That portion of my life more choice to 
me 
(Though brief, yet in itself so round and 
whole) 
Than all the imperfect residue can be; — 
The Artist saw his statue of the soul 

Was perfect; so, with one regretful 

stroke, 

The earthen model into fragments broke, 

And without her the impoverished seasons 

roll. 280 

1847. 1847. 



HEBE 

I SAW the twinkle of white feet, 
I saw the flash of robes descending; 

Before her ran an influence fleet, 
That bowed my heart like barley bending. 

As, in bare fields, the searching bees 
Pilot to blooms beyond our finding, 

It led me on, by sweet degrees 
Joy's simple honey-cells unbinding. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



429 



Those Graces were that seemed grim 
Fates ; 
With nearer love the sky leaned o'er me; 

The long-sought Secret's golden gates 
On musical lunges swung before me. 

I saw the brimmed bowl in her grasp 
Thrilling with godhood; like a lover 

I sprang the proffered life to clasp; — 
The beaker fell; the luck was over. 

The Earth has drunk the vintage up; 
What boots it patch the goblet's splinters ? 

Can Summer fill the icy cup, 
Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's ? 

O spendthrift haste ! await the Gods; 
The nectar crowns the lips of Patience; 

Haste scatters on unthankful sods 
The immortal gift in vain libations. 

Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, 
And shuns the hands would seize upon 
her; 
Follow thy life, and she will sue 
To pour for thee the cup of honor. 

1847. 

THE CHANGELING 1 

I had a little daughter, 

And she was given to me 
To lead me gently backward 

To the Heavenly Father's knee, 
That I, by the force of nature, 

Might in some dim wise divine 
The depth of his infinite patience 

To this wayward soul of mine. 

I know not how others saw her, 

But to me she was wholly fair, 10 

And the light of the heaven she came 
from 

Still lingered and gleamed in her hair; 
For it was as wavy and golden, 

And as many changes took, 
As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples 

On the yellow bed of a brook. 

To what can I liken her smiling 
Upon me, her kneeling lover, 



x Lowell's first child, Blanche, was born December 
31, 1845, and died March 19, 1847. The sorrow of her 
loss was softened by the birth of a second daughter in 
the autumn of 1847. See ' The First Snow-Fall.' 



How it leaped from her lips to her eye- 
lids, 

And dimpled her wholly over, 20 

Till her outstretched hands smiled also, 

And I almost seemed to see 
The very heart of her mother 

Sending sun through her veins to me ! 

She had been with us scarce a twelve- 
month, 

And it hardly seemed a day, 
When a troop of wandering angels 

Stole my little daughter away; 
Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari 

But loosed the hampering strings, 
And when they had opened her 
door, 

My little bird used her wings. 



3° 
cage- 



But they left in her stead a changeling, 

A little angel child, 
That seems like her bud in full blossom, 

And smiles as she never smiled: 
When I wake in the morning, I see it 

Where she always used to lie, 
And I feel as weak as a violet 

Alone 'neath the awful sky. 40 

As weak, yet as trustful also ; 

For the whole year long I see 
All the wonders of faithful Nature 

Still worked for the love of me ; 
Winds wander, and dews drip earth- 
ward, 

Rain falls, suns rise and set, % 

Earth whirls, and all but to prosper 

A poor little violet. 



This child is not mine as the first was, 

I cannot sing it to rest, 
I cannot lift it up fatherly 

And bliss it upon my breast: 
Yet it lies in my little one's cradle 

And sits in my little one's chair, 
And the light of the heaven she 's gone to 

Transfigures its golden hair. 
1847. 1847 



SHE CAME AND WENT 

As a twig trembles, which a bird 

Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, 

So is my memory thrilled and stirred ; — 
I only know she came and went. 



5° 



43° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven, 
The blue dome's measureless content, 

So my soul held that moment's heaven ; — 
I only know she came and went. 

As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps 
The orchards full of bloom and scent, 

So clove her May my wintry sleeps ; — 
I only know she came and went. 

An angel stood and met my gaze, 

Through the low doorway of my tent; 

The tent is struck, the vision stays; — 
I only know she came and went. 

Oh, when the room grows slowly dim, 
And life's last oil is nearly spent, 

One gush of light these eyes will brim, 
Only to think she came and went. 

1847 ? (1849.) 



'I THOUGHT OUR LOVE AT 
FULL, BUT I DID ERR' 

I thought our love at full, but I did err; 
Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I 

could not see 
That sorrow in our happy world must be 
Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter: 
But, as a mother feels her child first stir 
Under her heart, so felt I instantly 
Deep in my soid another bond to thee 
Thrill with that life we saw depart from her; 
O mother of our angel child ! twice dear ! 
Death knits as well as parts, and still, I wis, 
Her tender radiance shall infold us here, 
Even as the light, borne up by inward bliss, 
Threads the void glooms of space without 

a fear, 
To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss. 

(1849.) 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 1 



FIRST SERIES 



NO. I 
A LETTER 2 

FROM MR. EZEKIEL BIGLOW OF JAALAM 
TO THE HON. JOSEPH T. BUCKINGHAM, 
EDITOR OF THE BOSTON COURIER, IN- 
CLOSING A POEM OF HIS SON, MR. 
HOSEA BIGLOW 

Jatlem, June 1846. 

Mister Eddyter, — Our Hosea wuz 
down to Boston last week, and he see a 

1 Cumberland in his Memoirs tells us that when, in 
the midst of Admiral Rodney's great sea-fight, Sir 
Charles Douglas said to him, • Behold, Sir George, the 
Greeks and Trojans contending for the body of Patro- 
clus ! ' the Admiral answered, peevishly, ' Damn the 
Greeks and damn the Trojans ! I have other things to 
think of.' After the battle was won, Rodney thus to 
Sir Charles, ' Now, my dear friend, I am at the service 
of your Greeks and Trojans, and the whole of Homer's 
Iliad, or as much of it as you please ! ' I had some such 
feeling of the impertinence of our pseudo-classicality 
when I chose our homely dialect to work in. Should 
we be nothing, because somebody had contrived to be 
something (and that perhaps in a provincial dialect) 
ages ago ? and be nothing by our very attempt to be 
that something, which they had already been, and 
which therefore nobody could be again without being a 
bore ? Is there no way left, then, I thought, of being 
natural, of being naif, which means nothing more than 
native, of belonging to the age and country in which 
you are born? The Yankee, at least, is a new phe- 
nomenon ; let us try to be that. ... To me the dialect 
was native, was spoken all about me when a boy, at a 
time when an Irish day-laborer was as rare as an Ameri- 



cruetin Sarjunt a struttin round as popler 
as a hen with 1 chicking, with 2 fellers a 

can one now. Since then I have made a study of it so 
far as opportunity allowed. But when I write in it, it 
is as in a mother tongue, and I am carried back far 
beyond any studies of it to long-ago noonings in my 
father's hay-fields, and to the talk of Sam and Job over 
their jug of blackstrap under the shadow of the ash- 
tree which still dapples the grass whence they have 
been gone so long. (Lowell, in the ' Introduction ' to 
the Biglow Papers, 18G6.) 

1 only know that I believed our war with Mexico 
(though we had as just ground for it as a strong nation 
ever has against a weak one) to be essentially a war of 
false pretences, and that it would result in widening 
the boundaries and so prolonging the life of slavery. . . . 
Against these and many other things I thought all hon- 
est men should protest. I was born and bred in the 
country, and the dialect was homely to me. I tried my 
first Biglow Paper in a newspaper, and found that 
it had a great run. So I wrote the others from time 
to time during the year which followed, always very 
rapidly, and sometimes (as with ' What Mr. Robinson 
thinks ') at one sitting. 

When I came to collect them and publish them in a 
volume, I conceived my parson-editor with his ped- 
antry and verbosity, his amiable vanity and superiority 
to the verses he was editing, as a fitting artistic back- 
ground and soil. It gave me the chance, too, of glan- 
cing obliquely at many things which were beyond the 
horizon of my other characters. (Lowell, in a letter 
on the first series of the Biglow Papers, September 13, 
1859, to Thomas Hughes, who was planning an English 
reprint of them. LowelVs Letters, vol. i, pp. 29G, 297. 
Quoted by the kind permission of Messrs. Harper & 
Bros.) On the political effect of the Biglow Papers, 
see Greenslet's Lowell, pp. 84-8G. 

2 The act of May 13, 184G, authorized President Polk 
to employ the militia, and call out 50,000 volunteers, if 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



43i 



drummiii and fifin arter him like all nater. 
the sarjunt he thout Hosea hed n't gut his 
i teeth cut cos he looked a kindo 's though 
he 'd jest com down, so he cal'lated to hook 
him in, but Hosy wood n't take none o' his 
sarse for all he hed much as 20 Rooster's 
tales stuck onto his hat and eenamost enuf 
brass a bobbin up and down on his shoul- 
ders and figureed onto his coat and trousis, 
let alone wut nater hed sot in his featers, 
to make a G pounder out on. 

wal, Hosea he com home considerabal 
riled, and arter I 'd gone to bed I heern 
Him a thrashin round like a short-tailed 
Bull in fli-time. The old Woman ses she 
to me ses she, Zekle, ses she, our Hosee 's 
gut the chollery or suthin anuther ses she, 
don't you Bee skeered, ses I, he 's oney 
amakin pottery 1 ses i, he 's oilers on hand 
at that ere busynes like Da & martin, and 
shure enuf, cum mornin, Hosy he cum down 
stares full chizzle, hare on eend and cote 
tales flyin, and sot rite of to go reed his 
varses to Parson Wilbur bein he haint aney 
grate shows o' book larnin himself, bimeby 
he cum back and sed the parson wuz dreffle 
tickled with 'em as i hoop you will Be, and 
said they wuz True grit. 

Hosea ses taint hardly fair to call 'em 
hisn now, cos the parson kind o' slicked off 
sum o' the last varses, but he told Hosee 
he did n't want to put his ore in to tetch to 
the Rest on 'em, bein they wuz verry well 
As thay wuz, and then Hosy ses he sed 
suthin a nuther about Simplex Mundishes 
or sum sech feller, but I guess Hosea kind 
o' did n't hear him, for I never hearn o' 
nobody o' that name in this villadge, and 
I 've lived here man and boy 76 year cum 
next tater diggin, and thair aint no where s 
a kitting spryer 'n I be. 

necessary. He immediately called for the full number 
of volunteers, asking Massachusetts for 777 men. On 
May 26 Governor Briggs issued a proclamation for the 
enrolment of the regiment. As the President's call was 
merely a request and not an order, many Whigs and 
the Abolitionists were for refusing it. The Liberator 
for June 5 severely censured the governor for comply- 
ing, and accused him of not carrying out the resolu- 
tions of the last Whig Convention, which had pledged 
the party ' to present as firm a front of opposition to 
the institution as was consistent with their allegiance 
to the Constitution.' (Note by Mr. Frank Beverly Wil- 
liams, in the Riverside and Cambridge Editions of 
Lowell's Poetical Works). 

1 Aut insanit, aut versos facit. — H. W. (The com- 
ments signed H. W. are made by the Rev. Homer Wil- 
bur, A. M., pastor of the First Church in Jaalam, 
who edits the poems of his young parishioner HoBea 
Biglow. 



If you print 'em I wish you 'd jest let 
folks know who hosy's father is, cos my ant 
Keziah used to say it 's nater to be curus 
ses she, she aint livin though and he 's 
a likely kind o' lad. 

EZEKIEL BIGLOW. 



Thrash away, you '11 hev to rattle 

On them kittle-drums o' yourn, — 
'T aint a knowin' kind o' cattle 

Thet is ketched with mouldy corn; 
Put in stiff, you fifer feller, 

Let folks see how spry you be, — 
Guess you '11 toot till you are yeller 

'Fore you git ahold o' me ! 

Thet air flag 's a leetle rotten, 

Hope it aint your Sunday's best; — 10 
Fact ! it takes a sight o' cotton 

To stuff out a soger's chest: 
Sence we farmers hev to pay fer 't, 

Ef you must wear humps like these, 
S'posin' you should try salt hay fer 't, 

It would du ez slick ez grease. 

'T would n't suit them Southun fellers, 

They 're a dreffle graspin' set, 
We must oilers blow the hellers 

Wen they want their irons het; 20 

May be it 's all right ez preachin', 

But my narves it kind o' grates, 
Wen I see the overreachin' 

O' them nigger-drivin' States. 

Them thet rule us, them slave-traders, 

Haint they cut a thunderin' swarth 
(Helped by Yankee renegaders), 

Thru the vartu o' the North ! 
We begin to think it 's nater 

To take sarse an' not be riled; — 30 
Who 'd expect to see a tater 

All on eend at bein' biled ? 

Ez fer war, I call it murder, — 

There you hev it plain an' flat; 
I don't want to go no furder 

Than my Testyment fer that; 
God hez sed so plump an' fairly, 

It 's ez long ez it is broad, 
An' you 've gut to git up airly 

Ef you want to take in God. 40 

'T aint your eppyletts an' feathers 
Make the thing a grain more right; 



43 2 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



'T aint afollerin' your bell-wethers 

Will excuse ye in His sight; 
Ef you take a sword an' dror it, 

An' go stick a feller thru, 
Guv'ment aint to answer for it, 

God '11 send the bill to you. 

Wut 's the use o' meetin'-goin' 

Every Sabbath, wet or dry, 50 

Ef it 's right to go amowin' 

Feller-men like oats an' rye ? 
I dunno but wut it 's pooty 

Trainin' round in bobtail coats, — 
But it 's curus Christian dooty 

This 'ere cuttin' folks's throats. 

They may talk o' Freedom's airy 

Tell they 're pupple in the face, — 
It 's a grand gret cemetary 

Fer the barthrights of our race; 60 

They jest want this Californy 

So 's to lug new slave-States in 
To abuse ye, an' to scorn ye, 

An' to plunder ye like sin. 

Aint it cute to see a Yankee 

Take sech everlastin' pains, 
All to get the Devil's thankee 

Helpin' on 'em weld their chains ? 
Wy, it 's jest ez clear ez figgers, 

Clear ez one an' one make two, 70 

Chaps thet make black slaves o' nig- 
gers 

Want to make wite slaves o' you. 

Tell ye jest the eend I 've come to 

Arter cipherin' plaguy smart, 
An' it makes a handy sum, tu, 

Any gump could larn by heart; 
Laborin' man an' laborin' woman 

Hev one glory an' one shame. 
Ev'y thin' thet 's done inhuman 

Injers all on 'em the same. 80 

'T aint by turnin' out to hack folks 

You 're agoin' to git your right, 
Nor by lookin' down on black folks 

Coz you 're put upon by wite ; 
Slavery aint o' nary color, 

'T aint the hide thet makes it wus, 
All it keers fer in a feller 

'S jest to make him fill its pus. 

Want to tackle me in, du ye ? 
I expect you '11 hev to wait; 90 



Wen cold lead puts daylight thru ye 

You '11 begin to kal'late ; 
S'pose the crows wun't fall to pickin' 

All the carkiss from your bones, 
Coz you helped to give a lickin' 

To them poor half -Spanish drones ? 

Jest go home an' ask our Nancy 

Wether I 'd be sech a goose 
Ez to jine ye, — guess you 'd fancy 

The etarnal bmig wuz loose ! 100 

She wants me fer home consumption, 

Let alone the hay 's to mow, — 
Ef you 're arter folks o' gumption, 

You 've a darned long row to hoe. 

Take them editors thet 's crowin' 

Like a cockerel three months old, — 
Don't ketch any on 'em goin', 

Though they be so blasted bold; 
Aint they a prime lot o' fellers ? 

'Fore they think on 't guess they '11 
sprout no 

(Like a peach thet 's got the yellers), 

With the meanness bustin' out. 

Wal, go 'long to help 'em stealin' 

Bigger pens to cram with slaves, 
Help the men thet 's oilers dealin' 

Insults on your fathers' graves; 
Help the strong to grind the feeble, 

Help the many agin the few, 
Help the men thet call your people 

Witewashed slaves an' peddlin' crew ! 120 

Massachusetts, God forgive her, 

She 's akneelin' with the rest, 1 
She, thet ough' to ha' clung ferever 

In her grand old eagle-nest; 
She thet ough' to stand so fearless 

Wile the wracks are round her hurled, 
Holdin' up a beacon peerless 

To the oppressed of all the world ! 



1 An allusion to the governor's call for troops as well 
as to the vote on the War Bill. On May 11, 184G, the 
President sent to the House of Representatives his 
well-known message declaring the existence of war 
brought on 'by the act of Mexico,' and asking for a 
supply of 110,000,000. Of the seven members from 
Massachusetts, all Whigs, two, Robert C. Winthrop, of 
Boston, and Amos Abbott, of Andover, voted for the 
bill. The Whigs throughout the country, remembering 
the fate of the party which had opposed the last war 
with England, sanctioned the measure as necessary for 
the preservation of the army, then in peril by the un- 
authorized acts of the President. (F. B. Williams, in 
Riverside and Cambridge Editions.) 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



433 



Ha'n't they sold your colored seamen ? 

Ha'n't they made your env'ys w'iz ? 1 
Wut '11 make ye act like freemen ? 131 

Wut '11 git your dander riz ? 
Come, I '11 tell ye wut I 'm thinkin' 

Is our dooty in this fix, 
They 'd ha' done 't ez quick ez winkin' 

In the days o' seventy-six. 

Clang the bells in every steeple, 

Call all true men to disown 
The tradoocers of our people, 

The enslavers o' their own; 140 

Let our dear old Bay State proudly 

Put the trumpet to her mouth, 
Let her ring this messidge loudly 

In the ears of all the South : — 

' I '11 return ye good f er evil 

Much ez we frail mortils can, 
But I wun't go help the Devil 

Makin' man the cus o' man; 
Call me coward, call me traiter, 

Jest ez suits your mean idees, — 15c 
Here I stand a tyrant-hater, 

An' the friend o' God an' Peace ! ' 

Ef I 'd my way I hed ruther 

We should go to work an' part, 2 

They take one way, we take t' other, 
Guess it wouldn't break my heart; 

1 South Carolina, Louisiana, and several other 
Southern States at an early date passed acts to prevent 
free persons of color from entering their jurisdictions. 
These acts bore with particular severity upon colored 
seamen, who were imprisoned, fined, or whipped, and 
often sold into slavery. On the petition of the Mas- 
sachusetts Legislature, Governor Briggs, in 1844, ap- 
pointed Mr. Samuel Hoar agent to Charleston, and Mr. 
George Hubbard to New Orleans, to act on behalf of 
oppressed colored citizens of the Bay State. Mr. Hoar 
was expelled from South Carolina by order of the Legis- 
lature of that State, and Mr. Hubbard was forced by 
threats of violence to leave Louisiana. The obnoxious 
acts remained in force until after the Civil War. 
(F. B. Williams, in Riverside and Cambridge Editions.) 

2 Propositions to secede were not uncommon in New 
England at this time. The rights of the States had been 
strongly asserted on the acquisition of Louisiana in 1803, 
and on the admission of the State of that name in 1812. 
Among the resolutions of the Massachusetts Legis- 
lature adopted in 1845, relative to the proposed annexa- 
tion of Texas, was one declaring that ' such an act of 
admission would have no binding force whatever on the 
people of Massachusetts.' 

John Quincy Adams, in a discourse before the New 
York Historical Society, in 1830, claimed a right for the 
States ' to part in friendship with each other . . . when 
the fraternal spirit shall give way,' etc. The Garrisonian 
wing of the Abolitionists notoriously advocated seces- 
sion. There were several other instances of an expres- 
sion of this sentiment, but for the most part they were 
not evoked by opposition to slavery. (F. B. Williams in 
Riverside and Cambridge Editions.) 



Man hed ough' to put asunder 
Them thet God has noways jined; 

An' I should n't gretly wonder 
Ef there 's thousands o' my mind. 

June 17, 1846. 

[The first recruiting sergeant on record I 
conceive to have been that individual who 
is mentioned in the Book of Job as going to 
and fro in the earth, and walking up and down 
in it. Bishop Latimer will have him to have 
been a bishop, but to me that other calling 
would appear more congenial. The sect of 
Cainites is not yet extinct, who esteemed 
the first-born of Adam to be the most wor- 
thy, not only because of that privilege of 
primogeniture, but inasmuch as he was able 
to overcome and slay his younger brother. 
That was a wise saying of the famous Mar- 
quis Pescara to the Papal Legate, that it 
was impossible for men to serve Mars and 
Christ at the same time. Yet in time past 
the profession of arms was judged to be 
war' Qoxvv that of a gentleman, nor does 
this opinion want for strenuous upholders 
even in our day. Must we suppose, then,' 
that the profession of Christianity was only 
intended for losels, or, at best, to afford an 
opening for plebeian ambition ? Or shall we 
hold with that nicely metaphysical Pome- 
ranian, Captain Vratz, who was Count Kb- 
nigsmark's chief instrument in the murder 
of Mr. Thynne, that the Scheme of Salva- 
tion has been arranged with an especial eye 
to the necessities of the upper classes, and 
that ' God would consider a gentleman and 
deal with him suitably to the condition and 
profession he had placed him in ' ? It may 
be said of us all, Exemplo plus quam ratione 
vivimus. — H. W.] 



No. Ill 

WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS 

Guvenek B. is a sensible man; 3 

He stays to his home an' looks arter his 
folks ; 

3 George Nixon Briggs was the Whig governor of 
Massachusetts from 1844 to 1851. The campaign re- 
ferred to here is that of 1847. Governor Briggs was 
renominated by acclamation and supported by his 
party with great enthusiasm. His opponent was Caleb 
Cushing, then in Mexico, and raised by President Polk 
to the rank of Brigadier-General. Cushing was de- 
feated by a majority of 14,060. (F. B. Williams.) 



434 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



He draws his f urrer ez straight ez he can, 
An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes; 
But John P. i 
Robinson he 
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. 

My ! aint it terrible ? Wut shall we du ? 

We can't never choose him o' course, — 

thet 's flat; 

Guess we shall hev to come round (don 't 

you ?) 10 

An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all 

that; 

Fer John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. 

Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man: 2 

He 's ben on all sides thet give places or 
pelf; 
But consistency still wuz a part of his 
plan, — 
He 's ben true to one party, — an' thet is 
himself ; — 

So John P. 

Robinson he 20 

Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. 

Gineral C. he goes in fer the war; 

He don't vally princerple more 'n an old 
cud; 
Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, 
But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' 
blood ? 

So John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. 

We were gittin' on nicely up here to our 

village, 
With good old idees o' wut 's right an' 

wut aint, , 30 

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war 

an' pillage, 

1 John Paul Robinson (1799-1864) was a resident of 
Lowell, a lawyer of considerable ability, and a thorough 
classical scholar. He represented Lowell in the State 
Legislature in 1S29, 1S30, 1831, 1833, and 1842, and was 
Senator from Middlesex in 1836. Late in the guberna- 
torial contest of 1847 it was rumored that Robinson, 
heretofore a zealous Whig, aud a delegate to the recent 
Springfield Convention, had gone over to the Demo- 
cratic or, as it was then styled, the ' Loco ' camp. 
The editor of the Boston Palladium, wrote to him to 
learn the truth, and Robinson replied in an open letter 
avowing his intention to vote for Cushing. (F. B. 
Williams.) 

2 General Caleb Cushing. 



An' thet eppyletts worn't the best mark 
of a saint; 

But John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez this kind o' thing 's an exploded 
idee. 

The side of our country must oilers be took, 
An' President Polk, you know, he is our 
country. 
An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a 
book 
Puts the debit to him, an' to us the per 
contry; 

An' John P. 4 o 

Robinson he 
Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T. 

Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts 
lies; 
Sez they 're nothin' on airth but jest 
fee, faw, fum; 
An' thet all this big talk of our destinies 
Is half on it ign'ance, an' t' other half 
rum; 

But John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez it aint no sech thing; an', of course, 
so must we. 

Parson Wilbur sez Tie never heerd in his 
life 50 

Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their 
swaller-tail coats, 
An' marched round in front of a drum an' 
a fife, 
To git some on 'em office, an' some on 
'em votes; 

But John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez they did n't know everythin' down 
in Judee. 

Wal, it 's a marcy we 've gut folks to tell us 
The rights an' the wrongs o' these mat- 
ters, I vow, 

God sends country lawyers, an' other wise 
fellers, 
To start the world's team wen it gits in 
a slough; 60 

Fer John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez the world '11 go right, ef he hollers 
out Gee ! 

November 2, 1847. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



435 



[The attentive reader will doubtless have 
perceived in the foregoing poem an allusion 
to that pernicious sentiment, ' Our coun- 
try, right or wrong.' It is an abuse of lan- 
guage to call a certain portion of land, 
much more, certain personages, elevated 
for the time being to high station, our 
country. I would not sever nor loosen a 
single one of those ties by which we are 
united to the spot of our birth, nor minish 
by a tittle the respect due to the Magis- 
trate. I love our own Bay State too well 
to do the one, and as for the other, I have 
myself for nigh forty years exercised, how- 
ever unworthily, the function of Justice of 
the Peace, having been called thereto by 
the unsolicited kindness of that most ex- 
cellent man and upright patriot, Caleb 
Strong. Patriae fumus igne alieno luculentior 
is best qualified with this, — Ubi liberias, 
ibi patria. We are inhabitants of two 
worlds, and owe a double, not a divided, 
allegiance. In virtue of our clay, this little 
ball of earth exacts a certain loyalty of us, 
while, in our capacity as spirits, we are ad- 
mitted citizens of an invisible and holier 
fatherland. There is a patriotism of the 
soul whose claim absolves us from our other 
and terrene fealty. Our true country is 
that ideal realm which we represent to our- 
selves under the names of religion, duty, 
and the like. Our terrestrial organizations 
are but far-off approaches to so fair a 
model, and all they are verily traitors who 
resist not any attempt to divert them from 
this their original intendment. When, there- 
fore, one would have us to fling up our caps 
and shout with the multitude, i Our coun- 
try, however bounded I' 1 he demands of us 
that we sacrifice the larger to the less, the 
higher to the lower, and that we yield to 
the imaginary claims of a few acres of soil 
our duty and privilege as liegemen of 
Truth. Our true country is bounded on the 
north and the south, on the east and the 
west, by Justice, and when she oversteps 
that invisible boundary-line by so much as a 
hair's-breadth, she ceases to be our mother, 

1 Mr. R. C. Winthrop, M. C, in a speech at Faneuil 
Hall, July 4, 1845, said in deprecation of secession : 
' Our country — bounded by the St. John's and the 
Sabine, or however otherwise bounded or described, 
and be the measurements more or less — still our coun- 
try — to be cherished in all our hearts, to be defended 
by all our hands.' The sentiment was at once taken up 
and used effectively by the ' Cotton ' Whigs, those who 
inclined to favor the Mexican War. (F. B. Williams.) 



and chooses rather to be looked upon quasi 
noverca. That is a hard choice when our 
earthly love of country calls upon us to 
tread one path and our duty points us to 
another. We must make as noble and be- 
coming an election as did Penelope be- 
tween Icarius and Ulysses. Veiling our 
faces, we must take silently the hand of 
Duty to follow her. . . . H. W.] 

No. VI 
THE PIOUS EDITOR'S CREED 

I du believe in Freedom's cause, 

Ez fur away ez Payris is; 2 
I love to see her stick her claws 

In them infarnal Phayrisees; 
It 's wal enough agin a king 

To dror resolves an' triggers, — 
But libbaty 's a kind o' thing 

Thet don't agree with niggers. 

I du believe the people want 

A tax on teas an' coffees, io 

Thet nothin' aint extravygunt, — 

Purvidin' I 'm in office ; 
Fer I hev loved my country sence 

My eye-teeth filled their sockets, 
An' Uncle Sam I reverence, 

Partic'larly his pockets. 

I du believe in any plan 

O' levyin' the texes, 
Ez long ez, like a lumberman, 

I git jest wut I axes; 2 o 

I go free-trade thru thick an' thin, 

Because it kind o' rouses 
The folks to vote, — an' keeps us in 

Our quiet custom-houses. 

I du believe it 's wise an' good 

To sen' out furrin missions, 
Thet is, on sartin understood 

An' orthydox conditions ; — 
I mean nine thousan' dolls, per ann., 

Nine thousan' more fer outfit, 30 

An' me to recommend a man 

The place 'ould jest about fit. 

I du believe in special ways 
0' prayin' an' convartin'; 
The bread comes back in many days, 

2 This was written just after the Revolution of 1848 
in France, when the monarchy of Louis Philippe was 
overthrown. 



43 6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



An' buttered, tu, fer sartin; 
I mean in preyin' till one busts 

On wut the party chooses, 
An' in convartin' public trusts 

To very privit uses. 40 

I du believe hard coin the stuff 

Fer 'lectioneers to spout on; 
The people 's oilers soft enough 

To make hard money out on; 
Dear Uncle Sam pervides fer his, 

An' gives a good-sized junk to all, — 
I don't care how hard money is, 

Ez long ez mine 's paid punctooal. 

I du believe with all my soul 

In the gret Press's freedom, 50 

To pint the people to the goal 

An' in the traces lead 'em; 
Palsied the arm thet forges yokes 

At my fat contracts squintin', 
An' withered be the nose thet pokes 

Inter the gov'ment printin' ! 

I du believe thet I should give 

Wut 's his'n unto Caesar, 
Fer it 's by him I move an' live, 

Frum him my bread an' cheese air; 60 
I du believe thet all o' me 

Doth bear his superscription, — 
Will, conscience, honor, honesty, 

An' things o' thet description. 

I du believe in prayer an' praise 

To him thet hez the grantin' 
O' jobs, — in every thin' thet pays, 

But most of all in Cantin' ; 
This doth my cup with marcies fill, 

This lays all thought o' sin to rest, 70 
I don't believe in princerple, 

But oh, I du in interest. 

I du believe in bein' this 

Or thet, ez it may happen 
One way or 't other hendiest is 

To ketch the people nappin' ; 
It aint by princerples nor men 

My preudunt course is steadied, — 
I scent wich pays the best, an' then 

Go into it baldheaded. 80 

I du believe thet holdin' slaves 
Comes nat'ral to a Presidunt, 

Let 'lone the rowdedow it saves 
To hev a wal-broke precedunt; 



Fer any office, small or gret, 

I could n't ax with no face, 
'uthout I 'd ben, thru dry an' wet, 

Th' unrizzest kind o' doughface. 

I du believe wutever trash 

'11 keep the people in blindness, 90 

Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash 

Right inter brotherly kindness, 
Thet bombshells, grape, an' powder 'n' ball 

Air good-will's strongest magnets, 
Thet peace, to make it stick at all, 

Must be druv in with bagnets. 

In short, I firmly du believe 

Tn Humbug generally, 
Fer it 's a thing thet I perceive 

To hev a solid vally ; 100 

This heth my faithful shepherd ben, 

In pasturs sweet heth led me, 
An' this '11 keep the people green 

To feed ez they hev fed me. 

May 4, 1848. 

No. VIII 

A SECOND LETTER FROM 
B. SAWIN, ESQ. 1 

I SPOSE you wonder ware I be ; I can't tell, 

fer the soul o' me, 
Exacly ware I be myself, — meanm' by 

thet the holl o' me. 
Wen I left hum, I lied two legs, an' they 

worn't bad ones neither 
(The scaliest trick they ever played wuz 

bringin' on me hither), 
Now one on 'em 's I dunno ware ; — they 

thought I wuz adyin', 
An' sawed it off because they said 't wuz 

kin' o' mortifyin'; 
I 'm willin' to believe it wuz, an' yit I don't 

see, nuther, 
Wy one shoud take to feelin' cheap a min- 

nit sooner 'n t' other, 
Sence both wuz equilly to blame; but 

things is ez they be: 
It took on so they took it off, an' thet 's 

enough fer me: 10 

There 's one good thing, though, to be said 

about my wooden new one, — 

1 ' Birdofredum Sawin ' is a fellow-townsman of Hosea 
Biglow, who ' wuz cussed fool enuff to goe atrottin inter 
Miss Chiff arter a Drum and fife,' beguiled by the 
' cruetin sarjunt' of Biglow Paper No. I. His first letter 
is given in No. II. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



437 



The liquor can 't git into it ez 't used to in 

the true one ; 
So it saves drink ; an' then, besides, a feller 

couldn't beg 
A gretter blessin' then to hev one oilers 

sober peg; 
It 's true a chap 's in want o' two f er f ollerin' 

a drum, 
But all the march I 'm up to now is jest to 

Kingdom Come. 

I 've lost one eye, but thet 's a loss it 's easy 

to supply 
Out o' the glory thet I 've gut, f er thet is all 

my eye; 
An' one is big enough, I guess, by dili- 
gently usin' it, 
To see all I shall ever git by way o' pay fer 

losin' it; 20 

Off'cers I notice, who git paid fer all our 

thumps an' kickins, 
Du wal by keepin' single eyes arter the fat- 
test pickins; 
So, ez the eye 's put fairly out, I '11 larn to 

go without it, 
An' not allow myself to be no gret put out 

about it. 
Now, le' me see, thet is n't all; I used, 'fore 

leavin' Jaalam, 
To count things on my finger-eends, but 

sutthin' seems to ail 'em: 
Ware 's my left hand? Oh, darn it, yes, I 

recollect wut's come on 't; 
I haint no left arm but my right, an' thet 's 

gut jest a thumb on 't; 
It aint so hendy ez it wuz to cal'late a sum 

on 't. 
I 've hed some ribs broke, — six (I b'lieve), 

— I haint kep' no account on 'em ; 30 
Wen pensions git to be the talk, I '11 settle 

the amount on 'em. 
An' now I 'm speakin' about ribs, it kin' o' 

brings to mind 
One thet I could n't never break, — the one 

I lef behind; 
Ef you should see her, jest clear out the 

spout o' your invention 
An' pour the longest sweetnin' hi about an 

annooal pension, 
An' kin' o' hint (in case, you know, the 

critter should refuse to be 
Consoled) I aint so 'xpensive now to keep 

ez wut I used to be; 
There 's one arm less, ditto one eye, an' 

then the leg thet 's wooden 



Can be took off an' sot away wenever ther 's 
a puddin'. 

I spose you think I 'm comin' back ez op- 

perlunt ez thunder, 40 

With shiploads o' gold images an' varus 

sorts o' plunder; 
Wal, 'fore I vullinteered, I thought this 

country wuz a sort o' 
Canaan, a reg'lar Promised Land flowin' 

with rum an' water, 
Ware propaty growed up like time, without 

no cultivation, 
An' gold wuz dug ez taters be among our 

Yankee nation, 
Ware nateral advantages were pufficly 

amazin', 
Ware every rock there wuz about with pre- 
cious stuns wuz blazin', 
Ware mill-sites filled the country up ez 

thick ez you eould cram 'em, 
An' desput rivers run about a beggin' folks 

to dam 'em; 
Then there were meetinhouses, tu, chockful 

o' gold an' silver 50 

Thet you could take, an' no one coidd n't 

hand ye in no bill fer ; — 
Thet 's wut I thought afore I went, thet 's 

wut them fellers told us 
Thet stayed to hum an' speechified an' to 

the buzzards sold us; 
I thought thet gold-mines could be gut 

cheaper than Chiny asters, 
An' see myself acomin' back like sixty Ja- 
cob Astors; 
But seeh idees soon melted down an' did n't 

leave a grease-spot; 
I vow my holl sheer o' the spiles would n't 

come nigh a V spot; 
Although, most anywares we 've ben, you 

need n't break no locks, 
Nor run no kin' o' risks, to fill your pocket 

full o' rocks. 
I 'xpect I mentioned in my last some o' the 

nateral feeturs 60 

O' this all-fiered buggy hole in th' way o' 

awfle creeturs, 
But I fergut to name (new things to speak 

on so abounded) 
How one day you '11 most die o' thust, an' 

'fore the next git drownded. 
The clymit seems to me jest like a teapot 

made o' pewter 
Our Preudence hed, thet would n't pour 

(all she could du) to suit her; 



438 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Fust place the leaves 'ould choke the 

spout, so 's not a drop 'ould dreen 

out, 
Then Prude 'ould tip an' tip an' tip, till the 

holl kit bust clean out, 
The kiver-hinge-pin bein' lost, tea-leaves 

an' tea an' kiver 
'ould all come down kerswosh ! ez though 

the dam bust in a river. 
Jest so 't is here ; holl months there aint a 

day o' rainy weather, 7 o 

An' jest ez th' officers 'ould be a layin' 

heads together 
Ez t' how they 'd mix their drink at sech a 

milingtary deepot, — 
'T would pour ez though the lid wuz off the 

everlastin' teapot. 
The cons'quence is, thet I shall take, wen 

I 'm allowed to leave here, 
One piece o' propaty along, an' thet 's the 

shakin' fever; 
It 's reggilar employment, though, an' thet 

aint thought to harm one, 
Nor 't aint so tiresome ez it wuz with 

t' other leg an' arm on; 
An' it 's a consolation, tu, although it doos 

n't pay, 
To hev it said you 're some gret shakes in 

any kin' o' way. 
'T worn't very long, I tell ye wut, I thought 

o' fortin-makin', — 80 

One day a reg'lar shiver-de-freeze ; an' next 

ez good ez bakin', — 
One day abrilin' in the sand, then smoth'rin' 

in the mashes, — 
Git up all sound, be put to bed a mess o' 

hacks an' smashes. 
But then, thinks I, at any rate there 's glory 

to be hed, — 
Thet 's an investment, arter all, thet may n't 

turn out so bad; 
But somehow, wen we 'd fit an' licked, I 

oilers found the thanks 
Gut kin' o' lodged afore they come ez low 

down ez the ranks; 
The Gin'rals gut the biggest sheer, the 

Cunnles next, an' so on, — 
We never gut a blasted mite o' glory ez I 

know on; 
An' spose we hed, I wonder how you 're 

goin' to contrive its 90 

Division so 's to give a piece to twenty 

thousand privits; 
Ef you should multiply by ten the portion 

o' the brav'st one, 



You would n't git more 'n half enough to 

speak of on a grave-stun; 
We git the licks, — we 're jest the grist 

thet 's put into War's hoppers ; 
Leftenants is the lowest grade thet helps 

pick up the coppers. 
It may suit folks thet go agin a body with 

a soul in't, 
An' aint contented with a hide without a 

bagnet hole in't; 
But glory is a kin' o' thing / sha'n't pursue 

no furder, 
Coz thet 's the off'cers' parquisite, — yourn 's 

on'y jest the murder. 

Wal, arter I gin glory up, thinks I at least 

there 's one 100 

Thing in the bills we aint hed yit, an' thet 's 

the glorious fun: 
Ef once we git to Mexico, we fairly may 

persume we 
All day an' night shall revel in the halls o' 

Montezumy. 
I '11 tell ye wut my revels wuz, an' see how 

you would like 'em; 
We never gut inside the hall: the nighest 

ever / come 
Wuz stan'in' sentry in the sun (an', fact, it 

seemed a cent'ry) 
A ketehin' smells o' biled an' roast thet 

come out thru the entry, 
An' hearin' ez I sweltered thru my passes 

an' repasses, 
A rat-tat-too o' knives an' forks, a clinkty- 

clink o' glasses: 
I can't tell off the bill o' fare the Gin'rals 

hed inside; no 

All I know is, thet out o' doors a pair o' 

soles wuz fried, 
An' not a hunderd miles away frum ware 

this child wuz posted, 
A Massachusetts citizen wuz baked an' 

biled an' roasted; 
The on'y thing like revellin' thet ever come 

to me 
Wuz bein' routed out o' sleep by thet darned 

revelee. 

They say the quarrel 's settled now; fer my 

part I 've some doubt on 't, 
't '11 take more fish -skin than folks 

think to take the rile clean out 

on't; 
At any rate I 'm so used up I can't do no 

more fightin', 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



439 



The on'y chance thet 's left to me is politics 

or writin'; 
Now, ez the people 's gut to hev a miling- 

tary man, 120 

An' I aint nothin' else jest now, I 've hit 

upon a plan; 
The can'idatin' line, you know, 'ould suit 

me to a T, 
An' ef I lose, 't wunt hurt my ears to lodge 

another flea; 
So I '11 set up ez can'idate f er any kin' o' office 
(I mean fer any thet includes good easy- 
cheers an' soffies; 
Fer ez tu runnin' fer a place ware work 's 

the time o' day, 
You know thet 's wut I never did, — ex- 
cept the other way) ; 
Ef it 's the Presidential cheer fer wich I 'd 

better run, 
Wut two legs anywares about could keep 

up with my one ? 
There aint no kin' o' quality in can'idates, 

it 's said, 130 

So useful ez a wooden leg, — except a 

wooden head; 
There 's nothin' aint so poppylar (wy, it 's 

a parfect sin 
To think wut Mexico hez paid fer Santy 

Anny's pin) ; 
Then I haint gut no princerples, an', sence 

I wuz knee-high, 
I never did hev any gret, ez you can testify; 
I 'm a decided peace-man, tu, an' go agin 

the war, — 
Fer now the holl on 't 's gone an' past, wut 

is there to go for ? 
Ef, wile you 're 'lectioneerin' round, some 

curus chaps should beg 
To know my views o' state affairs, jest 

answer wooden leg ! 
Ef they aint settisfied with thet, an' kin' o' 

pry an' doubt 140 

An' ax fer sutthin' deffynit, jest say one 

eye PUT out ! 
Thet kin' o' talk I guess you '11 find '11 

answer to a charm, 
An' wen you're druv tu nigh the wall, hoi' 

up my missin' arm; 
Ef they should nose round fer a pledge, put 

on a vartoous look 
An' tell 'em thet 's percisely wut I never 

gin nor — took ! 

Then you can call me ' Timbertoes,' — 
thet 's wut the people likes ; 



Sutthin' combinin' morril truth with phrases 

sech ez strikes; 
Some say the people 's fond o' this, or thet, 

or wut you please, — 
I tell ye wut the people want is jest correct 

idees; 
' Old Timbertoes,' you see, 's a creed it 's 

safe to be quite bold on, 150 

There 's nothin' in 't the other side can any 

ways git hold on; 
It 's a good tangible idee, a sutthin' to embody 
Thet valooable class o' men who look thru 

brandy-toddy; 
It gives a Party Platform, tu, jest level 

with the mind 
Of all right-thinkin', honest folks thet 

mean to go it blind; 
Then there air other good hooraws to dror 

on ez you need 'em, 
Sech ez the one-eyed Slarterer, the 

Bloody Birdofredum: 
Them 's wut takes hold o' folks thet think, 

ez well ez o' the masses, 
An' makes you sartin o' the aid o' good 

men of all classes. 

There 's one thing I 'm in doubt about ; in 

order to be Presidunt, 160 

It 's absolutely ne'ssary to be a Southern 

residunt; 
The Constitution settles thet, an' also thet 

a feller 
Must own a nigger o' some sort, jet black, 

or brown, or yeller. 
Now I haint no objections agin particklar 

climes, 
Nor agin ownin' anythin' (except the truth 

sometimes), 
But, ez I haint no capital, up there among 

ye, maybe, 
You might raise funds enough fer me to 

buy a low-priced baby, 
An' then to suit the No'thern folks, who 

feel obleeged to say 
They hate an' cus the very thing they vote 

fer every day, 
Say you 're assured I go full but fer Lib- 

baty's diffusion 170 

An' made the purchis on'y jest to spite the 

Institootion ; — 
But, golly ! there 's the currier's hoss upon 

the pavement pawin' ! 
I '11 be more 'xplicit in my next. 
Yourn, BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN. 
July 6, 1848. 



440 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



A FABLE FOR CRITICS 1 



Reader ! walk up at once {it will soon be too late), 
and buy at a perfectly ruinous rate 

A FABLE FOR CRITICS : 

OR, BETTER, 

(I LIKE, AS A THING THAT THE READER'S FIRST 
FANCY MAY STRIKE, AN OLD-FASHIONED TITLE- 
PAGE, SUCH AS PRESENTS A TABULAR VIEW OF 
THE VOLUME'S CONTENTS), 

A GLANCE AT A FEW OF OUR LIT- 
ERARY PROGENIES 

(MRS. MALAPROP'S WORD) 
FROM THE TUB OF DIOGENES ; 

A VOCAL AND MUSICAL MEDLEY, 

THAT IS, 

A SERIES OF JOKES 

<25p 3C WanttttfvX <©ui3, 

WHO ACCOMPANIES HIMSELF WITH A RUB-A- 
DUB-DUB,- FULL OF SPIRIT AND GRACE, ON THE 
TOP OF THE TUB. 

Set forth in October, the ^\st day, 
In the year '48, G. P. Putnam, Broadway. 



1 This jeu oVesprit was extemporized, I may fairly 
say, so rapidly was it written, purely for my own 
amusement and with no thought of publication. I sent 
daily instalments of it to a friend in New York, the 
late Charles F. Briggs. He urged me to let it be 
printed, and I at last consented to its anonymous 
publication. The secret was kept till after several per- 
sons had laid claim to its authorship. (Lowell.) 

On the writing of the ' Fable,' its progress from week 
to week, and Lowell's presentation of the copyright to 
his friend Briggs, see Scudder's Life of Lowell, vol. i, 
pp. 238-255. 

Holmes said of it : ' It is capital — crammed full and 
rammed down hard — powder (lots of it) — shot slugs 

— bullets — very little wadding, and that is gun-cotton 

— all crowded into a rusty looking sort of a blunder- 
buss barrel as it were — capped with a percussion pre- 
face — and cocked with a title-page as apropos as a 
wink to a joke.' (Morse's Life of Holmes, vol. ii, p. 
107.) 

The original title-page is given above. 



It being the commonest mode of proce- 
dure, I premise a few candid remarks 

To the Reader: — 

This trifle, begun to please only myself 
and my own private fancy, was laid on the 
shelf. But some friends, who had seen it, 
induced me, by dint of saying they liked it, 
to put it in print. That is, having come to 
that very conclusion, I asked their advice 
when 't would make no confusion. For 
though (in the gentlest of ways) they had 
hinted it was scarce worth the while, I 
should doubtless have printed it. 

I began it, intending a Fable, a frail, 
slender thing, rhyme-ywinged, with a sting 
in its tail. But, by addings and alterings 
not previously planned, digressions chance- 
hatched, like birds' eggs in the sand, and 
dawdlings to suit every whimsey's demand 
(always freeing the bird which I held in 
my hand, for the two perched, perhaps out 
of reach, in the tree), — it grew by degrees 
to the size which you see. I was like the 
old woman that carried the calf, and my 
neighbors, like hers, no doubt, wonder and 
laugh; and when, my strained arms with 
their grown burthen full, I call it my Fable, 
they call it a bull. 

Having scrawled at fidl gallop (as far as 
that goes) in a style that is neither good 
verse nor bad prose, and being a person 
whom nobody knows, some people will say 
I am rather more free with my readers 
than it is becoming to be, that I seem to 
expect them to wait on my leisure in fol- 
lowing wherever I wander at pleasure, 
that, in short, I take more than a young 
author's lawful ease, and laugh in a queer 
way so like Mephistopheles, that the Pub- 
lic will doubt, as they grope through my 
rhythm, if in truth I am making fun of 
them or with them. 

So the excellent Public is hereby assured 
that the sale of my book is already secured. 
For there is not a poet throughout the 
whole land but will purchase a copy or two . 
out of hand, in the fond expectation of 
being amused in it, by seeing his betters 
cut up and abused in it. Now, I find, by a 
pretty exact calculation, there are some- 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



441 



thing like ten thousand bards in the nation, 
of that special variety whom the Review 
and Magazine critics call lofty and true, and 
about thirty thousand (this tribe is increas- 
ing) of the kinds who are termed full of 
promise and pleasing. The Public will see 
by a glance at this schedule, that they can- 
not expect me to be over-sedulous about 
courting them, since it seems I have got 
enough fuel made sure of for boiling my pot. 

As for such of our poets as find not 
their names mentioned once in my pages, 
with praises or blames, let them send in 
their cards, without further delay, to 
my friend G. P. Putnam, Esquire, in 
Broadway, where a list will be kept with 
the strictest regard to the day and the hour 
of receiving the card. Then, taking them 
up as I chance to have time (that is, if 
their names can be twisted in rhyme), I 
will honestly give each his proper posi- 
tion, at the rate of one author to each 
new edition. Thus a PREMIUM is of- 
fered sufficiently high (as the magazines 
say when they tell their best lie) to induce 
bards to club their resources and buy the 
balance of every edition, until they have all 
of them fairly been run through the mill. 

One word to such readers (judicious and 
wise) as read books with something behind 
the mere eyes, of whom in the country, 
perhaps, there are two, including myself, 
gentle reader, and you. All the characters 
sketched in this slight jeu d' esprit, though, 
it may be, they seem, here and there, 
rather free, and drawn from a somewhat 
too cynical standpoint, are meant to be 
faithful, for that is the grand point, and 
none but an owl would feel sore at a rub 
from a jester who tells you, without any 
subterfuge, that he sits in Diogenes' tub. 

Phcebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's 

shade, 
Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was 

made, 
For the god being one day too warm in his 

wooing, 
She took to the tree to escape his pursuing; 
Be the cause what it might, from his offers 

she shrunk, 
And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a, 

trunk; 
And, though 't was a step into which he 

had driven her, 



He somehow or other had never forgiven 

her; 
Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic, 
Something bitter to chew when he 'd play 

the Byronic, 10 

And I can't count the obstinate nymphs 

that he brought over 
By a strange kind of smile he put on when 

he thought of her. 
' My case is like Dido's,' he sometimes re- 
marked; 
' When I last saw my love, she was fairly 

embarked 
In a laurel, as she thought — but (ah, how 

Fate mocks !) 
She has found it by this time a very bad box; 
Let hunters from me take this saw when 

they need it, — 
You 're not always sure of your game when 

you 've treed it. 
Just conceive such a change taking place 

in one's mistress ! 
What romance would be left ? — who can 

flatter or kiss trees ? 20 

And, for mercy's sake, how could one keep 

up a dialogue 
With a dull wooden thing that will live 

and will die a log, — 
Not to say that the thought would forever 

intrude 
That you 've less chance to win her the 

more she is wood ? 
Ah ! it went to my heart, and the memory 

still grieves, 
To see those loved graces all taking their 

leaves; 
Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting 

but now, 
As they left me forever, each making its 

bough ! 
If her tongue had a tang sometimes more 

than was right, . 
Her new bark is worse than ten times her 

old bite.' 30 



Apollo looked up, hearmg footsteps ap- 
proaching, 

And slipped out of sight the new rhymes 
he was broaching, — 

' Good day, Mr. D j 1 1 'm happy to meet 



1 Duyckinck. Evert A. Duyckinck, with his brother 
George L. Duyckinck, published a ' Cyclopaedia of 
American Literature, embracing personal and critical 
notices of authors, and selections from their writings.' 



442 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat, 

Who through Grub Street the soul of a 
gentleman carries; 

What news from that suburb of London 
and Paris 

Which latterly makes such shrill claims to 
monopolize 

The credit of being the New World's me- 
tropolis ? ' 

' Why, nothing of consequence, save this 

attack 
On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful 

hack, 40 

Who thinks every national author a poor 

one, 
That is n't a copy of something that 's for- 
eign, 
And assaults the American Dick — ' 

' Nay, 't is clear 
That your Damon there 's fond of a flea in 

his ear, 
And, if no one else furnished them gratis, 

on tick 
He would buy some himself, just to hear 

the old click; 
Why, 1 honestly think, if some fool in 

Japan 
Should turn up his nose at the " Poems on 

Man" 
(Which contain many verses as fine, by the 

bye, 
As any that lately came under my eye), 50 
Your friend there by some inward instinct 

would know it, 
Would get it translated, reprinted, and show 

As a man might take off a high stock to 

exhibit 
The autograph round his own neck of the 

gibbet; 
Nor would let it rest so, but fire column 

after column, 
Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as 

solemn, 
By way of displaying his critical crosses, 
And tweaking that poor transatlantic pro- 
boscis, 
His broadsides resulting (this last there 's 

no doubt of) 
In successively sinking the craft they 're 

fired out of. 60 

Now nobody knows when an author is 

hit, 
If he have not a public hysterical fit; 



Let him only keep close in his snug garret's 

dim ether, 
And nobody 'd think of his foes — or of 

him either; 
If an author have any least fibre of worth 

in him, 
Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth 

in him; 
All the critics on earth cannot crush with 

their ban 
One word that 's in tune with the nature of 

man.' 



' But stay, here comes Tityrus Griswold, 1 

and leads on 
The flocks whom he first plucks alive, and 

then feeds on, — 7 o 

A loud-cackling swarm, in whose feathers 

warm drest, 
He goes for as perfect a — swan as the 

rest. 

' There comes Emerson first, whose rich 

words, every one, 
Are like gold nails in temples to hang tro- 
phies on, 
Whose prose is grand verse, while his 

verse, the Lord knows, 
Is some of it pr — No, 't is not even 

prose; 
I 'm speaking of metres; some poems have 

welled 
From those rare depths of soul that have 

ne'er been excelled; 
They 're not epics, but that does n't matter 

a pin, 
/Tn^creating, the only hard thing 's to begin; 
A grass-blade 's no easier to make than an 

oak; 81 

If you 've once found the way, you 've 

achieved the grand stroke; 
In the worst of his poems are mines of rich 

matter, 
But thrown in a heap with a crash and a 

clatter; 
Now it is not one thing nor another alone 
Makes a poem, but rather the general 

tone, 
The something pervading, uniting the 

whole, 
, The before unconceived, unconceivable soul, 

1 Rev. R. W. Griswold published in 1842 The Poets 
and Poetry of America, in 1846 The Prose Writers of 
America, and in 1848 The Female Poets of America. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



443 



So that just in removing this trifle or that, 
you 

Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the 
statue ; 90 

Roots, wood, bark, and leaves singly per- 
fect may be, 

But, clapt hodge-podge together, they 
don't make a tree. 

' But, to come back to Emerson (whom, 

by the way, 
I believe we left waiting), — his is, we may 

say, 
A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, 

whose range 
Has Olympus for one pole, for t' other the 

Exchange ; 
He seems, to my thinking (although I 'm 

afraid 
The comparison must, long ere this, have 

been made), 
A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyp- 
tian's gold mist 
And the Gascon's shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl 

coexist; 100 

All admire, and yet scarcely six converts 

he 's got 
To I don't (nor they either) exactly know 

what; 
For though he builds glorious temples, 't is 

odd 
He leaves never a doorway to get in a 

god. 
'T is refreshing to old-fashioned people like 

me 
To meet such a primitive Pagan as he, 
In whose mind all creation is duly respected 
As parts of himself — just a little projected ; 
And who 's willing to worship the stars and 

the sun, 
A convert to — nothing but Emerson. no 
So perfect a balance there is in his head, 
That he talks of things sometimes as if they 

were dead; 
Life, nature, love, God, and affairs of that 

sort, 
He looks at as merely ideas ; in short, 
As if they were fossils stuck round in a 

cabinet, 
Of such vast extent that our earth 's a mere 

dab in it; 
Composed just as he is inclined to conjec- 
ture her, 
Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine 

parts pure lecturer; 



You are filled with delight at his clear de- 
monstration, 

Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the 
occasion, 120 

With the quiet precision of science he '11 
sort 'em, 

But you can't help suspecting the whole a 
post mortem. 

'There are persons, mole-blind to the 

soul's make and style, 
Who insist on a likeness 'twixt him and 

Carlyle; 
To compare him with Plato would be vastly 

fairer, 
Carlyle's the more burly, but E. is the 

rarer; 
He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, true- 

lier, 
If C. 's as original, E. 's more peculiar; 
That he 's more of a man you might say of 

the one, 
Of the other he 's more of an Emerson; 130 
C. 's the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of 

limb, — 
E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim; 
The one 's two thirds Norseman, the other 

half Greek, 
Where the one 's most abounding, the 

other 's to seek; 
C.'s generals require to be seen in the 

mass, — 
E.'s specialties gain if enlarged by the 

glass; 
C. gives nature and God his own fits of 

the blues, 
And rims common-sense things with mys- 
tical hues, — 
E. sits in a mystery calm and intense, 
And looks coolly around him with sharp 

com m on-sense ; 1 40 

C. shows you how every-day matters unite 
With the dim transdiurnal recesses of 

night, — 
While E., in a plain, preternatural way, 
Makes mysteries matters of mere every 

day; 
C. draws all his characters quite a la Fu- 

seli, — 
Not sketching their bundles of muscles and 

thews illy, 
He paints with a brush so untamed and 

profuse 
They seem nothing but bundles of muscles 

and thews; 



444 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and 

severe, 
And a colorless outline, but full, round, and 

clear; — 150 

To the men he thinks worthy he frankly 

accords 
The design of a white marble statue in 

words. 
C. labors to get at the centre, and then 
Take a reckoning from there of his actions 

and men; 
E. calmly assumes the said centre as 

granted, 
And, given himself, has whatever is wanted. 

' He has imitators in scores, who omit 
No part of the man but his wisdom and 

wit, — 
Who go carefully o'er the sky-blue of his 

brain, 
And when he has skimmed it once, skim it 

again; 160 

If at all they resemble him, you may be sure 

it is 
Because their shoals mirror his mists and 

obscurities, 
As a mud-puddle seems deep as heaven for 

a minute, 
While a cloud that floats o'er is reflected 

within it. 

1 There comes , for instance ; to see 

him 's rare sport, 
Tread in Emerson's tracks with legs pain- 
fully short; 
How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red 

in the face, 
To keep step with the mystagogue's natural 

pace ! 
He follows as close as a stick to a rocket, 
His fingers exploring the prophet's each 

pocket. , 170 

Fie, for shame, brother bard; with good fruit 

of your own, 
Can't you let Neighbor Emerson's orchards 

alone ? 
Besides, 't is no use, you '11 not find e'en a 

core, — 

has picked up all the windfalls before. 

They might strip every tree, and E. never 

would catch 'em, 
His Hesperides have no rude dragon to 

watch 'em; 
When they send him a dishful, and ask him 

to try 'em, 



He never suspects how the sly rogues came 

by 'em; 
He wonders why 't is there are none such 

his trees on, 
And thinks 'em the best he has tasted this 

season. 180 

' There is Bryant, x as quiet, as cool, and 
as dignified, 

As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is 
ignified, 

Save when by reflection 't is kindled o' 
nights 

With a semblance of flame by the chill 
Northern Lights. 

He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard 
of your nation 

(There 's no doubt that he stands in su- 
preme iceolation), 

Your topmost Parnassus he may set his 
heel on, 

But no warm applauses come, peal follow- 
ing peal on, — 

He 's too smooth and too polished to hang 
any zeal on: 

Unqualified merits, I '11 grant, if you 
choose, he has 'em, jgo 

But he lacks the one merit of kindling 
enthusiasm ; 

If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, 

Like being stirred up with the very North 
Pole. 

'He is very nice reading in summer, 
but inter 
Nos, we don't want extra freezing in winter; 
Take him up in the depth of July, my ad- 
vice is, 

1 Compare three passages in LowelVs Letters (quoted 
by permission of Messrs. Harper and Brothers) : — 

' The Bryant is funny, and as fair as I could make it, 
immitigably just. Indeed I have endeavored to be bo 
in all. . . . The only verses I shall add regarding him 
are some complimentary ones which I left for a happier 
mood after I had written the comic part.' . . . May 
12, 1848. See the whole passage, LowelPs Letters, vol. 
i, p. 131. 

' I am quite sensible that I did not do Mr. Bryant 
justice in the " Fable." But there was no personal feel- 
ing in what I said — though I have regretted what I 
did say because it might seem personal. I am now 
asked to write a review of his poems for the North 
American. If I do, I shall try to do him justice. ' Jan- 
uary 11, 1855; vol. i, p. 221. 

' I am all the gladder I wrote my poem for Bryant's 
birthday [" On Board the Seventy-Six,"] — a kind of ■ 
palinode to what I said of him in the " Fable for Cri- 
tics," which has something of youth's infallibility in it, 
or at any rate of youth's irresponsibility.' February 9, 
1887. See the whole letter (to Mr. Richard Watson 
Gilder), LoweWs Letters, vol. ii, p. 334. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



445 



When you feel an Egyptian devotion to 

ices. 
But, deduct all you can, there 's enough 

that 's right good in him, 
He has a true soul for field, river, and 

wood in him; 
And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, 

or where'er it is, 200 

Glows, softens, and thrills with the tender- 

est charities — 
To you mortals that delve in this trade- 
ridden planet ? 
No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their 

limestone and granite. 
If you 're one who in loco (add foco here) 

desipis, 
You will get of his outermost heart (as I 

guess) a piece ; 
But you 'd get deeper down if you came as 

a precipice, 
And would break the last seal of its in- 

wardest fountain, 
If you only could palm yourself off for a 

mountain. 
Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning, 
Some scholar who 's hourly expecting his 

learning, 210 

Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but 

Wordsworth 
May be rated at more than your whole 

tuneful herd 's worth. 
No, don't be absurd, he 's an excellent 

Bryant; 
But, my friends, you '11 endanger the life 

of your client, 
By attempting to stretch him up into a 

giant r 
If you choose to compare him, I think 

there are two per- 
-sons fit for a parallel — Thomson and 

Cowper; x 
I don't mean exactly, — there 's something 

of each, 
There 's T.'s love of nature, C.'s penchant 

to preach; 
Just mix up their minds so that C.'s spice 

of craziness 220 

Shall balance and neutralize T.'s turn for 

laziness, 
And it gives you a brain cool, quite fric- 

tionless, quiet, 

1 To demonstrate quickly and easily how per- 
-versely absurd 't is to sound this name Cowper, 
As people in general call him named super, 
I remark that he rhymes it himself with hor >e- 
trooper. 



Whose internal police nips the buds of all 
riot, — 

A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put 
on 

The heart that strives vainly to burst off a 
button, — 

A brain which, without being slow or me- 
chanic, 

Does more than a larger less drilled, more 
volcanic; 

He 's a Cowper condensed, with no crazi- 
ness bitten, 

And the advantage that Wordsworth be- 
fore him had written. 

' But, my dear little bardlings, don't 

prick up your ears 230 

Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant 

as peers; 
If I call him an iceberg, I don't mean to say 
There is nothing in that which is grand in 

its way; 
He is almost the one of your poets that 

knows 
How much grace, strength, and dignity lie 

in Repose; 
If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise 

to mar 
His thought's modest fulness by going too 

far; 
'T would be well if your authors should all 

make a trial 
Of what virtue there is in severe self- 
denial, 
And measure their writings by Hesiod's 

staff, 240 

Which teaches that all has less value than 

half. 

' There is Whittier, whose swelling and 

vehement heart 
Strains the strait - breasted drab of the 

Quaker apart, 
And reveals the live Man, still supreme 

and erect, 
Underneath the bemummying wrappers of 

sect; 
There was ne'er a man born who had more 

of the swing 
Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of 

thing; 
And his failures arise (though he seem not 

to know it) 
From the very same cause that has made 

him a poet, — 



446 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



A fervor of mind which knows no separa- 
tion 250 

'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspira- 
tion, 

As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred 
from not knowing 

If 't were I or mere wind through her tripod 
was blowing; 

Let his mind once get head in its favorite 
direction 

And the torrent of verse bursts the dams 
of reflection, 

While, borne with the rush of the metre 
along, 

The poet may chance to go right or go 
wrong, 

Content with the whirl and delirium of 
song; 

Then his grammar's not always correct, 
nor his rhymes, 

And he 's prone to repeat his own lyrics 
sometimes, 260 

Not his best, though, for those are struck 
off at white-heats 

When the heart in his breast like a trip- 
hammer beats, 

And can ne'er be repeated again any more 

Than they could have been carefully plot- 
ted before: 

Like old what 's-his-name there at the bat- 
tle of Hastings 

(Who, however, gave more than mere 
rhythmical bastings), 

Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights 

For reform and whatever they call human 
rights, 

Both singing and striking in front of the war, 

And hitting his foes with the mallet of 
Thor ; 270 

Anne haec, one exclaims, on beholding his 
knocks, 

Vestis filii tui, O leather-clad Fox? 

Can that be thy son, in the battle's mid din, 

Preaching brotherly love and then driving 
it in 

To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin, 

With the smoothest of pebbles from Cas- 
taly's spring 

Impressed on his hard moral sense with a 
sling ? 

' All honor and praise to the right-hearted 
bard 
Who was true to The Voice when such ser- 
vice was hard, 



Who himself was so free he dared sing for 

the slave 280 

When to look but a protest in silence was 

brave ; 
All honor and praise to the women and men 
Who spoke out for the dumb and the 

down-trodden then ! 
It needs not to name them, already for 

each 
I see History preparing the statue and 

niche ; 
They were harsh, but shall you be so shocked 

at hard words 
Who have beaten your pruning-hooks up 

into swords, 
Whose rewards and hurrahs men are surer 

to gain 
By the reaping of men and of women than 

grain ? 
Why should you stand aghast at their fierce 

wordy war, if 290 

You scalp one another for Bank or for 

Tariff? 
Your calling them cut-throats and knaves 

all day long 
Does n't prove that the use of hard lan- 
guage is wrong; 
While the World's heart beats quicker to 

think of such men 
As signed Tyranny's doom with a bloody 

steel-pen, 
While on Fourth-of-Julys beardless orators 

fright one 
With hints at Harmodius and Aristogeiton, 
You need not look shy at your sisters and 

brothers 
Who stab with sharp words for the free- 
dom of others ; — 
No, a wreath, twine a wreath for the loyal 

and true 300 

Who, for sake of the many, dared stand 

with the few, 
Not of blood-spattered laurel for enemies 

braved, 
But of broad, peaceful oak-leaves for citi- 
zens saved ! 



' There is Hawthorne, with genius so 
shrinking and rare 
That you hardly at first see the strength 

that is there; 
A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet, 
So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet, 
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet; 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



447 



'T is as if a rough oak that for ages had 

stood, 
With his gnarled bony branches like ribs of 

the wood, 310 

Should bloom, after cycles of struggle and 

scathe, 
With a single anemone trembly and rathe ; 
His strength is so tender, his wildness so 

meek, 
That a suitable parallel sets one to seek, — 
He 's a John Bunyan Fouque", a Puritan 

Tieck; 
When Nature was shaping him, clay was 

not granted 
For making so full-sized a man as she 

wanted, 
So, to fill out her model, a little she spared 
From some finer-grained stuff for a woman 

prepared, 
And she could not have hit a more excellent 

plan 320 

For making him fully and perfectly man. 



• Here 's Cooper, who 's written six vol- 
umes to show 
He's as good as a lord: well, let's grant 

that he 's so; 
If a person prefer that description of praise, 
Why, a coronet 's certainly cheaper than 

bays; 
But he need take no pains to convince us 

he 's not 
(As his enemies say) the American Scott. 
Choose any twelve men, and let C. read 

aloud 
That one of his novels of which he 's most 

proud, 
And I 'd lay any bet that, without ever 

quitting 33 o 

Their box, they 'd be all, to a man, for ac- 
quitting. 
He has drawn you one character, though, 

that is new, 
One wildflower he 's plucked that is wet 

with the dew 
Of this fresh Western world, and, the thing 

not to mince, 
He has done naught but copy it ill ever 

since ; 
His Indians, with proper respect be it said, 
Are just Natty Bumppo, daubed over with 

red, 
And his very Long Toms are the same 

useful Nat, 



Rigged up in duck pants and a sou'wester 

hat 
(Though once in a Coffin, a good chance 

was found 340 

To have slipped the old fellow away under- 
ground). 
All his other men-figures are clothes upon 

sticks, 
The derniere chemise of a man in a fix 
(As a captain besieged, when his garrison 's 

small, 
Sets up caps upon poles to be seen o'er the 

wall) ; 
And the women he draws from one model 

don't vary, 
All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie. 
When a character 's wanted, he goes to the 

task 
As a cooper would do in composing a 

cask; 
He picks out the staves, of their qualities 

heedful, 3 50 

Just hoops them together as tight as is 

needful, 
And, if the best fortune should crown the 

attempt, he 
Has made at the most something wooden 

and empty. 

' Don't suppose I would underrate Coop- 
er's abilities; 

If I thought you 'd do that, I should feel 
very ill at ease; 

The men who have given to one character life 

And objective existence are not very rife; 

You may number them all, both prose- 
writers and singers, 

Without overrunning the bounds of your 
fingers, 

And Natty won't go to oblivion quicker 360 

Than Adams the Parson or Primrose the 
vicar. 

' There is one thing in Cooper I like, 
too, and that is 

That on manners he lectures his country- 
men gratis ; 

Not precisely so either, because, for a 
rarity, 

He is paid for his tickets in unpopularity. 

Now he may overcharge his American pic- 
tures, 

But you '11 grant there 's a good deal of 
truth in his strictures; 

And I honor the man who is willing to sink 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Half his present repute for the freedom to 

think, 
And, when he has thought, be his cause 

strong or weak, 3 7 o 

Will risk t' other half for the freedom to 

speak, 
Caring naught for what vengeance the mob 

has in store, 
Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or 

lower. 

' There are truths you Americans need to 

be told, 
And it never '11 refute them to swagger and 

scold ; 
John Bull, looking o'er the Atlantic, in 

choler 
At your aptness for trade, says you worship 

the dollar; 
But to scorn such eye-dollar-try 's what 

very few do, 
And John goes to that church as often as 

you do. 
No matter what John says, don't try to 

outcrow him, 380 

'T is enough to go quietly on and outgrow 

him ; 
Like most fathers, Bull hates to see Num- 
ber One 
Displacing himself in the mind of his son, 
And detests the same faults in himself 

he 'd neglected 
When he sees them again in his child's 

glass reflected; 
To love one another you 're too like by half; 
If he is a bull, you 're a pretty stout calf, 
And tear your own pasture for naught but 

to show 
What a nice pair of horns you 're begin- 
ning to grow. 

'There are one' or two things I should 
just like to hint, 390 

For you don't often get the truth told you 
in print; 

The most of you (this is what strikes all 
beholders) 

Have a mental and physical stoop hi the 
shoulders ; 

Though you ought to be free as the winds 
and the waves, 

You 've the gait and the manners of run- 
away slaves; 

Though you brag of your New World, you 
don't half believe in it; 



And as much of the Old as is possible 

weave in it; 
Your goddess of freedom, a tight, buxom 

girl, 
With lips like a cherry and teeth like a 

pearl, 
With eyes bold as Here's, and hair floating 

free, 400 

And full of the sun as the spray of the sea, 
Who can sing at a husking or romp at a 

shearing, 
Who can trip through the forests alone 

without fearing, 
Who can drive home the cows with a song 

through the grass, 
Keeps glancing aside into Europe's cracked 

glass, 
Hides her red hands in gloves, pinches up 

her lithe waist, 
And makes herself wretched with transma- 
rine taste; 
She loses her fresh country charm when 

she takes 
Any mirror except her own rivers and 

lakes. 

' You steal Englishmen's books and think 
Englishmen's thought, 410 

With their salt on her tail your wild eagle 
is caught; 

Your literature suits its each whisper and 
motion 

To what will be thought of it over the 
ocean; 

The cast clothes of Europe your statesman- 
ship tries 

And mumbles again the old blarneys and 
lies ; — 

Forget Europe wholly, your veins throb 
with blood, 

To which the dull current in hers is but 
mud : 

Let her sneer, let her say your experiment 
fails, 

in her voice there 's a tremble e'en now 
while she rails, 

And your shore will soon be in the nature 
of things 4 2 ° 

Covered thick with gilt drift-wood of cast- 
away kings, 

Where alone, as it were in a Longfellow's. 
Waif, 

Her fugitive pieces will find themselves safe. 

O my friends, thank your god, if you have 
one, that he 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



449 



'Twixt the Old World and you set the gulf 
of a sea; 

Be strong-backed, brown-handed, upright 
as your pines, 

By the scale of a hemisphere shape your 
designs, 

Be true to yourselves and this new nine- 
teenth age, 

As a statue by Powers, or a picture by Page, 

Plough, sail, forge, build, carve, paint, 
make all over new, 430 

To your own New- World instincts contrive 
to be true, 

Keep your ears open wide to the Future's 
first call, 

Be whatever you will, but yourselves first 
of all, 

Stand fronting the dawn on Toil's heaven- 
scaling peaks, 

And become my new race of more practical 
Greeks.' 



Here Miranda 1 came up, and said, ' Phoe- 
bus ! you know 

That the Infinite Soul has its infinite woe, 

As I ought to know, having lived cheek by 
jowl, 

Since the day I was born, with the Infinite 
Soul; 

I myself introduced, I myself, I alone, 440 

To my Land's better life authors solely my 
own, 

Who the sad heart of earth on their shoul- 
ders have taken, 

Whose works sound a depth by Life's 
quiet unshaken, 

Such as Shakespeare, for instance, the 
Bible, and Bacon, 

Not to mention my own works; Time's 
nadir is fleet, 

And, as for myself, I 'm quite out of con- 
ceit ' — 

1 Margaret Fuller. Lowell wrote to Briggs, March 
26, 1848 : ' I think I shall say nothing about Margaret 
Fuller (though she" offer so fair a target), because she 
has done me an ill-natured turn. I shall revenge myself 
amply upon her by writing better. She is a very fool- 
ish, conceited woman, who has got together a great deal 
of information, but not enough knowledge to save her 
from being ill-tempered. However, the temptation may 
be too strong for me. It certainly would have been if 
she had never said anything about me. Even Maria 
thinks I ought to give her a line or two.' LowelVs Let- 
ters, vol. i, p. 128. Quoted by permission of Messrs. 
Harper and Brothers.) See Margaret Fuller's Papers 
on Literature and Art, or Greenslet's Lowell, p. 63; 
and Poe's review of the Fable for Critics, in hia Works, 
vol. xiii, pp. 165-175. 



' Quite out of conceit ! I 'm enchanted to 

hear it,' 
Cried Apollo aside. ' Who 'd have thought 

she was near it ? 
To be sure, one is apt to exhaust those 

commodities 
One uses too fast, yet in this case as odd 

it is 450 

As if Neptune should say to his turbots 

and whitings, 
" I 'm as much out of salt as Miranda's own 

writings " 
(Which, as she in her own happy manner 

has said, 
Sound a depth, for 't is one of the functions 

of lead). 
She often has asked me if I could not find 
A place somewhere near me that suited her 

mind; 
I know but a single one vacant, which she, 
With her rare talent that way, would fit to 

aT. 
And it would not imply any pause or cessa- 
tion 
In the work she esteems her peculiar voca- 
tion, — 460 
She may enter on duty to-day, if she chooses, 
And remain Tiring-woman for life to the 

Muses.' 



' There comes Poe, with his raven, like 

Barnaby Rudge, 
Three fifths of him genius and two fifths 

sheer fudge, 
Who talks like a book of iambs and pen- 
tameters, 
In a way to make people of common sense 

damn metres, 
Who has written some things quite the 

best of their kind, 
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed 

out by the mind, 
Who — But hey-day ! What 's this ? 

Messieurs Mathews and Poe, 
You must n't fling mud-balls at Longfellow 

SO, 470 

Does it make a man worse that his charac- 
ter 's such 

As to make his friends love him (as you 
think) too much ? 

Why, there is not a bard at this moment 
alive 

More willing than he that his fellows 
should thrive; 



45° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



While you are abusing him thus, even now 
He would help either one of you out of a 

slough; 
You may say that he 's smooth and all that 

till you 're hoarse, 
But remember that elegance also is force; 
After polishing granite as much as you 

will, 
The heart keeps its tough old persistency 

still; 480 

Deduct all you can, that still keeps you at 

bay; 
Why, he '11 live till men weary of Collins 

and Gray. 
I 'm not over-fond of Greek metres in Eng- 
lish, 
To me rhyme 's a gain, so it be not too jin- 

glish, 
And your modern hexameter verses are no 

more 
Like Greek ones than sleek Mr. Pope is 

like Homer; 
As the roar of the sea to the coo of a pigeon 

is, 
So, compared to your moderns, sounds old 

Melesigenes; 
I may be too partial, the reason, perhaps, 

o 't is 
That I 've heard the old blind man recite 

his own rhapsodies, 490 

And my ear with that music impregnate 

may be, 
Like the poor exiled shell with the soul of 

the sea, 
Or as one can't bear Strauss when his na- 
ture is cloven 
To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of 

Beethoven; 
But, set that aside, and 't is truth that I 

speak, 
Had Theocritus written in English, not 

Greek, 
I believe that his exquisite sense would 

scarce change a line 
In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral 

Evangeline. 
That 's not ancient nor modern, its place is 

apart 
Where time has no sway, in the realm of 

pure Art, 500 

'T is a shrine of retreat from Earth's hub- 
bub and strife 
As quiet and chaste as the author's own 

life. 



' What ! Irving ? thrice welcome, warm 
heart and fine brain, 

You bring back the happiest spirit from 
Spain, 

And the gravest sweet humor, that ever 
were there 

Since Cervantes met death in his gentle 
despair ; 

Nay, don't be embarrassed, nor look so be- 
seeching, 

I sha'n't run directly against my own 
preaching, 

And, having just laughed at their Raphaels 
and Dantes, 

Go to setting you up beside matchless Cer- 
vantes; 510 

But allow me to speak what I honestly 
feel, — 

To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick 
Steele, 

Throw hi all of Addison, minus the chill, 

With the whole of that partnership's stock 
and good-will, 

Mix well, and while stirring, hum o'er, as 
a spell, 

The fine old English Gentleman, simmer it 
well, 

Sweeten just to your own private liking, 
then strain, 

That only the finest and clearest re- 
main, 

Let it stand out of doors till a soul it re- 
ceives 

From the warm lazy sun loitering down 
through green leaves, 520 

And you '11 find a choice nature, not wholly 
deserving 

A name either English or Yankee, — just 
Irving.' 



Here, 'Forgive me, Apollo,' I cried, 

. ' while I pour 
My heart out to my birthplace : 1 O loved 

more and more 
Dear Baystate, from whose rocky bosom 

thy sons 
Should suck milk, strong-will-giving, brave, 

such as runs 

1 ' The only passage in " A Fable for Critics " which 
he [later] dwelt upon with genuine delight was his • 
apostrophe to Massachusetts, and that is almost out of 
key with the rest of the poem.' (Scudder's Life of 
Lowell, vol. i, p. 266.) The passage should now be read 
as an apostrophe to America rather than to Massachu- 
setts. It is far more true of the West than of New Eng- 
land, and of America as a whole than of any section. 



TAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



4Si 



In the veins of old Graylock — who is it 

that dares 
Call thee pedler, a soul wrapped in bank- 
books and shares ? 
It is false ! She 's a Poet ! I see, as I 

write, 
Along the far railroad the steam - snake 

glide white, 530 

The cataract-throb of her mill-hearts I 

hear, 
The swift strokes of trip-hammers weary 

my ear, 
Sledges ring upon anvils, through logs the 

saw screams, 
Blocks swing to their place, beetles drive 

home the beams: — 
It is songs such as these that she croons to 

the din 
Of her fast-flying shuttles, year out and 

year in, 
While from earth's farthest corner there 

comes not a breeze 
But wafts her the buzz of her gold-glean- 
ing bees : 
What though those horn hands have as yet 

found small time 
For painting and sculpture and music and 

rhyme ? 540 

These will come in due order; the need 

that pressed sorest 
Was to vanquish the seasons, the ocean, the 

forest, 
To bridle and harness the rivers, the 

steam, 
Making those whirl her mill-wheels, this 

tug in her team, 
To vassalize old tyrant Winter, and 

make 
Him delve surlily for her on river and 

lake ; — 
When this New World was parted, she 

strove not to shirk 
Her lot in the heirdom, the tough, silent 

Work, 
The hero-share ever from Herakles down 
To Odin, the Earth's iron sceptre and 

crown: 550 

Yes, thou dear, noble Mother ! if ever 

men's praise 
Could be claimed for creating heroical 

lays, 
Thou hast won it; if ever the laurel 

divine 
Crowned the Maker and Builder, that glory 

is thine ! 



Thy songs are right epic, they tell how this 
rude 

Rock-rib of our earth here was tamed and 
subdued; 

Thou hast written them plain on the face 
of the planet 

In brave, deathless letters of iron and 
granite ; 

Thou hast printed them deep for all time; 
they are set 

From the same runic type-fount and alpha- 
bet 560 

With thy stout Berkshire hills and the 
arms of thy Bay, — 

They are staves from the burly old May- 
flower lay. 

If the drones of the Old World, in queru- 
lous ease, 

Ask thy Art and thy Letters, point proudly 
to these, 

Or, if they deny these are Letters and 
Art, 

Toil on with the same old invincible 
heart; 

Thou art rearing the pedestal broad-based 
and grand 

Whereon the fair shapes of the Artist shall 
stand, 

And creating, through labors undaunted 
and long, 

The theme for all Sculpture and Painting 
and Song ! 570 

' But my good mother Baystate wants no 
praise of mine, 

She learned from her mother a precept di- 
vine 

About something that butters no parsnips, 
her forte 

In another direction lies, work is her 
sport 

(Though she '11 curtsey and set her cap 
straight, that she will, 

If you talk about Plymouth and red Bun- 
ker's hill). 

Dear, notable goodwife ! by this time of 
night, 

Her hearth is swept neatly, her fire burning 
bright, 

And she sits in a chair (of home plan and 
make) rocking, 

Musing much, all the while, as she darns on 
a stocking, 580 

Whether turkeys will come pretty high 
next Thanksgiving, 



45 2 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Whether flour '11 be so dear, for, as sure 

as she 's living, 
She will use rye-and-injun then, whether 

the pig 
By this time ain't got pretty tolerable 

big, 
And whether to sell it outright will be 

best, 
Or to smoke hams and shoulders and salt 

down the rest, — 
At this minute, she 'd swop all my verses, 

ah, cruel ! 
For the last patent stove that is saving of 

fuel; 
So I '11 just let Apollo go on, for his 

phiz 
Shows I 've kept him awaiting too long as 

it is.' 590 

' If our friend, there, who seems a re- 
porter, is done 

With his burst of emotion, why, I will go 
on,' 

Said Apollo; some smiled, and, indeed, I 
must own 

There was something sarcastic, perhaps, in 
his tone : — 

' There 's Holmes, who is matchless 
among you for wit; 

A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from 
which flit 

The electrical tingles of hit after hit; 

In long poems 't is painful sometimes, and 
invites 

A thought of the way the new Telegraph 
writes, 

Which pricks down its little sharp sentences 
spitefidly 600 

As if you got more than you 'd title to 
rightfully, 

And you find yourself hoping its wild father 
Lightning 

Would flame in for a second and give you a 
fright'ning. 

He has perfect sway of what I call a sham 
metre, 

But many admire it, the English pentame- 
ter, 

And Campbell, I think, wrote most com- 
monly worse, 

With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same 
kind of verse, 



Nor e'er achieved aught in t' so worthy of 

praise 
As the tribute of Holmes to the grand 

Marseillaise. 
You went crazy last year over Bulwer's 

New Timon; — 610 

Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should 

rhyme on, 
Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon 

tomes, 
He could ne'er reach the best point and 

vigor of Holmes. 
His are just the fine hands, too, to weave 

you a lyric 
Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with 

satiric 
In a measure so kindly you doubt if the 

toes 
That are trodden upon are your own or 

your foes'. 

1 There is Lowell, who r s striving Par- 
nassus to climb 
With a whole bale of isms tied together 

with rhyme, 
He might get on alone, spite of brambles 

and boulders, 620 

But he can't with that bundle he has on his 

shoulders, 
The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh 

reaching 
Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing 

and preaching; 
His lyre has some chords that would ring 

pretty well, 
But he 'd rather by half make a drum of 

the shell, 
And rattle away till he 's old as Methusa- 

lem, 
At the head of a march to the last new 

Jerusalem.' 



Here Miranda came up and began, ' As 

to that — ' 
Apollo at once seized his gloves, cane, and 

hat, 
And, seeing the place getting rapidly 

cleared, 630 

I too snatched my notes and forthwith 

disappeared. 
1S47-48. 1848. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



453 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 1 



PRELUDE TO PART FIRST 2 

Over his keys the musing organist, 
Beginning doubtfully and far away, 

First lets his fingers wander as they list, 
And builds a bridge from Dreamland for 
his lay : 

Then, as the touch of his loved instrument 
Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his 
theme, 

First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent 
Along the wavering vista of his dream. 
Not only around our infancy 
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie ; " 10 
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, 
We Sinais climb and know it not. 4 

Over our manhood bend the skies ; 

Against our fallen and traitor lives 
The great winds utter prophecies; 

With our faint hearts the mountain 
strives ; 
Its arms outstretched, the druid wood 

Waits with its benedicite; 

1 According to the mythology of the Romancers, the 
San Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which 
Jesus partook of the Last Supper with his disciples. It 
was brought into England by Joseph of Arimathea, and 
remained there, an object of pilgrimage and adoration, 
for many years in the keeping of his lineal descendants. 
It was incumbent upon those who had charge of it to 
be chaste in thought, word, and deed; but one of the 
keepers having broken this condition, the Holy Grail 
disappeared. From that time it was a favorite enter- 
prise of the knights of Arthur's court to go in search of 
it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in finding it, as 
may be read in the seventeenth book of the Romance 
of King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the 
subject of one of the most exquisite of his poems. 

The plot (if I may give that name to anything so 
slight) of the following poem is my own, and, to serve 
its purposes, I have enlarged the circle of competition 
in search of the miraculous cup in such a manner as to 
include, not only other persons than the heroes of the 
Round Table, but also a period of time subsequent to 
the supposed date of King Arthur's reign. (Lowell.) 

2 Holmes begins a poem of welcome to Lowell on his 
return from England: — 

This is your month, the month of ' perfect days.' 

June was indeed Lowell's month. Not only in the 
famous passage of this ' Prelude,' but in ' Under the 
Willows ' (originally called 'A June Idyl'), ' Al 
Fresco ' (originally ' A Day in June '), ' Sunthin' in the 
Pastoral Line ' of the Bit/low Papers, and ' The Night- 
ingale in the Study,' he has made it peculiarly his 
own. 

3 Heaven lies about us in our Infancy ! (Words- 
worth, in the fifth stanza of the ' Ode: Intimations of 
Immortality. ' 

* See Lowell's letter, of Sunday, September 3, 1848, 
to his friend C. F. Briggs. 



And to our age's drowsy blood 

Still shouts the inspiring sea. 20 

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives 
us; 
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die 
in, 
The priest hath his fee who comes and 
shrives us, 
We bargain for the graves we lie in; 
At the devil's booth are all things sold, 
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of 
gold; 
For a cap and bells our lives we pay, 
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's task- 
ing: 
'T is heaven alone that is given away, 
'T is only God may be had for the ask- 
ing; # 30 
No price is set on the lavish summer; 
June may be had by the poorest comer. 

And what is so rare as a day hi June ? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days; 
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, 

And over it softly her warm ear lays; 
Whether we look, or whether we listen, 
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and 
towers, 40 

And, groping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 
The flush of life may well be seen 

Thrilling back over hills and valleys ; 
The cowslip startles in meadows green, 

The buttercup catches the sun in its 
chalice, 
And there 's never a leaf nor a blade too 
mean 

To be some happy creature's palace; 
The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 

Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50 
And lets his illumined being o'errun 

With the deluge of summer it receives ; 
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters 

and sings; 
He sings to the wide world, and she to her 

nest, — 
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the 
best? 



454 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Now is the high-tide of the year, 

And whatever of life hath ebbed away 
Comes flooding back with a ripply cheer, 
Into every bare inlet and creek and 

bay ; 60 

Now the heart is so full that a drop over- 
fills it, 
We are happy now because God wills it; 
No matter how barren the past may have 

been, 
'T is enough for us now that the leaves are 

green; 
We sit in the warm shade and feel right 

well 
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms 

swell; 
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help 

knowing 
That skies are clear and grass is grow- 

ing; 
The breeze comes whispering in our ear, 
That dandelions are blossoming near, 70 
That maize has sprouted, that streams 

are flowing, 
That the river is bluer than the sky, 
• That the robin is plastering his house hard 

by; 
And if the breeze kept the good news 

back, 
For other couriers we should not lack; 
We could guess it all by yon heifer's 

lowing, — 
And hark ! how clear bold chanticleer, 
Warmed with the new wine of the year, 
Tells all in his lusty crowing ! 

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how ; 80 
Everything is happy now, 

Everything is upward striving; 
'T is as easy now for the heart to be 

true 
As for grass to be green or skies to be 
blue, — 
'T is the natural way of living: 
Who knows whither the clouds have fled ? 
In the unscarred heaven they leave no 
wake; 
And the eyes forget the tears they have 
shed, 
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; 
The soul partakes the season's youth, 90 
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and 
woe 
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, 
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. 



What wonder if Sir Launfal now 
Remembered the keeping of his vow ? 

PART FIRST 



' My golden spurs now bring to me, 
And bring to me my richest mail, 

For to-morrow I go over land and sea 
In search of the Holy Grail; 

Shall never a bed for me be spread, 100 

Nor shall a pillow be under my head, 

Till I begin my vow to keep; 

Here on the rushes will I sleep, 

And perchance there may come a vision 
true 

Ere day create the world anew.' 

Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, 
Slumber fell like a cloud on him, 

And into his soul the vision flew. 



The crows flapped over by twos and threes, 

In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their 

knees, no 

The little birds sang as if it were 

The one day of summer in all the year, 

And the very leaves seemed to sing on the 

trees: 
The castle alone in the landscape lay 
Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray: 
'T was the proudest hall in the North 

Countree, 
And never its gates might opened be, 
Save to lord or lady of high degree; 
Summer besieged it on every side, 
But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 
She could not scale the chilly wall, 121 

Though around it for leagues her pavilions 

tall 
Stretched left and right, 
Over the hills and out of sight; 
Green and broad was every tent, 
And out of each a murmur went 
Till the breeze fell off at night. 



The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, 
And through the dark arch a charger sprang, 
Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight, 130 
In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright 
It seemed the dark castle had gathered all 
Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over 
its wall 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



455 



In his siege of three hundred summers 
long, 
And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, 
Had cast them forth: so, young and 
strong, 
And lightsome as a loeust-leaf, 
Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden 

mail, 
To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail. 



It was morning on hill and stream and 
tree, 140 

And morning in the young knight's heart; 
Only the castle moodily 
Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free, 

And gloomed by itself apart; 
The season brhnmed all other things up 
Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. 



As Sir Launfal made morn through the 
darksome gate, 
He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the 
same, 
Who begged with his hand and moaned as 
he sate; 
And a loathing over Sir Launfal came; 
The sunshine went out of his soul with a 
thrill, 151 

The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink 
and crawl, 
And midway its leap his heart stood still 

Like a frozen waterfall; 
For this man, so foul and bent of stature, 
Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, 
And seemed- the one blot on the summer 

morn, — 
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 



The leper raised not the gold from the 

dust: 
' Better to me the poor man's crust, 160 
Better the blessing of the poor, 
Though I turn me empty from his door; 
That is no true alms which the hand can 

hold; 
He ffiyeso nly the worthless gold — 
Who gives fro m a sense ^Qf rhi ty; 
But he who gives but a slender mite, 
And gives to that which is out of sight, 

That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty 
Which runs through all and doth all 
unite, — 



The hand cannot clasp the whole of his 
alms, i 70 

The heart outstretches its eager palms, 
For a god goes with it and makes it store 
To the soul that was starving in darkness 
before.' 



PRELUDE TO PART SECOND 1 

Down swept the chill wind from the moun- 
tain peak, 
From the snow five thousand summers 
old; 
On open wold and hilltop bleak 
It had gathered all the cold, 
And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's 

cheek; 
It carried a shiver everywhere 
From the unleafed boughs and pastures 
bare ; 180 

The little brook heard it and built a roof 
'Neath which he could house him, winter- 
proof; 
All night by the white stars' frosty gleams 
He groined his arches and matched his 

beams ; 
Slender and clear were his crystal spars 
As the lashes of light that trim the stars: 
He sculptured every summer delight 
In his halls and chambers out of sight; 
Sometimes his tinkling waters slipt 
Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 
Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed 
trees 191 

Bending to counterfeit a breeze; 
Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew 
But silvery mosses that downward grew; 
Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; 
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear 
For the gladness of heaven to shine 
through, and here 



1 Last night ... I walked to Watertown over the 
snow with the new moon before me and a sky exactly 
like that in Page's evening landscape. Orion was rising 
behind me, and, as I stood on the hill just before you 
enter the village, the stillness of the fields around me 
was delicious, broken only by the tinkle of a little brook 
which runs too swiftly for Frost to catch it. My pic- 
ture of the brook in Sir Launfal was drawn from it. 
But why do I send you this description — like the bones 
of a chicken I had picked ? Simply because I was so 
happy as I stood there, and felt so sure of doing some- 
thing that would justify my friends. (Lowell, to 
Briggs, in a letter of December, 1848, just after the 
publication of Sir Launfal. Quoted by permission of 
Messrs. Harper and Brothers.) 



45 6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops 
And hung them thickly with diamond 

drops, 200 

That crystalled the beams of moon and 

sun, 
And made a star of every one: 
No mortal builder's most rare device 
Could match this winter-palace of ice ; 
'Twas as if every image that mirrored 

lay 
In his depths serene through the summer 

day, 
Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, 
Lest the happy model should be lost, 
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry 
By the elfin builders of the frost. 210 

Within the hall are song and laughter, 

The cheeks of Christmas glow red and 
jolly, 
And sprouting is every corbel and rafter 

With lightsome green of ivy and holly; 
Through the deep gulf of the chimney 

wide 
Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; 
The broad flame-pennons droop and flap 

And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; 
Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, 

Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 220 
And swift little troops of silent sparks, 

Now pausing, now scattering away as in 
fear, 
Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks 

Like herds of startled deer. 

But the wind without was eager and sharp, 
Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, 
And rattles and wrings 
The icy strings, 
Singing, in dreary monotone, 
A Christmas carol of its own, 230 

Whose burden still, as he might guess, 
Was ' Shelterless, shelterless, shelter- 
less ! ' 
The voice of the seneschal flared like a 

torch 
As he shouted the wanderer away from the 

porch, 
And he sat in the gateway and saw all 
night 
The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, 
Through the window-slits of the castle 
old, 
Build out its piers of ruddy light 
Against the drift of the cold. 



PART SECOND 



There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 
The bave boughs rattled shudderingly; 241 
The river was dumb and could not speak, 

For the weaver Winter its shroud had 
spun; 
A single crow on the tree-top bleak 

From his shining feathers shed off the 
cold sun; 
Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, 
As if her veins were sapless and old, 
And she rose up decrepitly 
For a last dim look at earth and sea. 



Sir Launfal turned from his own hard 
gate, 250 

For another heir in his earldom sate; 
An old, bent man, worn out and frail, 
He came back from seeking the Holy Grail; 
Little he recked of his earldom's loss, 
No more on his surcoat was blazoned the 

cross, 
But deep in his soul the sign he wore, 
The badge of the suffering and the poor. 



Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare 
Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, 
For it was just at the Christmas time ; 260 
So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, 
And sought for a shelter from cold and 

snow 
In the light and warmth of long-ago; 
He sees the snake-like caravan crawl 
O'er the edge of the desert, black and 

small, 
Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one, 
He can count the camels in the sun, 
As over the red-hot sands they pass 
To where, in its slender necklace of grass, 
The little spring laughed and leapt in the 

shade, 270 

And with its own self like an infant played, 
And waved its signal of palms. 



' For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms; ' 
The happy camels may reach the Spring, 
But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome 

thing, 
The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone, 
That cowers beside him, a thing as lone 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



457 



And white as the ice-isles of Northern 

seas 
In the desolate horror of his disease. 



And Sir Launfal said, ' I behold in thee 280 
An image of Him who died on the tree; 
Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns, 
Thou also hast had the world's buffets and 

scorns, 
And to thy life were not denied 
The wounds in the hands and feet and side: 
Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; 
Behold, through him, I give to thee ! ' 

VI 
Then the soul of the leper stood up in his 
eyes 
And looked at Sir Launfal, and straight- 
way he 
Remembered in what a haughtier guise 290 

He had flung an alms to leprosie, 
When he girt his young life up in gilded 

mail 
And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. 
The heart within him was ashes and dust; 
He parted in twain his single crust, 
He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, 
And gave the leper to eat and drink, 
'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown 
bread, 
'T was water out of a wooden bowl, — 
Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper 
fed, 300 

And 't was red wine he drank with his 
thirsty soul. 



As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast 

face, 
A light shone round about the place ; 
The leper no longer crouched at his side, 
But stood before him glorified, 
Shining and tall and fair and straight 
As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful 

Gate, — 
Himself the Gate whereby men can 
Enter the temple of God in Man. 



His words were shed softer than leaves 
from the pine, 310 

And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on 
the brine, 



That mingle their softness and quiet in 

one 
With the shaggy unrest they float down 

upon; 
And the voice that was softer than silence 

said, 
' Lo, it is I, be not afraid ! 
In many climes, without avail, 
Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy 

Grail ; 
Behold, it is here, — this cup which thou 
Didst fill at the streamlet for me but 

now; 
This crust is my body broken for thee, 320 
This water his blood that died on the 

tree; 
The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 
In whatso we share with another's need; 
Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare; 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds 

three, 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.' 



Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound: 
' The Grail hi my castle here is found ! 
Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 330 
Let it be the spider's banquet-hall; 
He must be fenced with stronger mail 
Who would seek and find the Holy Grail.' 



The castle gate stands open now, 

And the wanderer is welcome to the 

hall 
As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough; 

No longer scowl the turrets tall, 
The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; 
When the first poor outcast went in at the 

door, 
She entered with him in disguise, 340 

And mastered the fortress by surprise; 
There is no spot she loves so well oh 

ground, 
She lingers and smiles there the whole year 

• round ; 
The meanest serf on Sir Launfal's land 
Has hall and bower at his command; 
And there 's no poor man in the North 

Countree 
But is lord of the earldom as much as 



he. 



1848. 



458 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



BEAVER BROOK 1 

Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill, 
And, minuting the long day's loss, 

The cedar's shadow, slow and still, 
Creeps o'er its dial of gray moss. 

Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, 
The aspen's leaves are scarce astir; 

Only the little mill sends u,p 
Its busy, never-ceasing burr. 

Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems 
The road along the mill-pond's brink, 10 

From 'neath the arching barberry-stems, 
My footstep scares the shy chewink. 

Beneath a bony buttonwood 

The mill's red door lets forth the din; 
The whitened miller, dust-imbued, 

Flits past the square of dark within. 

No mountain torrent's strength is here; 

Sweet Beaver, child of forest still, 
Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, 

And gently waits the miller's will. 20 

Swift slips Undine along the race 

Unheard, and then, with flashing bound, 

Floods the dull wheel with light and grace, 
And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge 
round. 

The miller dreams not at what cost 

The quivering millstones hum and whirl, 

Nor how for every turn are tost 
Armfuls of diamond and of pearl. 

But Summer cleared my happier eyes 
With drops of some celestial juice, 30 

To see how Beauty underlies 
Forevermore each form of use. 

And more; methought I saw that flood, 
Which now so dull and darkling steals, 

Thick, here and there, with human blood, 
To turn the world's laborious wheels. 

1 The little mill stands in a valley between one of the 
spurs of Wellington Hill and the main summit, just on 
the edge of Waltham. It is surely one of the loveliest 
spots in the world. It is one of my lions, and if you 
will make me a visit this spring I will take you up to 
hear it roar, and I will show you ' the oaks ' — the 
largest, I fancy, left in the country. (Lowell, in a 
letter of January 5, 1849. Quoted by permission of 
Messrs. Harper and Brothers.) 

The poem was originally called ' The Mill.' 



No more than doth the miller there, 
Shut in our several cells, do we 

Know with what waste of beauty rare 
Moves every day's machinery. 4 o 

Surely the wiser time shall come 
When this fine overplus of might, 

No longer sullen, slow, and dumb, 
Shall leap to music and to light. 

In that new childhood of the Earth 
Life of itself shall dance and play, 

Fresh blood in Time's shrunk veins make 
mirth, 
And labor meet delight half-way. 

1848. 1849. 



BIBLIOLATRES 

Bowing thyself in dust before a Book, 
And thinking the great God is thine alone, 
O rash iconoclast, thou wilt not brook 
What gods the heathen carves in wood and 

stone, 
As if the Shepherd who from the outer 

cold 
Leads all his shivering lambs to one sure 

fold 
Were careful for the fashion of his crook. 

There is no broken reed so poor and base, 
No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly 

blue, 
But He therewith the ravenhig wolf can 

chase, 10 

And guide his flock to springs and pastures 

new; 
Through ways unlooked for, and through 

many lands, 
Far from the rich folds built with human 

hands^ 
The gracious footprints of his love I trace. 

And what art thou, own brother of the clod, 
That from his hand the crook wouldst 

snatch away 
And shake instead thy dry and sapless rod, 
To scare the sheep out of the wholesome 

day? 
Yea, what art thou, blind, unconverted 

Jew, 
That with thy idol-volume's covers two 20 
Wouldst make a jail to coop the living 

God? 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



459 



Thou hear'st not well the mountain organ- 
tones 

By prophet ears from Hor and Sinai caught, 

Thinking the cisterns of those Hebrew 
brains 

Drew dry the springs of the All-knower's 
thought, 

Nor shall thy lips be touched with living 
fire, 

Who blow'st old altar-coals with sole de- 
sire 

To weld anew the spirit's broken chains. 

God is not dumb, that He should speak no 
more; 

If thou hast wanderings in the wilder- 
ness 30 

And find'st not Sinai, 't is thy soul is poor ; 

There towers the Mountain of the Voice no 
less, 

Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who 
bends, 

Intent on manna still and mortal ends, 

Sees it not, neither hears its thundered 
lore. 

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, 

And not on paper leaves nor leaves of 

stone; 
Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to 

it, 
Texts of despair or hope, of joy or moan. 
While swings the sea, while mists the 

mountains shroud, 40 

While thunder's surges burst on cliffs of 

cloud, 
Still at the prophets' feet the nations sit. 

1849. 



THE FIRST SNOW-FALL* 

The snow had begun in the gloaming, 

And busily all the night 
Had been heaping field and highway 

With a silence deep and white. 

Every pine and fir and hemlock 
Wore ermine too dear for an earl, 

1 See ' The Changeling' and ' She came and went.' 
In sending this poem to the Standard Lowell wrote : 
1 Print that as if you loved it. Let not a comma be 
blundered. Especially I fear they will put gleaming 
for gloaming in the first line unless you look to it. May 
you never have the key wliich shall unlock the whole 
meaning of the poem to you ! ' (Lowell's Letters, Harper 
and Brothers, letter of December 22, 1849.) 



And the poorest twig on the elm-tree 
Was ridged inch deep with pearl. 

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara 
Came Chanticleer's muffled crow, 10 

The stiff rails softened to swan's-down, 
And still fluttered down the snow. 

I stood and watched by the window 
The noiseless work of the sky, 

And the sudden flurries of snow-birds, 
Like brown leaves whirling by. 

I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn 
Where a little headstone stood; 

How the flakes were folding it gently, 
As did robins the babes in the wood. 20 

Up spoke our own little Mabel, 

Saying, ' Father, who makes it snow ? ' 

And I told of the good All-father 
Who cares for us here below. 

Again I looked at the snow-fall, 
And thought of the leaden sky 

That arched o'er our first great sorrow, 
When that mound was heaped so high. 

I remembered the gradual patience 

That fell from that cloud like snow, 30 

Flake by flake, healing and hiding 
The scar that renewed our woe. 

And again to the child I whispered, 

' The snow that husheth all, 
Darling, the merciful Father 

Alone can make it fall ! ' 

Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed 
her; 

And she, kissing back, could not know 
That my kiss was given to her sister, 

Folded close under deepening snow. 40 
1849. 1849. 



THE SINGING LEAVES 

A BALLAD 



' What fairings will ye that I bring ? ' 
Said the King to his daughters three; 

1 For I to Vanity Fair am boun, 
Now say what shall they be ? ' 



460 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Then up and spake the eldest daughter, 

That lady tall and grand: 
' Oh, bring me pearls and diamonds great, 

And gold rings for niy hand.' 

Thereafter spake the second daughter, 
That was both white and red: 10 

' For nie bring silks that will stand alone, 
And a gold comb for my head.' 

Then came the turn of the least daughter, 
That was whiter than thistle-down, 

And among the gold of her blithesome hair 
Dim shone the golden crown. 

1 There came a bird this morning, 
And sang 'neath my bower eaves, 

Till I dreamed, as his music made me, 
" Ask thou for the Singing Leaves." ' 20 

Then the brow of the King swelled crimson 

With a flush of angry scorn: 
' Well have ye spoken, my two eldest, 

And chosen as ye were born; 

' But she, like a thing of peasant race, 
That is happy binding the sheaves ; ' 

Then he saw her dead mother in her 
face, 
And said, ' Thou shalt have thy leaves.' 



He mounted and rode three days and nights 
Till he came to Vanity Fair, 30 

And 't was easy to buy the gems and the 
silk, 
But no Singing Leaves were there. 

Then deep in the greenwood rode he, 

And asked of every tree, 
' Oh, if you have ever a Singing Leaf, 

I pray you give it me ! ' 

But the trees all kept their counsel, 

And never a word said they, 
Only there sighed from the pine-tops 

A music of seas far away. 40 

Only the pattering aspen 

Made a sound of growing rain, 

That fell ever faster and faster, 
Then faltered to silence again. 

' Oh, where shall I find a little foot-page 
That would win both hose and shoon, 



And will bring to me the Singing Leaves 
If they grow under the moon ? ' 

Then lightly turned him Walter the page, 
By the stirrup as he ran: 50 

' Now pledge you me the truesome word 
Of a king and gentleman, 

' That you will give me the first, first thing 

You meet at your castle-gate, 
And the Princess shall get the Singing 
Leaves, 

Or mine be a traitor's fate.' 

The King's head dropt upon his breast 

A moment, as it might be; 
'T will be my dog, he thought, and said, 

' My faith I plight to thee.' 60 

Then Walter took from next his heart 

A packet small and thin, 
' Now give you this to the Princess Anne, 

The Singing Leaves are therein.' 



As the King rode in at his castle-gate, 

A maiden to meet him ran, 
And ' Welcome, father ! ' she laughed and 
cried 

Together, the Princess Anne. 

' Lo, here the Singing Leaves,' quoth he, 
' And woe, but they cost me dear ! ' 70 

She took the packet, and the smile 
Deepened down beneath the tear. 

It deepened down till it reached her heart, 

And then gushed up again, 
And lighted her tears as the sudden sun 

Transfigures the summer rain. 

And the first Leaf, when it was opened, 
Sang: ' I am Walter the page, 

And the songs I sing 'neath thy window 
Are my only heritage.' 80 

And the second Leaf sang: 'But in the 
land 

That is neither on earth nor sea, 
My lute and I are lords of more 

Than thrice this kingdom's fee.' 

And the third Leaf sang, ' Be mine ! Be 
mine ! ' 
And ever it sang, ' Be mine ! ' 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



461 



Then sweeter it sang and ever sweeter, 
And said, ' I am thine, thine, thine ! ' 

At the first Leaf she grew pale enough, 
At the second she turned aside, 

At the third, 't was as if a lily flushed 
With a rose's red heart's tide. 



90 



' Good counsel gave the bird,' said she, 

' I have my hope thrice o'er, 
For they sing to my very heart,' she said, 

' And it sings to them evermore.' 

She .brought to him her beauty and truth, 
But and broad earldoms three, 

And he made her queen of the broader lands 
He held of his lute in fee. 100 

1854. 



WITHOUT AND WITHIN 

My coachman, in the moonlight there, 
Looks through the side-light of the door ; 

I hear him with his brethren swear, 
As I could do, — but only more. 

Flattening his nose against the pane, 
He envies me my brilliant lot, 

Breathes on his aching fists in vain, 
And dooms me to a place more hot. 

He sees me in to supper go, 

A silken wonder by my side, 10 

Bare arms, bare shoulders, and a row 

Of flounces, for the door too wide. 

He thinks how happy is my arm 

'Neath its white-gloved and jewelled 
load ; 
And wishes me some dreadful harm, 

Hearing the merry corks explode. 

Meanwhile I inly curse the bore 
Of hunting still the same old coon, 

And envy him, outside the door, 

In golden quiets of the moon. 20 

The winter wind is not so cold 

As the bright smile he sees me win, 

Nor the host's oldest wine so old 
As our poor gabble sour and thin. 

I envy him the ungyved prance 

With which his freezing feet he warms, 



And drag my lady's-chains and dance 
The galley-slave of dreary forms. 

Oh, could he have my share of din, 
And I his quiet ! — past a doubt 30 

'T would still be one man bored within, 
And just another bored without. 

Nay, when, once paid my mortal fee, 
Some idler on my headstone grim 

Traces the moss-blurred name, will he 
Think me the happier, or I him ? 

1854. 



AUF WIEDERSEHEN 1 

SUMMER 

The little gate was reached at last, 
Half hid in lilacs down the lane; 
She pushed it wide, and, as she past, 
A wistful look she backward cast, 
And said, — ' Auf wiedersehen I ' 

With hand on latch, a vision white 

Lingered reluctant, and again 
Half doubting if she did aright, 
Soft as the dews that fell that night, 

She said, — ' Auf wiedersehen ! ' 

The lamp's clear gleam flits up the 
stair; 

I linger in delicious pain; 
Ah, in that chamber, whose rich air 
To breathe in thought I scarcely dare, 

Thinks she, — i Auf wiedersehen .?'... 

'T is thirteen years; once more I press 

The turf that silences the lane; 
I hear the rustle of her dress, 
I smell the lilacs, and — ah, yes, 
I hear ' Auf wiedersehen I ' 

Sweet piece of bashful maiden art ! 

The English words had seemed too 
fain, 
But these — they drew us heart to heart, 
Yet held us tenderly apart; 
She said, ' Auf wiedersehen ! ' 

1854. 



1 Mrs. Lowell died October 27, 1853. See Longfel- 
low's ' The Two Angels,' Scudder' s Life of Lowell, 
vol. i, pp. 356-362, and The Poems of ' Maria White 
Lowell. 



462 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



PALINODE 



AUTUMN 



Still thirteen years : 't is autumn now 
On field and hill, in heart and brain; 

The naked trees at evening sough; 

The leaf to the forsaken bough 
Sighs not, — ' Auf iviedersehen ! ' 

Two watched yon oriole's pendent dome, 
That now is void, and dank with rain, 

And one, — oh, hope more frail than foam ! 

The bird to his deserted home 
Sings not, — ' Auf iviedersehen ! ' 

The loath gate swings with rusty creak; 

Once, parting there, we played at pain; 
There came a parting, when the weak 
And fading lips essayed to speak 

Vainly, — ' Auf iviedersehen ! ' 

Somewhere is comfort, somewhere faith, 

Though thou in outer dark remain; 
One sweet sad voice ennobles death, 
And still, for eighteen centuries saith 
Softly, — ' Auf iviedersehen ! ' 

If earth another grave must bear, 

Yet heaven hath won a sweeter strain, 
And something whispers my despair, 
That, from an orient chamber there, 
Floats down, ' Auf iviedersehen ! ' 

1854. 



THE WIND-HARP 1 

I treasure in secret some long, fine hair 
Of tenderest brown, but so inwardly 
golden 
I half used to fancy the sunshine there, 
So shy, so shifting, so waywardly rare, 
Was only caught for the moment and 
holden 

1 It is dreary enough sometimes, for a mountain-peak 
on whose snow your foot makes the first mortal print 
is not so lonely as a room full of happy faces from 
which one is missing forever. This was originally the 
fifth stanza of ' The Windharp: ' — 

O tress ! that so oft in my heart hast lain. 
Rocked to rest within rest by its thankful beating, 

Say, which is harder — to bear the pain 

Of laughter and light, or to wait in vain 
'Neath the unleaved tree the impossible meeting ? 

If Death's lips be icy, Life gives, iwis, 

Some kisses more clay-cold and darkening than his ! 

(Lowell, in a letter of December 7, 1854.) 



While I could say Dearest! and kiss it, 

and then 
In pity let go to the summer again. 

I twisted this magic in gossamer strings 
Over a wind-harp's Delphian hollow; 
Then called to the idle breeze that swings 
All day in the pine-tops, and clings, and 

sings 1 1 

'Mid the musical leaves, and said, ' Oh, 

follow 
The will of those tears that deepen my 

words, 
And fly to my window to waken these 

chords.' 

So they trembled to life, and, doubtfully 
Feeling their way to my sense, sang, 
' Say whether 

They sit all day by the greenwood tree, 

The lover and loved, as it wont to be, 
When we — ' But grief conquered, and 
all together 

They swelled such weird murmur as haunts 
a shore 20 

Of some planet dispeopled, — ' Never- 
more ! ' 

Then from deep in the past, as seemed to 
me, 
The strings gathered sorrow and sang 
forsaken, 

'One lover still waits 'neath the green- 
wood tree, 

But 't is dark,' and they shuddered, ' where 
lieth she 
Dark and cold ! Forever must one be 
taken ? ' 

But I groaned, ' O harp of all ruth bereft, 

This Scripture is sadder, — " the other 
left " ! ' 

There murmured, as if one strove to speak, 
And tears came instead; then the sad 

tones wandered 30 

And faltered among the uncertain chords 
In a troubled doubt between sorrow and 

words ; 
At last with themselves they questioned 

and pondered, 
' Hereafter ? — w r ho knoweth ? ' and so they 

sighed 
Down the long steps that lead to silence 

and died. 
1854. 1854. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



463 



AFTER THE BURIAL 1 

Yes, faith is a goodly anchor; 

When skies are sweet as a psalm, 
At the bows it lolls so stalwart, 

In its bluff, broad-shouldered calm. 

And when over breakers to leeward 
The tattered surges are hurled, 

It may keep our head to the tempest, 
With its grip on the base of the world. 

But, after the shipwreck, tell me 

What help in its iron thews, 10 

Still true to the broken hawser, 

Deep down among sea-weed and ooze ? 

In the breaking gulfs of sorrow, 
When the helpless feet stretch out 

And find in the deeps of darkness 
No footing so solid as doubt, 

Then better one spar of Memory, 
One broken plauk of the Past, 

1 A threefold sorrow has here found for itself a single 
expression. Part of the poem was written in 1850, after 
the death of Lowell's third daughter, Rose, only six 
months and a half old. ' I shall never forget,' he said 
at this time, ' the feeling I had when little Blanche's 
coffin was brought into the house. It was refreshed 
again lately. But for Rose I would have no funeral. . . . 
She was a lovely child — we think the loveliest of our 
three. She was more like Blanche than Mabel. . . . 
Her illness lasted a week, but I never had any hope, 
so that she died to me the first day the doctor came. 
She was very beautiful — fair, with large dark-gray 
eyes and fine features. . . . Dear little child ! she had 
never spoken, only smiled.' There follow, in Lowell's 
letter, six stanzas of this poem, in an earlier form. 
Into it is interwoven the memory of his oldest child, 
Blanche, especially perhaps in the last stanza. ' After 
Blanche was buried ' says Scudder in his Life of 
Lowell, ' her father took her tiny shoes, the only ones 
she had ever worn, and hung them in his chamber. 
There they stayed till his own death.' But it was the 
death of Lowell's wife that gave to the poem its real 
intensity. The second to fourth stanzas, and the seventh 
to twelfth, were written in a mood which made Lowell 
say later : ' Something broke my life in two, and I can- 
not piece it together again. ... I hope you may never 
have reason to like " After the Burial " better than 
you do.' 

The same interweaving is found in ' Under the Wil- 
lows,' of which Lowell says : ' Something more than 
half of it was written more than twenty years ago, on 
the death of our eldest daughter; but when I came to 
complete it, that other death, which broke my life in 
two, would come in against my will.' 

Lowell said of this poem later, ' A living verse can 
only be made of a living experience — and that our own. 
One of my most personal poems, " After the Burial," 
has roused strange echoes in men who assured me they 
were generally insensible to poetry. After all, the only 
stuff a solitary man has to spin is himself.' (The ex- 
tracts from LoweWs Letters are quoted by permission 
of Messrs. Harper and Brothers.) 



That our human heart may cling to, 

Though hopeless of shore at last! 20 

To the spirit its splendid conjectures, 

To the flesh its sweet despair, 
Its tears o'er the thin-worn locket 

With its anguish of deathless hair ! 

Immortal ? I feel it and know it, 
Who doubts it of such as she ? 

But that is the pang's very secret, — 
Immortal away from me. 

There 's a narrow ridge in the graveyard 
Would scarce stay a child in his race, 30 

But to me and my thought it is wider 
Than the star-sown vague of Space. 

Your logic, my friend, is perfect, 
Your moral most drearily true; 

But, since the earth clashed on her coffin, 
I keep hearing that, and not you. 

Console if you will, I can bear it; 

'T is a well-meant alms of breath; 
But not all the preaching since Adam 

Has made Death other thau Death. 4 o 

It is pagan ; but wait till you feel it, — 
That jar of our earth, that dull shock 

When the ploughshare of deeper passion 
Tears down to our primitive rock. 

Communion in spirit ! Forgive me, 
But I, who am earthly and weak, 

Would give all my incomes from dream- 
land 
For a touch of her hand on my cheek. 

That little shoe in the corner, 

So worn and wrinkled and brown, 50 

With its emptiness confutes you, 

And argues your wisdom down. 
1850, 1854, 1868. 1868. 



L'ENVOI 
TO THE MUSE 1 

Whither ? Albeit I follow fast, 
In all life's circuit I but find, 

1 Passed an hour with Lowell this morning. He read 
me a poem, ' The Muse,' — very beautiful. It reminded 
me of Emerson's ' Forerunners.' (Longfellow's Jour- 
nal, May 3, 1855.) 



464 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Not where thou art, but where thou wast, 

Sweet beckoner, more fleet than wind ! 
I haunt the pine-dark solitudes, 

With soft brown silence carpeted, 
And plot to snare thee in the woods: 

Peace I o'ertake, but thou art fled ! 
I find the rock where thou didst rest, 
The moss thy skimming foot hath prest; 10 

All Nature with thy parting thrills, 
Like branches after birds new-flown; 

Thy passage hill and hollow fills 
With hints of virtue not their own; 
In dimples still the water slips 
Where thou has dipt thy finger-tips; 

Just, just beyond, forever burn 

Gleams of a grace without return; 

Upon thy shade I plant my foot, 
And through my frame strange raptures 
shoot; 20 

All of thee but thyself I grasp; 

I seem to fold thy luring shape, 
And vague air to my bosom clasp, 

Thou lithe, perpetual Escape ! 

One mask and then another drops, 
And thou art secret as before: 

Sometimes with flooded ear I list, 

And hear thee, wondrous organist, 
From mighty continental stops 
A thunder of new music pour; 30 

Through pipes of earth and air and stone 
Thy inspiration deep is blown; 
Through mountains, forests, open downs, 
Lakes, railroads, prairies, states, and towns, 
Thy gathering fugue goes rolling on 
From Maine to utmost Oregon ; 
The factory-wheels in cadence hum, 
From brawling parties concords come; 
All this I hear, or seem to hear, 
But when, enchanted, I draw near 40 

To mate with words the various theme, 
Life seems a whiff of kitchen steam, 
History an organ-grinder's thrum, 

For thou hast slipt from it and me 
And all thine organ-pipes left dumb, 

Most mutable Perversity ! 

Not weary yet, I still must seek, 

And hope for luck next day, next week; 

I go to see the great man ride, 

Shiplike, the swelling human tide 50 

That floods to bear him into port, 

Trophied from Senate-hall and Court; 

Thy magnetism, I feel it there, 

Thy rhythmic presence fleet and rare, 



Making the Mob a moment fine 
With glimpses of their own Divine, 
As in their demigod they see 

Their cramped ideal soaring free; 
'T was thou didst bear the fire about, 

That, like the springing of a mine, 60 
Sent up to heaven the street-long shout; 
Full well I know that thou wast here, 
It was thy breath that brushed my ear; 
But vainly in the stress and whirl 
I dive for thee, the moment's pearl. 

Through every shape thou well canst run, 

Proteus, 'twixt rise and set of sun, 

Well pleased with logger-camps in Maine 

As where Milan's pale Duqmo lies 
A stranded glacier on the plain, 7 o 

Its peaks and pinnacles of ice 
Melted in many a quaint device, 
And sees, above the city's din, 
Afar its silent Alpine kin: 
I track thee over carpets deep 
To wealth's and beauty's inmost keep; 
Across the sand of bar-room floors 
'Mid the stale reek of boosing boors; 
Where browse the hay-field's fragrant 

heats, 
Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats; 80 

I dog thee through the market's throngs 
To where the sea with myriad tongues 
Laps the green edges of the pier, 
And the tall ships that eastward steer, 
Curtsy their farewells to the town, 
O'er the curved distance lessening down; 
I follow allwhere for thy sake, 
Touch thy robe's hem, but ne'er o'ertake, 
Find where, scarce yet immoving, lies, 
Warm from thy limbs, thy last disguise ; go 
But thou another shape hast donned, 
And lurest still just, just beyond ! 

But here a voice, I know not whence, 
Thrills clearly through my inward sense, 
Saying: ' See where she sits at home 
While thou in search of her dost roam ! 
All summer long her ancient wheel 

Whirls humming by the open door, 
Or, when the hickory's social zeal 

Sets the wide chimney in a roar, 100 

Close-nestled by the tinkling hearth, 
It modulates the household mirth 
With that sweet serious undertone 
Of duty, music all her own; 
Still as of old she sits and spins 
Our hopes, our sorrows, and our sins; 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



465 



With equal care she twines the fates 

Of cottages and mighty states; 

She spins the earth, the air, the sea, 

The maiden's unschooled fancy free, no 

The boy's first love, the man's first grief, 

The budding and the fall o' the leaf; 

The piping west-wind's snowy care 

For her their cloudy fleeces spare, 

Or from the thorns of evil times 

She can glean wool to twist her rhymes; 

Morning and noon and eve supply 

To her their fairest tints for dye, 

But ever through her twirling thread 

There spires one line of warmest red, 120 

Tinged from the homestead's genial heart, 

The stamp and warrant of her art; 

With this Time's sickle she outwears, 

And blunts the Sisters' baffled shears. 

' Harass her not: thy heat and stir 
But greater coyness breed in her; 
Yet thou mayst find, ere Age's frost, 
Thy long apprenticeship not lost, 
Learning at last that Stygian Fate 
Unbends to him that knows to wait. 130 
The Muse is womanish, nor deigns 
Her love to him that pules and plains; 
With proud, averted face she stands 
To him that wooes with empty hands. 
Make thyself free of Manhood's guild; 
Pidl down thy barns and greater build; 
The wood, the mountain, and the plain 
Wave breast-deep with the poet's grain; 
Pluck thou the sunset's fruit of gold, 
Glean from the heavens and ocean old; 140 
From fireside lone and trampling street 
Let thy life garner daily wheat; 
The epic of a man rehearse, 
Be something better than thy verse ; 
Make thyself rich, and then the Muse 
Shall court thy precious interviews, 
Shall take thy head upon her knee, 
And such enchantment lilt to thee, 
That thou shalt hear the life-blood flow 
From farthest stars to grass-blades low, 150 
And find the Listener's science still 
Transcends the Singer's deepest skill ! ' 
1855 f 1860. 



MASACCIO 

IN THE BRANCACCI CHAPEL 

He came to Florence long ago, 

And painted here these walls, that shone 



For Raphael and for Angelo, 
With secrets deeper than his own, 
Then shrank into the dark again, 
And died, we know not how or when. 

The shadows deepened, and I turned 
Half sadly from the fresco grand; 
' And is this,' mused I, ' all ye earned, 
High-vaulted brain and cunning hand, 10 
That ye to greater men could teach 
The skill yourselves could never reach ? ' 

' And who were they,' I mused, ' that 

wrought 
Through pathless wilds, with labor long, 
The highways of our daily thought ? 
Who reared those towers of earliest song 
That lift vis from the crowd to peace 
Remote in sunny silences ? ' 

Out clanged the Ave Mary bells, 

And to my heart this message came: 20 

Each clamorous throat among them tells 

What strong-souled martyrs died in flame 

To make it possible that thou 

Shouldst here with brother sinners bow. 

Thoughts that great hearts once broke for, 

we 
Breathe cheaply in the common air; 
The dust we trample heedlessly 
Throbbed once in saints and heroes rare, 
Who perished, opening for their race 
New pathways to the commonplace. 30 

Henceforth, when rings the health to those 

Who live in story and in song, 

O nameless dead, that now repose 

Safe in Oblivion's chambers strong, 

One cup of recognition true 

Shall silently be drained to you ! 

1856 ? (1868.) 



THE ORIGIN OF DIDACTIC 
POETRY 

When wise Minerva still was young 

And just the least romantic, 
Soon after from Jove's head she flung 

That preternatural antic, 
'T is said, to keep from idleness 

Or flirting, those twin curses, 
She spent her leisure, more or less, 

In writing po , no, verses. 



4 66 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



How nice they were ! to rhyme with far 

A kind star did not tarry; 10 

The metre, too, was regular 

As schoolboy's dot and carry; 
And full they were of pious plums, 

So extra-super-nioral, — 
For sucking Virtue's tender gums 

Most tooth-enticing coral. 

A clean, fair copy she prepares, 

Makes sure of moods and tenses, 
With her own hand, — for prudence spares 

A mau-(or woman-)-uensis; 2 o 

Complete, and tied with ribbons proud, 

She hinted soon how cosy a 
Treat it would be to read them loud 

After next day's Ambrosia. 

The Gods thought not it would amuse 

So much as Homer's Odyssees, 
But could not very well refuse 

The properest of Goddesses; 
So all sat round in attitudes 

Of various dejection, 30 

As with a hem ! the queen of prudes 

Began her grave prelection. 

At the first pause Zeus said, 'Well sung ! — 

I mean — ask Phoebus, — lie knows.' 
Says Phcebus, ' Zounds ! a wolf 's among 

Admetus's merinos ! 
Fine ! very fine ! but I must go; 

They stand in need of me there; 
Excuse me ! ' snatched his stick, and so 

Plunged down the gladdened ether. 40 

With the next gap, Mars said, ' For me 

Don't wait, — naught could be finer, 
But I 'm engaged at half past three, — 

A fight in Asia Minor ! ' 
Then Venus lisped, ' I 'm sorely tried, 

These duty-calls are vip'rous; 
But I must go ; I have a bride 

To see about in Cyprus.' 

Then Bacchus, — ' I must say good-by, 

Although my peace it jeopards; 50 

I meet a man at four, to try 

A well-broke pair of leopards.' 
His words woke Hermes. ' Ah ! ' he said, 

' I so love moral theses ! ' 
Then winked at Hebe, who turned red, 

And smoothed her apron's creases. 

Just then Zeus snored, — the Eagle drew 
His head the wing from under; 



Zeus snored, — o'er startled Greece there 
flew 

The many-volumed thunder. 60 

Some augurs counted nine, some, ten; 

Some said 'twas war, some, famine, 
And all, that other-minded men 

Would get a precious . 

Proud Pallas sighed, ' It will not do ; 

Against the Muse I 've sinned, oh ! ' 
And her torn rhymes sent flying through 

Olympus's back window. 
Then, packing up a peplus clean, 

She took the shortest path thence, 70 

And opened, with a mind serene, 

A Sunday-school in Athens. 

The verses ? Some in ocean swilled, 

Killed every fish that bit to 'em; 
Some Galen caught, and, when distilled, 

Found morphine the residuum; 
But some that rotted on the earth 

Sprang up again in copies, 
And gave two strong narcotics birth, 

Didactic verse and poppies. 80 

Years after, when a poet asked 

The Goddess's opinion, 
As one whose soul its wings had tasked 

In Art's clear-aired dominion, 
' Discriminate,' she said, ' betimes; 

The Muse is unforgiving; 
Put all your beauty in your rhymes, 

Your morals in your living.' 

1857. ! 

THE DEAD HOUSE 2 

Here once my step was quickened, 
Here beckoned the opening door, 

And welcome thrilled from the threshold 
To the foot it had known before. 

1 In the first number of the Atlantic Monthly, of 
which Lowell was editor. 

2 I have a notion that the inmates of a house should 
never he changed. When the first occupants go out it 
should be burned, and a stone set up with ' Sacred to the 
memory of a HOME ' on it. Suppose the body were 
eternal, and that when one spirit went out another took 
the lease. How frightful the strange expression of the 
eyes would be ! I fancy sometimes that the look in the 
eyes of a familiar house changes when aliens have 
come into it. For certainly a dwelling adapts itself to 
its occupants. The front door of a hospitable man opens 
easily and looks broad, and you can read Welcome ! on 
every step that leads to it. {LoweWs Letters, vol. i, pp. 
2S3, 284. Quoted by permission of Messrs. Harper and 
Brothers.) 

For the first form of the poem, see Scudder's Life of 
Lowell, vol. i, pp. 435-437. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



467 



A glow came forth to meet me 

From the flame that laughed in the grate, 
And shadows adance on the ceiling, 

Danced blither with mine for a mate. 

' I claim you, old friend,' yawned the arm- 
chair, 
'This corner, you know, is your seat; ' 10 
1 Rest your slippers on me,' beamed the 
fender, 
' I brighten at touch of your feet.' 

' We know the practised finger,' 

Said the books, ' that seems like brain; ' 

And the shy page rustled the secret 
It had kept till I came again. 

Sang the pillow, ' My down once quivered 
On nightingales' throats that flew 

Through moonlit gardens of Hafiz 

To gather quaint dreams for you.' 20 

Ah me, where the Past sowed heart's-ease, 
The Present plucks rue for us men ! 

I come back: that scar unhealing 
Was not in the churchyard then. 

But, I think, the house is unaltered, 

I will go and beg to look 
At the rooms that were once familiar 

To my life as its bed to a brook. 

Unaltered ! Alas for the sameness 

That makes the change but more ! 30 

'T is a dead man I see in the mirrors, 
'T is his tread that chills the floor ! 

To learn such a simple lesson, 
Need I go to Paris and Rome, 

That the many make the household, 
But only one the home ? 

'T was just a womanly presence, 

An influence unexprest, 
But a rose she had worn, on my grave-sod 

Were more than long life with the rest ! 

'T was a smile, 't was a garment's rustle, 41 
'T was nothing that I can phrase, 

But the whole dumb dwelling grew con- 
scious, 
And put on her looks and ways. 

Were it mine I would close the shutters, 
Like lids when the life is fled, 



And the funeral fire should wind it, 
This corpse of a home that is dead. 

For it died that autumn morning 

When she, its soul, was borne 50 

To lie all dark on the hillside 

That looks over woodland and corn. 

1858. 1858. 



AT THE BURNS CENTENNIAL 



JANUARY, 1859 



A hundred years ! they 're quickly fled, 

With all their joy and sorrow; 
Their dead leaves shed upon the dead, 

Their fresh ones sprung by morrow ! 
And still the patient seasons bring 

Their change of sun and shadow; 
New birds still sing with every spring, 

New violets spot the meadow. 



A hundred years ! and Nature's powers 

No greater grown nor lessened ! 10 

They saw no flowers more sweet than 
ours, 

No fairer new moon's crescent. 
Would she but treat us poets so, 

So from our winter free us, 
And set our slow old sap aflow 

To sprout in fresh ideas ! 

Ill 

Alas, think I, what worth or parts 

Have brought me here competing, 
To speak what starts in myriad hearts 

With Burns's memory beating ! 20 

Himself had loved a theme like this; 

Must I be its entomber ? 
No pen save his but 's sure to miss 

Its pathos or its humor. 



As I sat musing what to say, 

And how my verse to number, 
Some elf in play passed by that way, 

And sank my lids in slumber; 
And on my sleep a vision stole, 

Which I will put in metre, 
Of Burns's soul at the wicket-hole 

Where sits the good Saint Peter. 



468 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



The saint, methought, had left his post 

That day to Holy Willie, 
Who swore, ' Each ghost that conies shall 
toast 

In brunstane, will he, nill he; 
There 's nane need hope with phrases 
fine 

Their score to wipe a sin f rae ; 
I '11 chalk a sign, to save their tryin', — 

A hand (ffV) and " Vide infra ! " ' 40 



Alas ! no soil 's too cold or dry 

For spiritual small potatoes, 
Scrimped natures, spry the trade to ply 

Of diaboli advocatus; 
Who lay bent pins in the penance-stool 

Where Mercy plumps a cushion, 
Who 've just one rule for knave and fool, 

It saves so much confusion ! 



So when Burns knocked, Will knit his 
brows, 

His window gap made scanter, 50 

And said, ' Go rouse the other house ; 

We lodge no Tam O'Shanter ! ' 
1 We lodge ! ' laughed Burns. ' Now well 
I see 

Death cannot kill old nature ; 
No human flea but thinks that he 

May speak for his Creator ! 

VIII 

' But, Willie, friend, don't turn me forth, 

Aidd Clootie needs no gauger; 
And if on earth I had small worth, 

You 've let in worse, I 'se wager ! ' 60 
' Na, nane has knockit at, the yett 

But found me hard as whunstane; 
There 's chances yet your bread to get 

Wi Auld Nick, gaugin' brunstane.' 



Meanwhile, the Unco' Guid had ta'en 

Their place to watch the process, 
Flattening in vain on many a pane • 

Their disembodied noses. 
Remember, please, 'tis all a dream; 

One can't control the fancies 70 

Through sleep that stream with wayward 
gleam, 

Like midnight's boreal dances. 



Old Willie's tone grew sharp 's a knife : 

' In primis, I indite ye, 
For makin' strife wi' the water o' life, 

And preferrin' aqua vitas ! ' 
Then roared a voice with lusty din, 

Like a skipper's when 't is blowy, 
' If that 's a sin, / 'd ne'er got in, 

As sure as my name 's Noah ! ' 80 



Baulked, Willie turned another leaf, — 

' There 's many here have heard ye, 
To the pain and grief o' true belief, 

Say hard things o' the clergy ! ' 
Then rang a clear tone over all, — 

' One plea for him allow me : 
I once heard call from o'er me, " Saul, 

Why persecutest thou me ? " ' 



To the next charge vexed Willie turned, 

And, sighing, wiped his glasses: 90 

' I 'm much concerned to find ye yearned 

O'er-warmly tow'rd the lasses ! ' 
Here David sighed; poor Willie's face 

Lost all its self-possession: 
1 1 leave this case to God's own grace; 

It baffles my discretion ! ' 



Then sudden glory round me broke, 

And low melodious surges 
Of wings whose stroke to splendor woke 

Creation's farthest verges; 1 

A cross stretched, ladder-like, secure 

From earth to heaven's own portal, 
Whereby God's poor, with footing sure, 

Climbed up to peace immortal. 



I heard a voice serene and low 

(With my heart I seemed to hear it) 
Fall soft and slow as snow on snow, 

Like grace of the heavenly spirit; 
As sweet as over new-born son 

The croon of new-made mother, 
The voice begun, ' Sore tempted one ! ' 

Then, pausing, sighed, ' Our brother ! 



' If not a sparrow fall, unless 
The Father sees and knows it, 

Think ! recks He less his form express, 
The soul his own deposit ? 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



469 



If only dear to Him the strong, 

That never trip nor wander, 
Where were the throng whose morning 
song 

Thrills his blue arches yonder ? 120 

XVI 
' Do souls alone clear-eyed, strong-kneed, 

To Him true service render, 
And they who need his hand to lead, 

Find they his heart untender ? 
Through all your various ranks and fates 

He opens doors to duty, 
And he that waits there at your gates 

Was servant of his Beauty. 



' The Earth must richer sap secrete 

(Could ye in time but know it !), 130 

Must juice concrete with fiercer heat, 

Ere she can make her poet; 
Long generations go and come, 

At last she bears a singer, 
For ages dumb of senses numb 

The compensation-bringer ! 

XVIII 

' Her cheaper broods in palaces 

She raises under glasses, 
But souls like these, heav'n's hostages, 

Spring shelterless as grasses : 140 

They share Earth's blessing and her bane, 

The common sun and shower; 
What makes your pain to them is gain, 

Your weakness is their power. 



' These larger hearts must feel the rolls 

Of stormier-waved temptation; 
These star-wide souls between their poles 

Bear zones of tropic passion. 
He loved much ! — that is gospel good, 

Howe'er the text you handle; 150 

From common wood the cross was hewed, 

By love turned priceless sandal. 

XX 
1 If scant his service at the kirk, 

He paters heard and aves 
From choirs that lurk in hedge and birk, 

From blackbird and from mavis; 
The cowering mouse, poor unroofed thing, 

In him found Mercy's angel; 
The daisy's ring brought every spring 

To him Love's fresh evangel ! 160 



XXI 

' Not he the threatening texts who deals 

Is highest 'mong the preachers, 
But he who feels the woes and weals 

Of all God's wandering creatures. 
He doth good work whose heart can find 

The spirit 'neath the letter; 
Who makes his kind of happier mind, 

Leaves wiser men and better. 

XXII 

' They make Religion be abhorred 

Who round with darkness gulf her, 170 
And think no word can please the Lord 

Unless it smell of sulphur. 
Dear Poet-heart, that childlike guessed 

The Father's loving kindness, 
Come now to rest ! Thou didst bis best, 

If haply 't was in blindness ! ' 



Then leapt heaven's portals wide apart, 

And at their golden thunder 
With sudden start I woke, my heart 

Still throbbing-full of wonder. 180 

' Father,' I said, ' 't is known to Thee 

How Thou thy Saints preparest; 
But this I see, — Saint Charity 

Is still the first and fairest ! ' 



Dear Bard and Brother ! let who may 

Against thy faults be railing 
(Though far, I pray, from us be they 

That never had a failing !), 
One toast I '11 give, and that not long, 

Which thou would st pledge if present, — 
To him whose song, in nature strong, 191 

Makes man of prince and peasant ! 

1859? 



THE WASHERS OF THE 
SHROUD 1 

OCTOBER, 1 86l 

Along a river-side, I know not where, 
I walked one night in mystery of dream ; 

1 Lowell wrote to Professor Charles Eliot Norton, 
October 12, 1861 : ' I had just two days allowed me by 
Fields for the November Atlantic, and I got it done. It 
had been in my head some time, and when you see it 
you will remember my having spoken to you about it. 
Indeed, I owe it to you, for the hint came from one of 
those books of Souvestre's you lent me — the Breton 
legends. The writing took hold of me enough to leave 



47 o 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



A chill creeps curdling yet beneath my 

hair, 
To think what chanced me by the pallid 

gleam 
Of a moon-wraith that waned through 

haunted air. 

Pale fireflies pulsed within the meadow- 
mist 

Their halos, wavering thistle downs of 
light; 

The loon, that seemed to mock some goblin 
tryst, 

Laughed; and the echoes, huddling in af- 
fright, 

Like Odin's hounds, fled baying down the 
night. 10 

Then all was silent, till there smote my 

ear 
A movement in the stream that checked 

my breath: 
Was it the slow plash of a wading deer ? 
But something said, ' This water is of 

Death ! 
The Sisters wash a shroud, — ill thing to 

hear ! ' 

I, looking then, beheld the ancient Three 
Known to the Greek's and to the North- 
man's creed, 
That sit in shadow of the mystic Tree, 
Still crooning, as they weave their endless 

brede, 
One song: • Time was, Time is, and Time 
shall be.' 20 

No wrinkled crones were they, as I had 

deemed, 
But fair as yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, 
To mourner, lover, poet, ever seemed; 
Something too high for joy, too deep for 

sorrow, 
Thrilled in their tones, and from their 

faces gleamed. 

me tired out and to satisfy me entirely as to what was 
the original of my head and back pains. But whether 
it is good or not, I am not yet far enough off to say. 
But do like it, if you can. Fields says it is " splendid," 
with tears in his eyes — but then I read it to him, which 
is half the battle. I began it as a lyric, but it would 
be too aphoristic for that, and finally flatly refused to 
sing at any price. So I submitted, took to pentameters, 
and only hope the thoughts are good enough to be pre- 
served in the ice of the colder and almost glacier-slow 
measure. I think I have done well — in some stanzas 
at least — and not wasted words. It is about present 
matters.' (LowelVs Letters, vol. i, p. 318. Quoted by 
permission of Messrs. Harper and Brothers.) 



' Still men and nations reap as they have 

strawn,' 
So sang they, working at their task the 

while ; 
'The fatal raiment must be cleansed ere 

dawn: 
For Austria ? Italy ? the Sea - Queen's 

isle? 
O'er what quenched grandeur must our 

shroud be drawn ? 30 

' Or is it for a younger, fairer corse, 

That gathered States like children round 

his knees, 
That tamed the wave to be his posting 

horse, 
Feller of forests, linker of the seas, 
Bridge-builder, hammerer, youngest son of 

Thor's? 

'What make we, murmur'st thou? and 

what are we? 
When empires must be wound, we bring 

the shroud, 
The time-old web of the implacable Three: 
Is it too coarse for him, the young and 

proud? 
Earth's mightiest deigned to wear it, — 

why not he? ' 40 

' Is there no hope? ' I moaned, ' so strong, 

so fair! 
Our Fowler whose proud bird would brook 

erewhile 
No rival's swoop in all our western air! 
Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file 
For him, life's morn yet golden in his hair? 

' Leave me not hopeless, ye unpitying 

dames ! 
I see, half seeing. Tell me, ye who scanned 
The stars, Earth's elders, still must noblest 

aims 
Be traced upon oblivious ocean-sands ? 
Must Hesper join the wailing ghosts of 

names ? ' s° 

• When grass-blades stiffen with red battle- 
dew, 

Ye deem we choose the victor and the slain: 

Say, choose we them that shall be leal and 
true 

To the heart's longing, the high faith of 
brain? 

Yet there the victory lies, if ye but knew. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



47 l 



'Three roots bear up Dominion: Know- 
ledge, Will, — 

These twain are strong, but stronger yet 
the third, — 

Obedience, — 't is the great tap-root that 
still, 

Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred, 

Though Heaven-loosed tempests spend their 
utmost skill. 60 

' Is the doom sealed for Hesper? 'T is not 
we 

Denounce it, but the Law before all time: 

The brave makes danger opportunity; 

The waverer, paltering with the chance sub- 
lime, 

Dwarfs it to peril: which shall Hesper be? 

' Hath he let vultures climb his eagle's 

seat 
To make Jove's bolts purveyors of their 

maw? 
Hath he the Many's plaudits found more 

sweet 
Than Wisdom? held Opinion's wind for 

Law? 
Then let him hearken for the doomster's 

feet ! 70 

' Rough are the steps, slow-hewn in flintiest 

rock, 
States climb to power by ; slippery those 

with gold 
Down which they stumble to eternal mock: 
No chaff erer's hand shall long the sceptre 

hold, 
Who, given a Fate to shape, would sell the 

block. 

'We sing old Sagas, songs of weal and 

woe, 
Mystic because too cheaply understood; 
Dark sayings are not ours; men hear and 

know, 
See Evil weak, see strength alone in Good, 
Yet hope to stem God's fire with walls of 

tow. 80 

' Time Was unlocks the riddle of Time 

Is, 
That offers choice of glory or of gloom; 
The solver makes Time Shall Be surely 

his. 



But hasten, Sisters ! for even now the tomb 
Grates its slow hinge and calls from the 
abyss.' 

'But not for him,' I cried, 'not yet for 

him, 
Whose large horizon, westering, star by 

star 
Wins from the void to where on Ocean's 

rim 
The sunset shuts the world with golden 

bar, 
Not yet his thews shall fail, his eye grow 

dim! 90 

'His shall be larger manhood, saved for 
those 

That walk unblenching through the trial- 
fires; 

Not suffering, but faint heart, is worst of 
woes, 

And he no base-born son of craven sires, 

Whose eye need blench confronted with his 
foes. 

'Tears may be ours, but proud, for those 
who win 

Death's royal purple in the f oeman's lines ; 

Peace, too, brings tears ; and 'mid the battle- 
din, 

The wiser ear some text of God divines, 

For the sheathed blade may rust with 
darker sin. 100 

' God, give us peace ! not such as lulls to 

sleep, 
But sword on thigh, and brow with purpose 

knit ! 
And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep, 
Her ports all up, her battle-lanterns lit, 
And her leashed thunders gathering for 

their leap ! ' 

So cried I with clenched hands and passion- 
ate pain, 

Thinking of dear ones by Potomac's side; 

Again the loon laughed mocking, and 
again 

The echoes bayed far down the night and 
died, 

While waking I recalled my wandering 
brain. 1 10 

1861. 1861. 



47- 



CH1EF AMERICAN POETS 



THE BIGLOW PAPERS 



SECOND SERIES 



THE COURTIN' 1 

Gk)P makes seeh nights, all white an' still 

Fur 'z you can look or listen. 
Moonshine an' snow on held an' hill, 

All silence an' all glisten. 

Zekle erep' up quite unbeknown 
An' peeked in thru' the winder, 

An' there sot Huldy all alone, 
'ith no one nigh to bender. 

A fireplace filled the room's one side 

"With half a cord o' wood in — 10 

There war n't no stoves (tell comfort died) 
To bake ye to a puddiii'. 

The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out 
Towards the pootiest, bless her. 

An' leetle flames danced all about 
The chiny on the dresser. 

Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, 

An' in amongst 'em rusted 
The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young 

Fetched back Pom Concord busted. 20 

The Tery room, coz she was in, 
Seemed warm Pom floor to ceilin', 

An' she looked full ez rosy agin 
Ez the apples she was peelin'. 

1 The only attempt I had ever made at anything like 
a pastoral (.if that may be called an attempt which was 
the result almost of pure accident) was in ' The 
Courtin'.' While the Introduction to the First Series 
was going through the press, I received word from the 
printer that there was a blank page left which must be 
filled. I sat down at once and improvised another 
fictitious ' notice of the press,' in which, because verse 
would fill up space more cheaply than prose, I inserted 
an extract from a supposed ballad of Mr. Biglow. I 
kept no copy of it. and the printer, as directed, cut it 
off when the gap was filled. Presently I began to re- 
ceive letters asking for the rest of it, sometimes for the 
balance of it. I had none, but to answer such demands, 
I patched a conchision upon it in a later edition. Those 
who had only the first continued to importune me. 
Afterward, being asked to write it ovit as an autograph 
for the Baltimore Sanitary Commission Fair, I added 
other verses, into some of which I infused a little more 
sentiment in a homely way, and after a fashion com- 
pleted it by sketching in the characters and making a 
connected story. Most likely I have spoiled it, but I 
shall put it at "the end of this Introduction, to answer 
once for all those kindly importunings. (Lowell, in 
the ' Introduction ' to the Biglow Papers, 1866.) 



'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look 

On seen a blessed cretur, 
A dogrose blushin 1 to a brook 

Ain't niodester nor sweeter. 

He was six foot o' man, A 1, 

Clear grit an' human natur", 3 o 

None could n't quicker pitch a ton 

Nor dror a furrer straighter. 

He 'd sparked it with full twenty gals, 
Hed squired 'em. danced 'em, druv 'em. 

Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells — 
All is, he could n't love 'em. 

But long o' her his veins 'ould rim 

All crinkly like curled maple. 
The side she breshed felt full o' sun 

Ez a south slope in Ap'il. 4 o 

She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing 

Ez hisn in the choir: 
My ! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, 

She knoired the Lord was nigher. 

An' she 'd blush searlit, right in prayer, 
When her new meetin'-bunnet 

Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair 
O' blue eyes sot upun it. 

Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some ! 

She seemed to 've gut a new sold, 5 o 

For she felt sartin-sure he 'd come, 

Down to her very shoe-sole. 

She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu, 

A-raspin' on the scraper, — 
All ways to once her feelins flew 

Like sparks in burnt-up paper. 

He kin' o' l'itered on the mat, 

Some doubtfle o' the sekle, 
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, 

But hern went pity Zekle. 

An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk 
Ez though she wished him furder, 

An' on her apples kep' to work, 
Parin' away like murder. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



473 



' You want to see my Pa, I s'pose ? ' 

' Wal ... no ... I come dasignin' ' — 

' To see my Ma ? She 's sprinklin' clo'es 
Agin to-moiTer's i'nin'.' 

To say why gals acts so or so, 

Or don't, 'oidd be persumin'; 70 

Mebby to mean yes an' say no 

Comes nateral to women. 

He stood a spell on one foot fust, 

Then stood a spell on t' other, 
An' on which one he felt the wust 

He could n't ha' told ye nuther. 

Says he, ' I 'd better call agin ; ' 
Says she, 'Think likely, Mister: ' 

Thet last word pricked him like a pin, 
An' . . . Wal, he up an' kist her. 80 

When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, 

Huldy sot pale ez ashes, 
All kin' o' smily roun' the lips 

An' teary roun' the lashes. 

For she was jes' the quiet kind 

Whose naturs never vary, 
Like streams that keep a summer mind 

Snowhid in Jenooary. 

The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued 
Too tight for all expressing 90 

Tell mother see how metters stood, 
An' gin 'em both her blessin'. 

Then her red come back like the tide 

Down to the Bay o' Fundy, 
An' all I know is they was cried 

In meetin' come nex' Sunday. 
1848, ?, me. 1848, 1866. 



NO. II 

MASON AND SLIDELL: A YAN- 
KEE IDYLL 1 

I love to start out arter night 's begun, 
An' all the chores about the farm are done, 

1 In the latter part of 18G1 President Davis under- 
took to send agents or commissioners to England and 
France to represent the Southern cause. The men 
chosen were James M. Mason, of Virginia, and John 
Slidell, of Louisiana. On the 12th of October they left 
Charleston, eluded the blockading squadron, and landed 
at Havana. Thence they embarked for Bt. Thomas on 



The critters milked an' foddered, gates 

shet fast, 
Tools cleaned aginst to-morrer, supper 

past, 
An' Nancy darnin' by her ker'sene lamp, — 
I love, I say, to start upon a tramp, 
To shake the kinkles out o' back an' legs, 
An' kind o' rack my life off from the dregs 
Thet 's apt to settle in the buttery-hutch 
Of folks thet f oiler in one rut too much: 10 
Hard work is good an' wholesome, past all 

doubt; 
But 't ain't so, ef the mind gits tuckered 

out. 
Now, bein' born in Middlesex, you know, 
There 's certin spots where I like best to 

go: 
The Concord road, for instance (I, for one, 
Most gin'lly oilers call it John bull's Run), 
The field o' Lexin'ton where England tried 
The fastest colours thet she ever dyed, 
An' Concord Bridge, thet Davis, when he 

came, 
Found was the bee-line track to heaven an' 

fame, 20 

Ez all roads be by natur', ef your soul 
Don't sneak thru shun-pikes so 's to save 

the toll. 

They 're 'most too fur away, take too much 

time 
To visit of 'en, ef it ain't in rhyme; 
But the' 's a walk thet 's hendier, a sight, 
An' suits me fust-rate of a winter's night, — 

the British mail-steamer Trent. On the way the Trent 
was stopped by Captain Wilkes, of the American man- 
of-war San Jacinto, and the Confederate agents were 
transferred as prisoners to the latter vessel. The Brit- 
ish Government at once proclaimed the act ' a great 
outrage,' and sent a peremptory demand for the re- 
lease of the prisoners and reparation. At the same 
time, without waiting for any explanation, it made ex- 
tensive preparations for hostilities. It seemed and un- 
doubtedly was expedient for the United States to receive 
Lord Russell's demand as an admission that impress- 
ment of British seamen found on board neutral vessels 
was unwarrantable. Acting on the demand as an admis- 
sion of the principle so long contended for by the United 
States, Mr. Seward disavowed the act of Wilkes and 
released the commissioners. But it was held then and 
has since been stoutly maintained by many jurists that 
the true principles of international law will not justify 
a neutral vessel in transporting the agents of a bel- 
ligerent on a hostile mission. On the analogy of de- 
spatches they should be contraband. The difficulty of 
amicable settlement at that time, however, lay not so 
much in the point of law as in the intensity of popular 
feeling on both sides of the Atlantic. (F. B. Williams, 
in the Riverside and Cambridge Editions of Lowell's 
Poetical, Works.) See also the long introductory letter 
of the Rev. Homer Wilbur, in the Cambridge Edition, 
pp. 228-233, and the Riverside Edition, vol. ii, pp. 
240-253. 



474 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



I mean the round whale's-back o' Prospect 

Hill. 
I love to Titer there while night grows 

still, 
An' in the twinklin' villages about, 
Fust here, then there, the well-saved lights 

goes out, 30 

An' nary sound but wateh-dogs' false 

alarms, 
Or muffled cock-crows from the drowsy 

farms, 
Where some wise rooster (men act jest 

thet way) 
Stands to 't thet moon-rise is the break o' 

day 
(So Mister Seward sticks a three-months' 

pin 
Where the war 'd oughto eend, then tries 

agin; 
My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 't is to 

crow: 
Don't never prophesy — onless ye know). 
I love to muse there till it kind o' seems 
Ez ef the world went eddyin' off in 

dreams ; 40 

The northwest wind thet twitches at my 

baird 
Blows out o' sturdier days not easy scared, 
An' the same moon thet this December 

shines 
Starts out the tents an' booths o' Putnam's 

Hues; 
The rail-fence posts, acrost the hill thet 

runs, 
Turn ghosts o' sogers should'rin' ghosts o' 

guns; 
Ez wheels the sentry, glints a flash o' light, 
Along the firelock won at Concord Fight, 
An', 'twixt the silences, now fur, now nigh, 
Rings the sharp chellenge, hums the low 

reply. , 50 

Ez I was settin' so, it warn't long sence, 
Mixin' the puffict with the present tense, 
I heerd two voices som'ers in the air, 
Though, ef I was to die, I can't tell where : 
Voices I call 'em : 't was a kind o' sough 
Like pine-trees thet the wind's ageth'rin 

through; 
An', fact, I thought it was the wind a spell, 
Then some misdoubted, could n't fairly tell, 
Fust sure, then not, jest as you hold an eel, 
I knowed, an' did n't, — fin'lly seemed to 

feel 60 

'T was Concord Bridge a talkin' off to kill 



With the Stone Spike thet 's druv thru 

Bimker's Hill; 
Whether 't was so, or ef I on'y dreamed, 
I couldn't say; I tell it ez it seemed. 

THE BRIDGE 

Wal, neighbor, tell us wut 's turned up 

thet 's new ? 
You 're younger 'n I be, — nigher Boston, 

tu: 
An' down to Boston, ef you take their 

showin', 
Wut they don't know ain't hardly wuth the 

knowin'. 
There's stmihin' goin' on, I know: las' 

night 
The British sogers killed hi our gret fight 70 
(Nigh fifty year they bed n't stirred nor 

spoke) 
Made sech a coil you 'd thought a dam hed 

broke: 
Why, one he up an' beat a revellee 
With his own crossbones on a holler tree, 
Till all the graveyards swarmed out like a 

hive 
With faces I hain't seen sence Seventy- 
five. 
Wut is the news ? 'T ain't good, or they 'd 

be cheerin'. 
Speak slow an' clear, for I 'in some hard o' 

hearin'. 

THE MONIMENT 

I don't know hardly ef it 's good or bad, — 

THE BRIDGE 

At wust, it can't be wus than wut we 've 
had. So 

THE MONIMENT 

You know them envys thet the Rebbles 

sent, 
An' Cap'n Wilkes he borried o' the Trent ? 

THE BRIDGE 

Wut ! they ha'n't hanged 'em ? Then their 

wits is gone ! 
Thet 's the sure way to make a goose a 

swan ! 

THE MONIMENT 

No: England she would hev 'em, Fee, Faw, 

Fum! 
(Ez though she lied n't fools enough to 

home), 
So they 've returned 'em — 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



475 



THE BRIDGE 

Hev they ? Wal, by heaven, 
Thet 's the wust news I 've heerd sence 

Seventy-seven ! 
By George, I meant to say, though I declare 
It '8 'most enough to make a deacon swear. 

THE MONIMENT 

Now don't go off half-cock: folks never 
gains 91 

By usin' pepper-sarse instid o' brains. 
Come, neighbor, you don't understan' — 

THE BRIDGE 

How? Hey? 

Not understan' ? Why, wut 's to hender, 

pray? 
Must I go huntin' round to find a chap 
To tell me when my face hez hed a slap ? 

THE MONIMENT 

See here: the British they found out a flaw 
In Cap'n Wilkes's readin' o' the law 
(They make, all laws, you know, an' so, o' 

course, 
It 's nateral they should understan' their 

force): 100 

He 'd oughto ha' took the vessel into port, 
An' hed her sot on by a reg'lar court; 
She was a mail-ship, an' a steamer, tu, 
An' thet, they say, hez changed the pint o' 

view, 
Coz the old practice, bein' meant for sails, 
Ef tried upon a steamer, kind o' fails; 
You may take out despatches, but you 

mus' n't 
Take nary man — 

THE BRIDGE 

You mean to say, you dus' n't ! 
Changed pint o' view ! No, no, — it 's 

overboard 
With law an' gospel, when their ox is 

gored ! no 

I tell ye, England's law, on sea an' land, 
Hez oilers ben, ' / 've gut the heaviest hand.' 
Take nary man ? Fine preachin' from her 

lips ! 
Why, she hez taken hunderds from our 

ships, 
An' woidd agin, an' swear she had a right to, 
Ef we warn't strong enough to be perlite to. 
Of all the sarse thet I can call to mind, 
England doos make the most onpleasant 

kind: 



It 's you 're the sinner oilers, she 's the 

saint; 
Wut 's good 's all English, all thet is n't 

ain't; J2 o 

Wut profits her is oilers right an' just, 
An' ef you don't read Scriptur so, you 

must; 
She 's praised herself ontil she fairly thinks 
There ain't no light in Natur when she 

winks; 
Hain't she the Ten Comman'ments in her 

pus ? 
Could the world stir 'thout she went, tu, 

ez nus ? 
She ain't like other mortals, thet 's a fact: 
She never stopped the habus-corpus act, 
Nor specie payments, nor she never yet 
Cut down the int'rest on her public debt; 130 
She don't put down rebellions, lets 'em 

breed, 
An' 's oilers willin' Ireland should secede ; 
She 's all thet 's honest, honnable, an' fair, 
An' when the vartoos died they made her 

heir. 

THE MONIMENT 

Wal, wal, two wrongs don't never make a 

right; 
Ef we 're mistaken, own up, an' don't 

fight: 
For gracious' sake, ha'n't we enough to du 
'thout gettin' up a fight with England, tu ? 
She thinks we 're rabble-rid — 

THE BRIDGE 

An' so we can't 
Distinguish 'twixt You oughtn 't an' You 

sha'n't ! i 4 o 

She jedges by herself; she 's no idear 
How 't stiddies folks to give 'em their fair 

sheer: 
The odds 'twixt her an' us is plain 's a 

steeple, — 
Her People 's turned to Mob, our Mob 's 

turned People. 

THE MONIMENT 

She 's riled jes' now — 

THE BRIDGE 

Plain proof her cause ain't strong, — 
The one thet fust gits mad 's 'most oilers 

wrong. 
Why, sence she helped in lickin' Nap the 

Fust 
An' pricked a bubble jest agoin' to bust, 



476 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



With Rooshy, Prooshy, Austry, all assistin', 

Th' ain't nut a face but wut she 's shook 

her fist in, 150 

Ez though she done it all, an' ten times 

more, 
An' nothin' never hed gut done afore, 
Nor never could agin, 'thout she wuz spliced 
On to one eend an' gin th' old airth a hoist. 
She is some punkins, thet I wun't deny 
(For ain't she some related to you V I ?), 
But there 's a few small intrists here be- 
low 
Outside the counter o' John Bull an' Co, 
An' though they can't conceit how 't 

should be so, 

I guess the Lord druv down Creation's 

spiles 160 

'thout no gret helpin' from the British Isles, 

An' could contrive to keep things pooty 

stiff 
Ef they withdrawed from business in a 

miff; 
I ha'n't no patience with sech swellin' fel- 
lers ez 
Think God can't forge 'thout them to blow 
the bellerses. 

THE MON1MENT 

You 're oilers quick to set your back aridge, 

Though 't suits a tom-cat more 'n a sober 
bridge : 

Don't you git het: they thought the thing 
was planned; 

They '11 cool off when they come to under- 
stand. 

THE BRIDGE 

Ef thet 's wut you expect, you '11 hev to 

wait; 170 

Folks never understand the folks they hate : 
She '11 fin' some other grievance jest ez 

good, 
'fore the month 's out, to git misunderstood. 
England cool off ! She '11 do it, ef she sees 
She 's run her head into a swarm o' bees. 
I ain't so prejudiced ez wut you spose: 
I hev thought England was the best thet 

goes; 
Remember (no, you can't), when / was 

reared, 
God save the King was all the tune you 

heerd: 
But it 's enough to turn Wachuset roun' 1S0 
This stumpin' fellers when you think 

they 're down. 



THE MONUMENT 

But, neighbor, ef they prove their claim at 

law, 
The best way is to settle, an' not jaw. 
An' don't le' 's mutter 'bout the awfle bricks 
We '11 give 'em, ef we ketch 'em in a 

fix: 
That 'ere 's most frequently the kin' o' talk 
Of critters can't be kicked to toe the chalk ; 
Your ' You '11 see nex' time ! ' an' ' Look 

out bumby ! ' 
'Most oilers ends in eatin' umble-pie. 
'T wun't pay to scringe to England : will 

it pay i 9 o 

To fear thet meaner bully, old ' They '11 

say'? 
Suppose they du say: words are dreffle 

bores, 
But they ain't quite so bad ez seventy-fours. 
Wut England wants is jest a wedge to fit 
Where it '11 help to widen out our split: 
She 's found her wedge, an' 't ain't for us 

to come 
An' lend the beetle thet 's to drive it home. 
For growed-up folks like us 't would be a 

scandle, 
When we git sarsed, to fly right off the 

handle. 
England ain't all bad, coz she thinks us 

blind: 200 

Ef she can't change her skin, she can her 

mind; 
An' we shall see her change it double-quick, 
Soon ez we 've proved thet we 're a-goin' 

to lick. 
She an' Columby 's gut to be fas' friends : 
For the world prospers by their privit 

ends: 
'T would put the clock back all o' fifty 

years 
Ef they should fall together by the ears. 

THE BRIDGE 

I 'gree to thet; she 's nigh us to wut France 
is; 

But then she '11 hev to make the fust ad- 
vances ; 

We 've gut pride, tu, an' gut it by good 
rights, 210 

An' ketch me stoopin' to pick up the mites 

O' condescension she '11 be lettin' fall 

When she finds out we ain't dead arter all ! 

I tell ye wut, it takes more 'n one good 
week 

Afore my nose forgits it 's hed a tweak. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



477 



THE MONIMENT 

She '11 come out right bumby, thet I '11 

engage, 
Soon ez she gits to seein' we 're of age ; 
This talkin' down o' hers ain't wuth a fuss ; 
It 's nat'ral ez nut likin' 't is to us ; 2 19 

Ef we 're agoin' to prove we be growed-up, 
'T wun't be by barkin' like a tarrier pup, 
But turnin' to an' makin' things ez good 
Ez wut we 're oilers braggin' that we could; 
We 're boun' to be good friends, an' so 

we 'd oughto, 
In spite of all the fools both sides the water. 

THE BRIDGE 

I b'lieve thet 's so ; but harken in your 

ear, — 
I 'm older 'n you, — Peace wun't keep house 

with Fear: 
Ef you want peace, the thing you 've gut tu 

du 
Is jes' to show you 're up to fightin', tu. 
/ recollect how sailors' rights was won, 230 
Yard locked in yard, hot gun-lip kissin' 

gun: 
Why, afore thet, John Bull sot up thet he 
Hed gut a kind o' mortgage on the sea; 
You'd thought he held by Gran'ther 

Adam's will, 
An' ef you knuckle down, he '11 think so 

still. 
Better thet all our ships an' all their crews 
Should sink to rot in ocean's dreamless 

ooze, 
Each torn flag wavin' chellenge ez it went, 
An' each dumb gun a brave man's moni- 

ment, 
Than seek sech peace ez only cowards 

crave : 240 

Give me the peace of dead men or of brave! 

THE MONIMENT 

I say, ole boy, it ain't the Glorious Fourth: 
You 'd oughto larned 'fore this wut talk 

wuz worth. 
It ain't our nose thet gits put out o' jint; 
It 's England thet gives up her dearest pint. 
We 've gut, I tell ye now, enough to du 
In our own fem'ly fight, afore we 're thru. 
I hoped, las' spring, jest arter Sumter's 

shame, 
When every flag-staff flapped its tethered 

flame, 
An' all the people, startled from their 

doubt, 250 



Come must'rin' to the flag with sech a 

shout, — 
I hoped to see things settled 'fore this fall, 
The Bebbles licked, Jeff Davis hanged, an' 

all; 
Then come Bull Run, an' sence then I 've 

ben waitin' 
Like boys in Jennooary thaw for skatin', 
Nothin' to du but watch my shadder's trace 
Swing, like a ship at anchor, roun' my base, 
With daylight's flood an' ebb : it 's gittin' 

slow, 
An' I 'most think we 'd better let 'em go. 
I tell ye wut, this war 's a-goin' to cost — 

THE BRIDGE 

An' I tell you it wun't be money lost; 261 
Taxes milks dry, but, neighbor, you '11 allow 
Thet havin' things onsettled kills the cow: 
We 've gut to fix this thing for good an' all ; 
It 's no use buildin' wut 's a-goin' to fall. 
I 'm older 'n you, an' I 've seen things an' 

men, 
An' my experunce, — tell ye wut it 's ben: 
Folks thet worked thorough was the ones 

thet thriv, 
But bad work f oilers ye ez long 's ye live ; 
You can't git red on 't; jest ez sure ez sin, 
It 's oilers askin' to be done agin: 271 

Ef we should part, it would n't be a week 
'Fore your sof t-soddered peace would spring 

aleak. 
We 've turned our cuffs up, but, to put her 

thru, 
We must git mad an' off with jackets, tu; 
'T wun't du to think thet killin' ain't per- 

lite, — 
You 've gut to be in airnest, ef you fight ; 
Why, two thirds o' the Rebbles 'ould cut 

dirt, 
Ef they once thought thet Guv'ment meant 

to hurt; 
An' I du wish our Gin'rals hed in mind 280 
The folks in front more than the folks be- 
hind ; 
You wun't do much ontil you think it 's God, 
An' not constitoounts, thet holds the rod; 
We want some more o' Gideon's sword, I 

jedge, 
For proclamations ha'n't no gret of edge; 
There 's nothin' for a cancer but the knife, 
Onless you set by 't more than by your life. 
I've seen hard times; I see a war begun 
Thet folks thet love their bellies never 'd 

won; 



478 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Pharo's lean kine hung on for seven long 

year ; 290 

But when 't was done, we did n't count it 

dear; 
Why, law an' order, honor, civil right, 
Ef they ain't wuth it, wut is wuth a fight ? 
I 'm older 'n you: the plough, the axe, the 

mill, 
All kin's o' labor an' all kin's o' skill, 
Would be a rabbit in a wile-cat's claw, 
Ef 't warn't for thet slow critter, 'stablished 

law; 
Onsettle thet, an' all the world goes whiz, 
A screw's gut loose in everythin' there is: 
Good buttresses once settled, don't you fret 
An' stir 'em; take a bridge's word for thet! 
Young folks are smart, but all ain't good 

thet 's new ; ■ 302 

I guess the gran'thers they knowed sunthin', 

tu. 

THE MONIMENT 

Amen to thet ! build sure in the beginnin' : 
An' then don't never tech the underpimnn': 
Th' older a guv'ment is, the better 't suits ; 
New ones hunt folks's. corns out like new 

boots: 
Change jes' for change, is like them big 

hotels 
Where they shift plates, an' let ye live on 

smells. 

THE BRIDGE 

Wal, don't give up afore the ship goes 
down: 310 

It 's a stiff gale, but Providence wun't 
drown ; 

An' God wun't leave us yit to sink or swim, 

Ef we don't fail to du wut 's right by Him. 

This land o' ourn, I tell ye, 's gut to be 

A better country than man ever see. 

I feel my sperit swellin' with a cry 

Thet seems to say, ' Break forth an' pro- 
phesy ! ' 

O strange New World, thet yit wast never 
young, 

Whose youth from thee by gripin' need 
was wrung, 

Brown foundlin' o' the woods, whose baby- 
bed 320 

Was prowled roun' by the Injun's cracklin' 
tread, f 

An' who grew'st strong thru shifts an' wants 
an' pains, 

Nussed by stern men with empires in their 
brains, 



Who saw in vision their young Ishmel 

strain 
With each hard hand a vassal ocean's mane, 
Thou, skilled by Freedom an' by gret events 
To pitch new States ez Old- World men 

pitch tents, 
Thou, taught by Fate to know Jehovah's 

plan 
Thet man's devices can't unmake a man, 
An' whose free latch-string never was 

drawed in 330 

Against the poorest child of Adam's kin, — 
The grave 's not dug where traitor hands 

shall lay 
In fearful haste thy murdered corse away ! 
I see — 

Jest here some dogs begun to bark, 
So thet I lost old Concord's last remark: 
I listened long, but all I seemed to hear 
Was dead leaves gossipin' on some birch- 
trees near; 
But ez they hed n't no gret things to say, 
An' sed 'em often, I come right away, 
An', walkin' home'ards, jest to pass the 
time, 340 

I put some thoughts thet bothered me in 

rbyme ; 
I hain't hed time to fairly try 'em on, 
But here they be — it 's 

JONATHAN TO JOHN 

It don't seem hardly right, John, 
When both my hands was full, 
To stump me to a fight, John, — 
Your cousin, tu, John Bull ! 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess 
We know it now,' sez he, 
' The lion's paw is all the law, 350 

Accordin' to J. B., 
Thet 's fit for you an' me ! ' 

You wonder why we 're hot, John ? 

Your mark wuz on the guns, 
The neutral guns, thet shot, John, 
Our brothers an' our sons: 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess 
There 's human blood,' sez he, 
1 By fits an' starts, in Yankee hearts, 

Though 't may surprise J. B. 360 
More 'n it would you an' me.' 

Ef / turned mad dogs loose, John, 
On your front-parlor stairs, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



479 



Would it jest meet your views, John, 
To wait an' sue their heirs ? 

Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess, 

I on'y guess,' sez he, 
' Thet ef Vattel on his toes fell, 

'T would kind o' rile J. B., 

Ez wal ez you an' nie ! ' 370 

Who made the law thet hurts, John, 

Heads I win, — ditto tails f 

( J. B.' was on his shirts, John, 

Onless my memory fails. 

Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess 
(I'm good at thet),' sez he, 
' Thet sauce for goose ain't jest the juice 
For ganders with J. B., 
No more 'n with you or me ! ' 

When your rights was our wrongs, John, 

You did n't stop for fuss, — 38 1 

Britanny's trident prongs, John, 
Was good 'nough law for us. 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess, 
Though physic 's good,' sez he, 
' It does n't f oiler thet he can swaller 
Prescriptions signed " J. B.," 
Put up by you an' me ! ' 

We own the ocean, tu, John: 

You mus' n' take it hard, 390 

Ef we can't think with you, John, 
It 's jest your own back-yard. 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess, 
Ef thet 's Ins claim,' sez he, 
' The fencin'-stuff '11 cost enough 
To bust up friend J. B., 
Ez wal ez you an' me ! ' 

Why talk so dreffle big, John, 

Of honor when it meant 
You did n't care a fig, John, 400 

But jest for ten per cent f 

Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess 
He 'slike the rest,' sez he: 
' When all is done, it 's number one 
Thet 's nearest to J. B., 
Ez wal ez t' you an' me ! ' 

We give the critters back, John, 

Cos Abram thought 't was right; # 
It warn't your bullyin' clack, John, 

Provokin' us to fight. 4 io 

Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess 
We 've a hard row,' sez he, 
' To hoe jest now; but thet, somehow, 



May happen to J. B., 
Ez wal ez you an' me ! ' 

We ain't so weak an' poor, John, 

With twenty million people, 
An' close to every door, John, 
A school-house an' a steeple. 

Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess, 420 

It is a fact,' sez he, 
' The surest plan to make a Man 
Is, think him so, J. B., 
Ez much ez you or me ! ' 

Our folks believe in Law, John; 

An' it 's for her sake, now, 
They 've left the axe an' saw, John, 
The anvil an' the plough. 

Ole Uncle S. sez he, 'I guess, 
Ef 't warn't for law,' sez he, 430 

' There 'd be one shindy from here to Indy ; 
An' thet don't suit J. B. 
(When 't ain't 'twixt you an' me ! ) ' 

We know we 've got a cause, John, 

Thet 's honest, just, an' true; 
We thought 't would win applause, John, 
Ef nowheres else, from you. 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess 
His love of right,' sez he, 
' Hangs by a rotten fibre o' cotton: 440 

There 's natur' in J. B., 
Ez wal 'z in you an' me ! ' 

The South says, ' Poor folks down ! ' John, 

An' ' A II men up ! ' say we, — 
White, yaller, black, an' brown, John: 
Now which is your idee ? 

Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess, 
John preaches wal,' sez he; 
' But, sermon thru, an' come to du, 

Why, there 's the old J. B. 450 

A-crowdin' you an' me ! ' 

Shall it be love, or hate, John ? 

It 's you thet 's to decide; 
Ain't your bonds held by Fate, John 
Like all the world's beside ? 
Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess 
Wise men forgive,' sez he, 
' But not forgit; an' some time yit 
Thet truth may strike J. B., 
Ez wal ez you an' me ! ' 460 

God means to make this land, John, 
Clear thru, from sea to sea, 



480 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Believe an' understand, John, 
The wuth o' bein' free. 

Ole Uncle S. sez he, * I guess, 
God's price is high,' sez he; 
' But no-thin' else than wut He sells 
Wears long, an' thet J. B. 
May lam, like you an' me ! ' 
December, 1861. February, 1862. 

No. VI 

SUNTHIN' IN THE PASTORAL 
LINE » 

Once git a smell o' musk into a draw, 
An' it clings hold like precerdents in law: 
Your gra 'ma'am put it there, — when, good- 
ness knows, — 
To jes' this-worldify her Sunday-clo'es ; 
But the old chist wun't sarve her gran'son's 

wife 
(For, 'thout new funnitoor, wut good in 

life?), 
An' so ole clawfoot, from the preeinks 

dread 
O' the spare chamber, slinks into the shed, 
Where, dim with dust, it fust or last sub- 
sides 
To holdin' seeds an' fifty things besides; 10 
But better days stick fast in heart an' husk, 
An' all you keep in 't gits a scent o' musk. 

Jes' so with poets: wut they 've airly read 
Gits kind o worked into their heart an' 

head, 
So 's 't they can't seem to write but jest on 

sheers 
With f urrin countries or played-out idecrs, 
Nor hev a feclin', ef it doos n't smack 
O' wut some critter chose 'to feel 'way 

back : 
This makes 'em talk o' daisies, larks, an' 

things, 
Ez though we 'd nothin' here that blows an' 

sings 20 

1 He [Arthur Hugh dough] often suggested that I 
should try my hand at some Yankee Pastorals, which 
would admit of more sentimont and a higher tono with- 
out foregoing the advantage offered by the dialect. I 
have never completed anything of the kind, but, in this 
Second Series, both my remembrance of his counsel 
and the deeper feeling called up by the great interests 
at stake, led mo to venture some passages nearer to 
what is called poetical than could have been admitted 
without incongruity into the former series. (Lowell, in 
the 'Introduction' to the Biglow Papers, 1SO0.) 



( Why, I 'd give more for one live bobolink 
Than a square mile o' larks in printer's 

ink),— ■ 
This makes 'em think our fust o' May is 

May, 
Which 't ain't, for all the alinanicks can 

say. 

little city-gals, don't never go it 
Blind on the word o' noospaper or poet ! 
They 're apt to puff, an' May-day seldom 

looks 
Up in the country ez 't doos hi books ; 
They 're no more like than hornets'-nests 

an' hives, 
Or printed sarmons be to holy lives. 30 

I, with my trouses perched on cowhide 

boots, 
Tuggin' my foundered feet out by the roots, 
Hev seen ye come to fling on April's hearse 
Yoiu' muslin nosegays from the milliner's, 
Puzzlin' to find dry ground your queen to 

choose, 
An' dance your throats sore in morocker 

shoes : 

1 've seen y'e an' felt proud, thet, come wut 

would, 
Our Pilgrim stock wuz pethed with hardi- 
hood. 
Pleasure doos make us Yankees kind o' 

winch, 
Ez though 't wuz sunthin' paid for by the 
inch ; 40 

But yit we du contrive to worry thru, 
Ef Dooty tells us thet the thing 's to du, 
An' kerry a hollerday, ef we set out, 
Ez stiddily ez though 't wuz a redoubt. 

I, country-born an' bred, know where to find 
Some blooms thet make the season suit the 

mind, 
An' seem to metch the doubtin' bluebird's 

notes, — 
Half-vent'rin' liverworts in furry coats, 
Bloodroots, whose rolled-up leaves ef you 

oncurl, 
Each on 'em 's cradle to a baby-pearl, — 50 
But these are jes' Spring's pickets; sure ez 

sin, 
Th» rebble frosts '11 try to drive 'em in; 
For half our May 's so awfully like May n't, . 
't would rile a Shaker or an evrige saint; 
Though I own up I like our back'ard springs 
Thet kind o' haggle with their greens an' 

things, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



481 



An' when you 'most give up, 'uthout more 
words 

Toss the holds full o' blossoms, leaves, an' 
birds; 

Thet 's Northun natur', slow an' apt to 
doubt, 

But when it doos git stirred, ther' 's no gin- 
out ! 60 

Fust come the blackbirds clatt'rin' hi tall 

trees, 
An' settlin' things in windy Congresses, — 
Queer politicians, though, for I '11 be 

skinned 
Ef all on 'em don't head aginst the wind, 
'fore long the trees begin to show belief, — 
The maple crimsons to a coral-reef, 
Then saffern swarms swing off from all the 

willers 
So plump they look like yaller caterpillars, 
Then gray hossches'nuts leetle hands un- 
fold 
Softer 'n a baby's be at three days old : 70 
Thet 's robin- redbreast's almanick; he 

knows 
Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom-snows; 
So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse, 
He goes to plast'rin' his adobe house. 

Then seems to come a hitch, — things lag 

behind, 
Till some tine mornin' Spring makes up her 

mind, 
An' ez, when snow-swelled rivers cresh 

their dams 
Heaped-up with ice thet dovetails in an' 

jams, 
A leak comes spirtin' thru some phi-hole 

cleft, 
Grows stronger, fercer, tears out right an' 

left, 80 

Then all the waters bow themselves an' 

come, 
Suddin, in one gret slope o' shedderin' foam, 
Jes' so our Spring gits everythin' in tune 
An' gives one leap from Apcrl into June: 
Then all comes crowdin' in; afore you 

think, 
Young oak-leaves mist the side-hill woods 

with pink; 
The catbird in the laylock-bush is loud; 
The orchards turn to heaps o' rosy cloud; 
Red-cedars blossom tu, though few folks 

know it, 
An' look all dipt in sunshine like a poet; 90 



The lime-trees pile their solid stacks o' 

shade 
An' drows'ly simmer with the bees' sweet 

trade ; 
In ellum-shrouds the flashin' hangbird 

clings 
An' for the summer vy'ge his hammock 

slings; 
All down the loose-walled lanes in archin' 

bowers 
The barb'ry droops its strings o' golden 

Howers, 
Whose shrinkin' hearts the school-gals love 

to try 
With pins, — they '11 worry yourn so, boys, 

bimeby ! 
But 1 don't love your cat'logue style, — do 

you ? — 
Ez ef to sell off Natur' by vendoo; joo 

One word with blood in 't 's twice ez good 

ez two: 
'nuff sed, June's bridesman, poet o' the year, 
Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here; 
Half-hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, 
Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' 

wings, 
Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair, 
Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the 

air. 

I ollus feel the sap start in my veins 

In Spring, with curus heats an' prickly 

pains, 
Thet drive me, when I git a chance, to 

walk , IO 

Off by myself to hev a privit talk 
With a queer critter thet can't seem to 

'gree 
Along o' me like most folks, — Mister Me. 
Ther' 's times when I 'm unsoshle ez a stone, 
An' sort o' suffercate to be alone, — 
I 'm crowded jes' to think thet folks are 

nigh, 
An' can't bear nothin' closer than the sky; 
Now the wind 's full ez shifty in the mind 
Ez wut it is ou'-doors, ef I ain't blind, 
An' sometimes, in the fairest sou'west 

weather, 120 

My innard vane pints east for weeks to- 
gether, 
My natur' gits all goose-flesh, an' my sins 
Come drizzlin' on my conscience sharp ez 

pins: 
Wal, et sech times I jes' slip out o' sight 
An' take it out in a fair stan'-up fight 



482 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



With the one cuss I can't lay on the shelf, 
The crook'dest stick in all the heap, — My- 
self. 

'T wuz so las' Sabbath arter meetin'-time : 
Findin' my f eelin's would n't noways rhyme 
With nobody's, but off the hendle flew 130 
An' took things froni an east-wind pint o' 

view, 
I started off to lose me in the hills 
Where the pines be, up back o' 'Siah's 

Mills: 
Pines, ef you 're blue, are the best friends 

I know, 
They mope an' sigh an' sheer your feelin's 

so, — 
They hesh the ground beneath so, tu, I 

swan, 
You half-forgit you 've gut a body on. 
Ther' 's a small school'us' there where four 

roads meet, 
The door-steps hollered out by little feet, 
An' side-posts carved with names whose 

owners grew 140 

To gret men, some on 'em, an' deacons, tu; 
't ain't used no longer, coz the town hez gut 
A high-school, where they teach the Lord 

knows wut: 
Three-story larnin' 's pop'lar now; I guess 
We thriv' ez wal on jes' two stories less, 
For it strikes me ther' 's sech a thing ez 

sinnin' 
By overloadin' children's underpinnin' : 
Wal, here it wuz I larned my ABC, 
An' it 's a kind o' favorite spot with me. 

We're curus critters: Now ain't jes' the 

minute 150 

Thet ever fits us easy while we 're in it ; 
Long ez 't wuz f utur', 't would be perfect 

bliss, — 
Soon ez it 's past, thet time 's wuth ten o' 

this; 
An' yit there ain't a man thet need be told 
Thet Now 's the only bird lays eggs o' gold. 
A knee-high lad, I used to plot an' plan 
An' think 'twuz life's cap-sheaf to be a 

man; 
Now, gittin' gray, there 's nothin' I enjoy 
Like dreamin' back along into a boy: 
So the ole school'us' is a place I choose 160 
Afore all others, ef I want to muse ; 
I set down where I used to set, an' git 
My boyhood back, an' better things with 

it,— 



Faith, Hope, an' sunthin', ef it is n't Cher- 
rity, 

It 's want o' guile, an' thet 's ez gret a rer- 
rity, — 

While Fancy's cushin', free to Prince and 
Clown, 

Makes the hard bench ez soft ez milk- 
weed-down. 

Now, 'fore I knowed, thet Sabbath arter- 

noon 
When I sot out to tramp myself in tune, 
I found me in the school'us' on my seat, 170 
Drummhi' the march to No-wheres with 

my feet. 
Thinkin' o' nothin', I 've heerd ole folks 

say 
Is a hard kind o' dooty in its way: 
It 's thinkin' everythin' you ever knew, 
Or ever hearn, to make your feelin's blue. 
I sot there tryin' thet on for a spell: 
I thought o' the Rebellion, then o' Hell, 
Which some folks tell ye now is jest a met- 

terfor 
(A the'ry, p'raps, it wun't feel none the bet- 
ter for) ; 
I thought o' Reconstruction, wut we 'd 

win 180 

Patchin' our patent self-blow-up agin: 
I thought ef this 'ere milkin' o' the wits, 
So much a month, warn't givin' Natur' 

fits, — 
Ef folks warn't druv, findin' their own milk 

fail, 
To work the cow thet hez an iron tail, 
An' ef idees 'thout ripenin' in the pan 
Would send up cream to humor ary man: 
From this to thet I let my worryin' creep, 
Till finally I must ha' fell asleep. 

Our lives in sleep are some like streams 
thet glide 190 

'twixt flesh an' sperrit boundin' on each 
side, 

Where both shores' shadders kind o' mix 
an' mingle 

In sunthin' thet ain't jes' like either single ; 

An' when you cast off moorin's from To- 
day, 

An' down towards To-morrer drift away, 

The imiges thet tengle on the stream 

Make a new upside-down'ard world o' 
dream: 

Sometimes they seem like sunrise-streaks 
an' warnin's 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



483 



O' wut ; 11 be in Heaven on Sabbath-morn- 

in's, 
An', mixed right in ez ef jest out o' 

. s P ite > 
Sunthin' tbet says your supper ain't gone 

right. 
I 'm gret on dreams, an' often when I wake, 
I 've lived so much it makes my mem'ry 

ache, 
An' can't skurce take a cat-nap in my 

cheer 
'thout hevin' 'em, some good, some bad, all 

queer. 

Now I wuz settin' where I 'd ben, it 

seemed, 
An' ain't sure yit whether I r'ally dreamed, 
Nor, ef I did, how long I might ha' slep', 
When I hearn some un stompin' up the 

step, 
An' lookin' round, ef two an' two make 

four, 
1 see a Pilgrim Father in the door. 
He wore a steeple-hat, tall boots, an' spurs 
With rowels to 'em big ez ches'imt-burrs, 
An' his gret sword behind him sloped away 
Long 'z a man's speech thet dunno wut to 

say. — 
I £f your name 's Biglow, an' your given- 
name 
Hosee,' sez he, ' it 's arter you I came; 
I 'm your gret-gran'ther " multiplied by 

three.' — 
'•My wut f ' sez I. — « Your gret-gret-gret,' 

sez he: 
' You would n't ha' never ben here but for 

me. 22o 

Two hundred an' three year ago this May 
The ship I come in sailed up Boston Bay; 

I 'd been a cunnle in our Civil War, 

But wut on airth hev you gut up one for ? 
Coz we du things in England, 't ain't for 

you 
To git a notion you can du 'em tu: 
II 'm told you write in public prints: ef 

true, 
It's nateral you should know a thing or 

two.' — 
'Thet air 's an argymunt I can't en- 
dorse, — 
't would prove, coz you wear spurs, you kep' 

ahorse: 23<J 

For brains,' sez I, < wutever you may think, 
Ain't boun' to cash the drafs o' pen-an'- 

ink, — 



Though mos' folks write ez ef they hoped 

jes' quickenin' 
The churn would argoo skim-milk into 

thickenin' ; 
But skim-milk ain't a thing to change its 

view 
O' wut it 's meant for more 'n a smoky 

flue. 
But du pray tell me, 'fore we furder go, 
How in all Natur' did you come to know 
'bout our affairs,' sez I, 'in Kinedom- 

Come ? ' — 6 

' Wal, I worked round at sperrit-rappin' 
some, 240 

An danced the tables till their legs wuz 

gone, 
In hopes o' larnin' wut wuz goin' on,' 
Sez he, ' but me j urns lie so like all-split 
Thet I concluded it wuz best to quit. 
But, come now, ef you wun't confess to 

knowin', 
You 've some conjectures how the thing 's 

a-goin'.' — 
'Gran'ther,' sez I, < a vane warn't never 

known 
Nor asked to hev a jedgment of its own; 
An' yit, ef 't ain't gut rusty in the jints, 
It 's safe to trust its say on certin pints: 250 
It knows the wind's opinions to a T, 
An' the wind settles wut the weather '11 be.' 
' I never thought a scion of our stock 
Could grow the wood to make a weather- 
cock; 
When I wuz younger 'n you, skurce more 'n 

a shaver, 
No airthly wind,' sez he, ' could make me 

waver ! ' 
(Ez he said this, he clinched his jaw an' 

forehead, 
Hitchin' his belt to bring his sword-hilt 

forrard.) — 
' Jes so it wuz with me,' sez I, ' I swow, 
When / wuz younger 'n wut you see me 
now, — 26o 

Nothin' from Adam's fall to Huldy's bon- 
net, 
Thet I warn't full-cocked with my jedg- 
ment on it; 
But now I 'm gittin' on in life, I find 

It 's a sight harder to make up my mind, 

Nor I don't often try tu, when events 
Will du it for me free of all expense. 
The moral question 's ollus plain enough, — 
It 's jes' the human-natur' side thet 's 
tough ; 



484 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Wut 's best to think may n't puzzle nie nor 

you,— 
The pinch conies in decidin' wut to du; 270 
Ef you read History, all runs smooth ez 

grease, 
Coz there the men ain't nothin' more 'n 

idees, — 
But come to make it, ez we must to-day, 
Th' idees hev arms an' legs an' stop the way : 
It 's easy fixin' things in facts an' figgers, — 
They can't resist, nor warn't brought up 

with niggers; 
But come to try your the'ry on, — why, then 
Your facts an' figgers change to ign'ant 

men 
Actin' ez ugly — ' — * Smite 'em hip an' 

thigh ! ' 
Sez gran'ther, 'and let every man-child 

die ! 280 

Oh for three weeks o' Crommle an' the 

Lord ! 
Up, Isr'el, to your tents an' grind the 

sword ! ' — 
'Thet kind o' thing worked wal in ole 

Judee, 
But you forgit how long it 's ben A. D. ; 
You think thet 's ellerkence, — I call it 

shoddy, 
A thing,' sez I, ' wun't cover soul nor body ; 
I like the plain all-wool o' common-sense, 
Thet warms ye now, an' will a twelve- 
month hence. 
You took to follerin' where the Prophets 

beckoned, 
An', fust you knowed on, back come Charles 

the Second; 290 

Now wut I want 's to hev all tve gain stick, 
An' not to start Millennium too quick; 
We hain't to punish only, but to keep, 
An' the cure 's gut to go a cent'ry deep.' 
' Wall, milk-an'-water ain't the best o' glue,' 
Sez he, ' an' so you '11 find afore you 're 

thru; 
Ef reshness venters sunthin', shilly-shally 
Loses ez often wut 's ten times the vally. 
Thet exe of ourn, when Charles's neck gut 

split, 
Opened a gap thet ain't bridged over yit: 300 
Slav'ry 's your Charles, the Lord hez gin 

the exe ' — 
' Our Charles,' sez I, ' hez gut eight mil- 
lion necks. 
The hardest question ain't the black man's 

right, 
The trouble is to 'mancipate the white; 



One 's chained in body an' can be sot free, 
But t' other 's chained in soul to an idee : 
It 's a long job, but we shall worry thru it; 
Ef bagnets fail, the spellin'-book must du 

it.' 
' Hosee,' sez he, ' I think you 're goin to fail: 
The rettlesnake ain't dangerous in the 

tail; 310 

This 'ere rebellion 's nothing but the ret- 

tle, — 
You '11 stomp on thet an' think you 've won 

the bettle; 
It 's Slavery thet 's the fangs an' thinkin' 

head, 
An' ef you want selvation, cresh it dead, — 
An' cresh it suddin, or you '11 larn by 

waitin' 
Thet Chance wun't stop to listen to de- 

batin' ! ' — 
' God's truth ! ' sez I,— * an' ef / held the 

club, 
An' knowed jes' where to strike, — but 

there 's the rub ! ' — 
' Strike soon,' sez he, ' or you '11 be deadly 

ailin', — 
Folks thet 's afeared to fail are sure o' 

failin'; 320 

God hates your sneakin' creturs thet be- 

heve 
He '11 settle things they rim away an' 

leave ! ' 
He brought his foot down fercely, ez he 

spoke, 
An' give me sech a startle thet I woke. 
1862. June, 1862. 

No. VII 

LATEST VIEWS OF MR. BIGLOW 

Ef I a song or two could make 

Like rockets druv by their own burnin', 
All leap an' light, to leave a wake 

Men's hearts an' faces skyward turn- 
in' ! — 
But, it strikes me, 't ain't jest the time 

Fer stringin' words with settisf action: 
Wut 's wanted now 's the silent rhyme 

'Twixt upright Will an' downright Ac- 
tion. 

Words, ef you keep 'em, pay their keep, 
But gabble 's the short cut to ruin; 10 

It 's gratis (gals half-price), but cheap 
At no rate, ef it benders doin'; 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



485 



Ther' 's nothin' wuss, 'less 't is to set 
A martyr-prem'um upon jawrin': 

Teapots git dangerous, ef you shet 

Their lids down on 'em with Fort War- 
ren. 

'Bout long enough it 's ben discussed 

Who sot the magazine afire, 
An' whether, ef Bob Wickliffe bust, 

'T would scare us more or blow us 
higher. zo 

D' ye s'pose the Gret Foreseer's plan 

Wuz settled fer him in town-meetin' ? 
Or thet ther' 'd ben no Fall o' Man, 

Ef Adam 'd on'y bit a sweetin' ? 

Oh, Jon'than, ef you want to be 

A rugged chap agin an' hearty, 
Go fer wutever '11 hurt Jeff D., 

Nut wut '11 boost up ary party. 
Here 's hell broke loose, an' we lay flat 

With half the univarse a-singein', 30 

Till Sen'tor This an' Gov'nor Thet 

Stop squabblin' fer the garding-ingin. 

It 's war we 're in, not politics; 

It 's systems wrastlin' now, not parties; 
An' victory in the eend '11 fix 

Where longest will an' truest heart is. 
An' wut 's the Guv'ment folks about ? 

Tryin' to hope ther' 's nothin' doin', 
An' look ez though they did n't doubt 

Sunthin' pertickler wuz a-brewin'. 40 

Ther' 's critters yit thet talk an' act 

Fer wut they call Conciliation; 
They 'd hand a buff'lo-drove a tract 

When they wuz madder than all Ba- 
shan. 
Conciliate ? it jest means be kicked, 

No metter how they phrase an' tone it; 
It means thet we 're to set down licked, 

Thet we 're poor shotes an' glad to own 
it! 

A war on tick 's ez dear 'z the deuce, 

But it wun't leave no lastin' traces, 50 
Ez 't would to make a sneakin' truce 

Without no moral specie-basis: 
Ef greenbacks ain't nut jest the cheese, 

I guess ther' 's evils thet 's extremer, — 
Fer instance, — shinplaster idees 

Like them put out by Gov'nor Seymour. 1 

1 Horatio Seymour (1810-1886), of Utica, New York, 
was one of the most prominent and respected men in 



Last year, the Nation, at a word, 

When tremblin' Freedom cried to shield 
her, 
Flamed weldin' into one keen sword 

Waitin' an' longin' fer a wielder: 60 

A splendid flash ! — but how 'd the grasp 

With sech a chance ez thet wuz tally ? 
Ther' warn't no meanin' in our clasp, — 

Half this, half thet, all shilly-shally. 

More men ? More Man ! It 's there we fail; 

Weak plans grow weaker yit by length- 
enin': 
Wut use in addin' to the tail, 

When it 's the head 's in need o' strength- 
enin' ? 
We wanted one thet felt all Chief 

From roots o' hair to sole o' stockin', 70 
Square-sot with thousan'-ton belief 

In him an' us, ef earth went rockin' ! 

Ole Hick'ry would n't ha' stood see-saw 

'Bout doin' things till they wuz done 
with, — 
He 'd smashed the tables o' the Law 

In time o' need to load his gun with; 
He could n't see but jest one side, — 

Ef his, 't wuz God's, an' thet wuz plenty; 
An' so his ' Forrards ! ' multiplied 

An army's fightin' weight by twenty. 80 

But this 'ere histin', creak, creak, creak, 

Your cappen's heart up with a derrick, 
This tryin' to coax a lightnin'-streak 

Out of a half-discouraged hay-rick, 
This hangin' on mont' arter mont' 

Fer one sharp purpose 'mongst the 
twitter, — 
I tell ye, it doos kind o' stunt 

The peth and sperit of a critter. 



90 



In six months where '11 the People be, 

Ef leaders look on revolution 
Ez though it wuz a cup o' tea, — 

Jest social el'ments in solution ? 
This weighin' things doos wal enough 

When war cools down, an' comes to 
writin' ; 

the Democratic party, and a bitter opponent of Lincoln. 
He had at this time been recently elected governor of 
New York on a platform that denounced almost every 
measure the government had found it necessary to 
adopt for the suppression of the Rebellion. His influ- 
ence contributed not a little to the encouragement of 
that spirit which inspired the Draft Riot in the city of 
New York in July, 18G3. (F. B. Williams, in Riverside 
and Cambridge Editions.) 



4 86 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



But while it 's makin', the true stuff 
Is pison-mad, pig-headed fightin'. 

Democ'acy gives every man 

The right to be his own oppressor ; 
But a loose Gov'nient ain't the plan, 

Helpless ez spilled beans on a dresser: ioo 
I tell ye one thing we might larn 

From them smart critters, the Seced- 
ers, — 
Ef bein' right 's the fust consarn, 

The 'fore-the-fust 's cast-iron leaders. 

But 'pears to me I see some signs 

Thet we 're a-goin' to use our senses: 
Jeff druv us into these hard lines, 

An' ough' to bear his half th' expenses; 
Slavery 's Secession's heart an' will, 

South, North, East, West, where'er you 
find it, no 

An' ef it drors into War's mill, 

D' ye say them thunder-stones sha'n't 
grind it ? 

D' ye s'pose, ef Jeff giv him a lick, 

Ole Hick'ry 'd tried his head to sof 'n 
So 's 't would n't hurt thet ebony stick 

Thet 's made our side see stars so 
of'n? 
• No ! ' he 'd ha' thundered, ' on your knees, 

An' own one flag, one road to glory ! 
Soft-heartedness, in times like these, 

Shows sof 'ness in the upper story ! ' 120 

An' why should we kick up a muss 

About the Pres'dunt's proclamation ? l 
It ain't a-goin' to lib'rate us, 

Ef we don't like emancipation: 
The right to be a cussed fool 

Is safe from all devices human, 
It 's common (ez a gin'l rule) 

To every critter born o' woman. 

So we 're all right, an' I, fer one, 

Don't think our cause '11 lose in vally 130 
By rammin' Scriptur in our gun, 

An' gittin' Natur' fer an ally: 
Thank God, say I, fer even a plan 

To lift one human bein's level, 
Give one more chance to make a man, 

Or, anyhow, to spile a devil ! 

Not thet I 'm one thet much expec' 
Millennium by express to-morrer; 
1 The Emancipation Proclamation. 



They will miscarry, — I rec'lec' 

Tu many on 'em, to my sorrer: 140 

Men ain't made angels in a day, 

No matter how you mould an' labor 
'em, 
Nor 'riginal ones, I guess, don't stay 

With Abe so of'n ez with Abraham. 

The'ry thinks Fact a pooty thing, 

An' wants the banns read right ensuin'; 
But fact wun't noways wear the ring, 

'Thout years o' settin' up an' wooin': 
Though, arter all, Time's dial-plate 

Marks cent'ries with the minute-finger, 
An' Good can't never come tu late, 151 

Though it doos seem to try an' linger. 

An' come wut will, I think it 's grand 

Abe 's gut his will et last bloom-fur- 
naced 
In trial-flames till it 'II stand 

The strain o' bein' in deadly earnest: 
Thet 's wut we want, — we want to know 

The folks on our side hez the bravery 
To b'lieve ez hard, come weal, come woe, 

In Freedom ez Jeff doos in Slavery. 160 

Set the two forces foot to foot, 

An' every man knows who '11 be winner, 
Whose faith in God hez ary root 

Thet goes down deeper than his dinner: 
Then 't will be felt from pole to pole, 

Without no need o' proclamation, 
Earth's biggest Country 's gut her soul 

An' risen up Earth's Greatest Nation! 

February, 1863. 

NO. X 

MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE 
EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC 
MONTHLY 

Dear Sir, — Your letter come to han' 

Requestin' me to please be funny; 
But I ain't made upon a plan 

Thet knows wut 's comin', gall or honey : 
Ther' 's times the world doos look so queer, 

Odd fancies come afore 1 call 'em; 
An' then agin, for half a year, 

No preacher 'thout a call 's more solemn. 

You 're 'n want o' sunthin' light an' cute, 
Rattlin' an' shrewd an' kin' o' jingle- 
ish, 10 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



487 



An' wish, pervidin' it 'ould suit, 
I 'd take an' citify my English. 

I ken write long-tailed, ef I please, — 
But when I 'm jokin', no, 1 thankee; 

Then, 'fore I know it, my idees 
Run helter-skelter into Yankee. 

Sence I begun to scribble rhyme, 

I tell ye wut, I hain't ben foolin'; 
The parson's books, life, death, an' time 

Hev took some trouble with ray school- 
in'; 20 
Nor th' airth don't git put out with me, 

Thet love her 'z though she wuz a 
woman; 
Why, th' ain't a bird upon the tree 

But half forgives my bein' human. 

An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way 

01' farmers bed when I wuz younger; 
Their talk wuz meatier, an' 'ould stay, 

While book-froth seems to whet your 
hunger; 
For puttin' in a downright lick 

'twixt Humbug's eyes, ther' 's few can 
, metch it, 30 

An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick 

Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hetchet. 

But when I can't, I can't, thet 's all, 

For Natur' won't put up with gullin'; 
Idees you hev to shove an' haul 

Like a druv pig ain't wuth a mullein: 
Live thoughts ain't sent for; thru all 
rifts 

O' sense they pour an' resh ye onwards, 
Like rivers when south-lyin' drifts 

Feel thet th' old airth 's a-wheelin' sun- 
wards. 40 

Time wuz, the rhymes come crowdin' thick 

Ez office-seekers arter 'lection, 
An' into ary place 'ould stick 

Without no bother nor objection; 
But sence the war my thoughts hang 
back 

Ez though I wanted to enlist 'em, 
An' subs'tutes, — they don't never lack, 

But then they '11 slope afore you 've 
mist 'em. 

Nothin' don't seem like wut it wuz ; 

I can't see wut there is to hender, 50 

An' yit my brains jes' go buzz, buzz, 

Like bumblebees agin a winder; 



'fore these times come, in all airth's row, 
Ther' wuz one quiet place, my head in, 

Where I could hide an' think, — but now 
It 's all one teeter, hopin', dreadin'. 

Where 's Peace ? I start, some clear-blown 
night, 
When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' 
number, 
An', creakin' 'cross the snow-erus' white, 

Walk the col' starlight into summer; 60 
Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell 
Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer 
Than the last smile thet strives to tell 
O' love gone heavenward in its shim- 
mer. 

I hev been gladder o' sech things 

Than cocks o' spring or bees o' clover, 
They filled my heart with livin' springs, 

But now they seem to freeze 'em over; 
Sights innercent ez babes on knee, 

Peaceful ez eyes o' pastur'd cattle, 70 
Jes' coz they be so, seem to me 

To rile me more with thoughts o' battle. 

Indoors an' out by spells I try; 

Ma'am Natur' keeps her spin-wheel 
goin', 
But leaves my natur' stiff and dry 

Ez fiel's o' clover arter mowin'; 
An' her jes' keepin' on the same, 

Calmer 'n a clock, an' never carin', 
An' findin' nary thing to blame, 

Is wus than ef she took to swearin'. 80 

Snow-flakes come whisperin' on the pane 

The charm makes blazin' logs so plea- 
sant, 
But I can't hark to wut they 're say'n', 

With Grant or Sherman oilers present; 
The chimbleys shudder in the gale, 

Thet lulls, then suddin takes to flappin' 
Like a shot hawk, but all 's ez stale 

To me ez so much sperit-rappin'. 

Under the yaller-pines I house, 

When sunshine makes 'em all sweet- 
scented, 90 
An'- hear among their furry boughs 

The baskin' west-wind purr contented, 
While 'way o'erhead, ez sweet an' low 

Ez distant bells thet ring for meetin', 
The wedged wil' geese their bugles blow, 

Further an' further South retreatin'. 



4 88 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Or up the slippery knob I strain 

An' see a hundred hills like islan's 
Lift their blue woods in broken chain 

Out o' the sea o' snowy silence ; 100 

The farm-smokes, sweetes' sight on airth, 

Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin' 
Seem kin' o' sad, an' roun' the hearth 

Of empty places set me thinkin'. 

Beaver roars hoarse with meltin' snows, 

An' rattles di'mon's from his granite; 
Time wuz, he snatched away my prose, 

An' hito psalms or satires ran it; 
But he, nor all the rest thet once 

Started my blood to country-dances, no 
Can't set me goin' more 'n a dunce 

Thet hain't no use for dreams an' fan- 



Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street 

I hear the drummers makin' riot, 
An' I set thinkin' o' the feet 

Thet f ollered once an' now are quiet, — 
White feet ez snowdrops innercent, 

Thet never knowed the paths o' Satan, 
Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't, 

No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin'. 120 

Why, hain't I held 'em on my knee ? l 

Did n't I love to see 'em growin', 
Three likely lads ez wal could be, 

Hahnsome an' brave an' not tu knowin' ? 
I set an' look into the blaze 

Whose natur', jes' like theirn, keeps 
climbin', 
Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways, 

An' half despise myself for rhymin'. 



1 Of Lowell's three nephews one, William Lowell 
Putnam, was killed, and another, James Jackson 
Lowell, seriously wounded, at the battle of Ball's Bluff, 
the same battle in which Holmes's son was wounded 
(see ' My Hunt After the Captain ') ; the third, Charles 
Russell Lowell, died October 20, 1864, of wounds re- 
ceived the previous day at the battle of Cedar Creek. 
James Jackson Lowell recovered from the wounds 
received at Ball's Bluff, but was killed in the battle 
of Seven Pines. See Lowell's Letters, vol. i, pp. 162- 
166; and Scudder's Life of Lowell, vol. ii, pp. 29-31. 

See also the note on Emerson's ' Sacrifice,' p. 95, note 
1 ; and Colonel Henry Lee Higginson's Four Addresses, 
there referred to. Emerson wrote to Carlyle, October 
15, 1870 : ' The Lowell race, again, in our War yielded 
three or four martyrs so able and tender and true, that 
James Russell Lowell cannot allude to them in verse or 
prose but the public is melted anew. ' ( Carlyle-Emerson 
Correspondence, vol. ii, p. 374.) See also Lowell's 
' Commemoration Ode,' p. 490, and ' Under the Old 
Elm,' p. 512, with the passages from his letters there 
quoted. 



Wut 's words to them whose faith an' 
truth 

On War's red techstone rang true metal, 
Who ventered life an' love an' youth 131 

For the gret prize o' death in battle ? 
To him who, deadly hurt, agen 

Flashed on afore the charge's thunder, 2 
Tippin' with fire the bolt of men 

Thet rived the Rebel line asunder ? 

'T ain't right to hev the young go fust, 

All throbbin' full o' gifts an' graces, 
Leavin' life's paupers dry ez dust 

To try an' make b'lieve fill their places: 
Nothin' but tells us wut we miss, 141 

Ther' 's gaps our lives can't never fay 
in, 
An' thet world seems so fur from this 

Lef ' for us loafers to grow gray in ! 

My eyes cloud up for rain; my mouth 
Will take to twitchin' roun' the cor- 
ners; 

I pity mothers, tu, down South, 

For all they sot among the scorners: 

I 'd sooner take my chance to stan' 

At Jedgment where your meanest slave 

IS, 150 

Than at God's bar hoi' up a han' 

Ez drippin' red ez yourn, Jeff Davis ! 

Come, Peace ! not like a mourner bowed 

For honor lost an' dear ones wasted, 
But proud, to meet a people proud, 

With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted ! 
Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt, 

An' step thet proves ye Victory's daugh- 
ter ! 
Longin' for you, our sperits wilt 

Like shipwrecked men's on raf's for 
water. 160 

Come, while our country feels the lift 

Of a gret instinct shoutin' ' Forwards ! ' 
An' knows thet freedom ain't a gift 

Thet tarries long in han's o' cowards ! 
Come, sech ez. mothers prayed for, when 

They kissed their cross with lips thet 
quivered, 
An' bring fair wages for brave men, 

A nation saved, a race delivered ! 

April, 1865. 

2 General Charles Russell Lowell, at the battle of 
Cedar Creek. 






JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



489 



ON BOARD THE '76 1 

WRITTEN FOR MR. BRYANT'S SEVEN- 
TIETH BIRTHDAY 

NOVEMBER 3, 1 864 

Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, 
Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the 
side; 
Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch stag- 
gering free, 
Trailed threads of priceless crimson 
through the tide; 
Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon 
torn, 
We lay, awaiting morn. 

Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks de- 
spair; 
And she that bare the promise of the 
world 
Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, 
bare, 
At random o'er the wildering waters 
hurled; 10 

The reek of battle drifting slow alee 
Not sullener than we. 

Morn came at last to peer into our woe, 
When lo, a sail ! Now surely help was 
nigh; 
The red cross flames aloft, Christ's pledge; 
but no, 
Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes 

by 

And hails us : — ' Gains the leak ! Ay, so 
we thought ! 
Sink, then, with curses fraught ! ' 

I leaned against my gun still angry-hot, 
And my lids tingled with the tears held 
back: 20 

This scorn methought was crueller than 
shot: 
The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack, 
Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly 
far 
Than such fear-smothered war. 

There our foe wallowed, bike a wounded 
brute 
The fiercer for his hurt. What now 
were best ? 

1 See the third quotation from JuOwelVs Letters, in 
note on p. 444. 



Once more tug bravely at the peril's root, 
Though death came with it ? Or evade 
the test 
If right or wrong in this God's world of ours 
Be leagued with mightier powers ? 30 

Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag 
With the slow beat that doubts and 
then despairs; 
Some, caitiff, would have struck the starry 
flag 
That knits us with our past, and makes 
us heirs 
Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done 
'Neath the all-seeing sun. 

But there was one, the Singer of our crew, 
Upon whose head Age waved his peace- 
ful sign, 
But whose red heart's-blood no surrender 
knew; 
And couchant under brows of massive 
line, 40 

The eyes, like guns beneath a parapet, 

Watched, charged with lightnings yet. 

The voices of the hills did his obey ; 

The torrents flashed and tumbled in his 
song; 
He brought our native fields from far 
away, 
Or set us 'mid the innumerable throng 
Of dateless woods, or where we heard the 
calm 
Old homestead's evening psalm. 

But now he sang of faith to things unseen, 
Of freedom's birthright given to us in 
trust; 50 

And words of doughty cheer he spoke be- 
tween, 
That made all earthly f ortune seem as 
dust, 
Matched with that duty, old as Time and 
new, 
Of being brave and true. 

We, listening, learned what makes the 
might of words, — 
Manhood to back them, constant as a 
star; 
His voice rammed home our cannon, edged 
our swords, 
And sent our boarders shouting; shroud 
and spar 



49° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard, 
and wooed 
The winds with loftier mood. 60 

In our dark hours he manned our guns 
again; 
Remanned ourselves from his own man- 
hood's stores; 
Pride, honor, country, throbbed through 
all his strain; 
And shall we praise ? God's praise was 
his before; 
And on our futile laurels he looks down, 

Himself our bravest crown. 
1864. 1865. 



ODE RECITED AT THE HAR- 
VARD COMMEMORATION 1 



JULY 21, 1865 



Weak- winged is song, 
Nor aims at that clear-ethered height 
Whither the brave deed climbs for light: 

We seem to do them wrong, 

1 The Commemoration services (July 21, 18G5) took 
place in the open air, in the presence of a great assem- 
bly. Prominent among the speakers were Major-Gen- 
eral Meade, the hero of Gettysburg, and Major-General 
Devens. The wounds of the war were still fresh and 
bleeding, and the interest of the occasion was deep and 
thrilling. The summer afternoon was drawing to its 
close when the poet began the recital of the ode. No 
living audience could for the first time follow with in- 
telligent appreciation the delivery of such a poem. . To 
be sure, it had its obvious strong points and its sono- 
rous charms; but, like all the later poems of the author, 
it is full of condensed thought and requires study. The 
reader to-day finds many passages whose force and 
beauty escaped him during the recital, yet the effect of 
the poem at the time was overpowering. The face of 
the poet, always singularly expressive, was on this oc- 
casion almost transfigured, — glowing, as if with an 
inward light. It was impossible to look away from it. 
Our age has furnished many great historic scenes, but 
this Commemoration combined the elements of gran- 
deur and pathos, and produced an impression as lasting 
as life. (Underwood's James Russell Lowell, quoted 
in the Riverside Literature Series.) 

The passage about Lincoln was not in the Ode as 
originally recited, but added immediately after. More 
than eighteen months before, however, I had written 
about Lincoln in the North American Review, — an 
article which pleased him. I did divine him earlier 
than most men of the Brahmin caste. The Ode itself 
was an improvisation. Two days before the Com- 
memoration I had told my friend Child that it was im- 
possible, — that I was dull as a door-mat. But the 
next day something gave me a jog and the whole thing 
came out of me with a rush. I sat up all night writing 
it out clear, and took it on the morning of the day 
to Child. 'I have something, but don't yet know 
what it is, or whether it will do. Look at it and tell 



Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their 

hearse 
Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler 

verse, 
Our trivial song to honor those who 

come 
With ears attuned to strenuous trump and 

drum, 
And shaped in squadron-strophes their de- 
sire, 
Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and 

fire: IO 

Yet sometimes feathered words are 

strong, 
A gracious memory to buoy up and save 
From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common 

grave 
Of the unventurous throng. 

me.' He went a little way apart with it under an elm- 
tree in the college yard. He read a passage here and 
there, brought it back to me, and said, ' Do ? I should 
think so ! Don't you be scared.' And I was n't, but 
virtue enough had gone out of me to make me weak 
for a fortnight after. (Lowell, in a letter to Richard 
Watson Gilder, January 16, 1886. Letters, Harper and 
Brothers, vol. ii, pp. 305-306.) 

I don't know how to answer your queries about my 
' Ode.' I guess I am right, for it was a matter of pure 
instinct — except the strophe you quote, which I added 
for balance both of measure and thought. I am not 
sure if I understand what you say about the tenth 
strophe. Tou will observe that it leads naturally to 
the eleventh, and that I there justify a certain narrow- 
ness in it as an expression of the popular feeling as 
well as my own. I confess I have never got over the 
feeling of wrath with which (just after the death of my 
nephew Willie) I read in an English paper that nothing 
was to be hoped of an army officered by tailors' ap- 
prentices and butcher-boys. The poem was written 
with a vehement speed, which I thought I had lost in 
the skirts of my professor's gown. Till within two 
days of the celebration I was hopelessly dumb, and then 
it all came with a rush, literally making me lean (mi 
fece magro) and so nervous that I was weeks in getting 
over it. I was longer in getting the new (eleventh) 
strophe to my mind than in writing the rest of the 
poem. In that I hardly changed a word, and it was so 
undeliberate that I did not find out till after it was 
printed that some of the verses lacked corresponding 
rhymes. All the ' War Poems ' were improvisations as it 
were. My blood was up, and you would hardly believe 
me if I were to tell how few hours intervened between 
conception and completion, even in so long a one as 
'Mason and Slidell.' So I have a kind of faith that 
the ' Ode ' is right because it was there, I hardly knew 
how. I doubt you are right in wishing it more histori- 
cal. But then I could not have written it. I had put 
the ethical and political view so often in prose that I . 
was weary of it. The motives of the war ? I had im- 
patiently argued them again and again — but for an ode 
they must be in the blood and not the memory. (Low- 
ell, in a letter of December 8, 1868. Letters, Harper 
and Brothers, vol. ii, pp. 9-10.) See also Lowell's let~ 
ter to Miss Norton, July 25, 1865; and Scudder's Life 
of Lowell, vol. ii, pp. 1-73, especially 63-73. 

For a noble description of the Commemoration pro- 
cession and the exercises, see W. G. Brown's The Roe 
of Compromise and other Essays, pp. 197-199 ; quoted 
in Greenslet's Lowell, pp. 161-163. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



49 1 



To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes 
back 
Her wisest Scholars, those who under- 
stood 
The deeper teaching of her mystic tome, 
And offered their fresh lives to make it 
good: 

No lore of Greece or Rome, 
No science peddling with the names of 
things, 20 

Or reading stars to find inglorious fates, 

Can lift our life, with wings 
Far from Death's idle gulf that for the 
many waits, 

And lengthen out our daties 
With that clear fame whose memory sings 
In manly hearts to come, and nerves them 

and dilates: 
Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all ! 
Not such the trumpet-call 
Of thy diviner mood, 
That could thy sons entice 30 

From happy homes and toils, the fruitful 

nest 
Of those half-virtues which the world calls 
best, 

Into War's tumult rude; 
But rather far that stern device 
The sponsors chose that round thy cradle 
stood 
In the dim, unventured wood, 
The Veritas that lurks beneath 1 
The letter's unprolific sheath, 
Life of whate'er makes life worth living, 
Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 
One heavenly thing whereof earth hath 
the giving. 41 



Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best 
oil 
Amid the dust of books to find her, 
Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, 
With the cast mantle she hath left be- 
hind her. 
Many in sad faith sought for her, 
Many with crossed hands sighed for 

her; 
But these, our brothers, fought for her, 
At life's dear peril wrought for her, 
So loved her that they died for her, 50 

1 Veritas, the motto on the seal of Harvard Univer- 
sity, inscribed upon three open books. See Holmes's 
poem ' Veritas,' p. 396. 



Tasting the raptured fleetness 
Of her divine completeness: 
Their higher instinct knew 
Those love her best who to themselves are 

true, 
And what they dare to dream of, dare to 
do; 
They followed her and found her 
Where all may hope to find, 
Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, 
But beautiful, with danger's sweetness 
round her. 
Where faith made whole with deed 60 
Breathes its awakening breath 
Into the lifeless creed, 
They saw her plumed and mailed, 
With sweet, stern face unveiled, 
And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them 
in death. 



Our slender life runs rippling by, and 
glides 
Into the silent hollow of the past; 

What is there that abides 
To make the next age better for the 
last? 
Is earth too poor to give us 70 

Something to live for here that shall out- 
live us ? 
Some more substantial boon 
Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's 
fickle moon ? 
The little that we see 
From doubt is never free; 
The little that we do 
Is but half -nobly true; 
With our laborious hiving 
What men call treasure, and the gods call 
dross, 
Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 80 
Oidy secure in every one's conniving, 
A long account of nothings paid with loss, 
Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen 
wires, 
After our little hour of strut and rave, 
With all our pasteboard passions and de- 
sires, 
Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, 
Are tossed pell-mell together in the 

grave. 
But stay ! no age was e'er degenerate, 
Unless men held it at too cheap a rate, 
For in our likeness still we shape our 
fate. 90 



492 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Ah, there is something here 
Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, 
Something that gives our feeble light 
A high immunity from Night, 
Something that leaps life's narrow bars 
To claim its birthright with the hosts of 
heaven; 
A seed of sunshine that can leaven 
Our earthly dullness with the beams of 
stars, 

And glorify our clay 
With light from fountains elder than the 
Day; 100 

A conscience more divine than we, 
A gladness fed with secret tears, 
A vexing, forward-reaching sense 
Of some more noble permanence; 
A light across the sea,- 
Which haunts the soul and will not let it 
be, 
Still beaconing from the heights of unde- 
generate years. 



Whither leads the path 
To ampler fates that leads ? 
Not down through flowery meads, 
To reap an aftermath m 

Of youth's vainglorious weeds, 
But up the steep, amid the wrath 
And shock of deadly-hostile creeds, 
Where the world's best hope and stay 
By battle's flashes gropes a desperate 

way, 
And every turf the fierce foot clings to 
bleeds. 
Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, 
Ere yet the sharp, decisive word 
Light the black lips of cannon, and the 
sword 120 

Dreams in its easeful sheath; 
But some day the live coal behind the 
thought, 
Whether from Baal's stone obscene, 
Or from the shrine serene 
Of God's pure altar brought, 
Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and 

pen 
Learns with what deadly purpose it was 

fraught, 
And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, 
Shakes all the pillared state with shock of 

men: 
Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 130 
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, piirsued, 



And cries reproachful: ' Was it, then, my 

praise, 
And not myself was loved ? Prove now 

thy truth; 
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth ; 
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase, 
The victim of thy genius, not its mate ! ' 
Life may be given in many ways, 
And loyalty to Truth be sealed 
As bravely in the closet as the field, 

So bountiful is Fate ; 140 

But then to stand beside her, 
When craven churls deride her, 
To front a lie in arms and not to yield, 
This shows, methinks, God's plan 
And measure of a stalwart man, 
Limbed like the old heroic breeds, 
Who stands self-poised on manhood's 
solid earth, 
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, 
Fed from within with all the strength he 
needs. 



Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 150 

Whom late the Nation he had led, 
With ashes on her head, 
Wept with the passion of an angry grief: 
Forgive me, if from present things I 

turn 
To speak what in my heart will beat and 

burn, 
And hang my wreath on his world-honored 
urn. 
Nature, they say, doth dote, 
And cannot make a man 
Save on some worn-out plan, 
Kepeating us by rote: 160 

For him her Old- World moulds aside she 
threw, 
And choosing sweet clay from the 

breast 
Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and 
true. 
How beautiful to see" 
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to 

lead; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to 
be, 
Not lured by any cheat of birth, 170 
But by his clear-grained human worth, 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



493 



They knew that outward grace is dust ; 
They could not choose but trust 
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 

And supple-tempered will 
That bent like perfect steel to spring again 
and thrust. 
His was no lonely mountain-peak of 

mind, 
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy 

bars, 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors 
blind; iSo 

Broad prairie rather, genial, level- 
lined, 
Fruitful and friendly for all human 
kind, 
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of lofti- 
est stars. 

Nothing of Europe here, 
Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, 
Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
Coidd Nature's equal scheme deface 
And thwart her genial will; 
Here was a type of the true elder race, 
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us 
face to face. 190 

I praise him not; it were too late; 
And some innative weakness there must be 
In him who condescends to victory 
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, 
Safe in himself as in a fate. 
So always firmly he: 
He knew to bide his time, 
And can his fame abide, 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime, 

Till the wise years decide. 200 

Great captains, with their guns and 

drums, 

Disturb our judgment for the hour, 

But at last silence comes; 

These all are gone, and, standing like a 

tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame. 
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing 
man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not 
blame, 
New birth of our new soil, the first Amer- 
ican. 



Long as man's hope insatiate can discern 

Or only guess some more inspiring 

goal 210 

Outside of Self, enduring as the pole, 



Along whose course the flying axles burn 
Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's man- 
lier brood; 
Long as below we cannot find 
The meed that stills the inexorable mind; 
So long this faith to some ideal Good, 
Under whatever mortal names it masks, 
Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal 
mood 
That thanks the Fates for their severer 
tasks, 
Feeling its challenged pulses leap, 220 
While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, 
And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon 
it asks, 
Shall win man's praise and woman's love, 
Shall be a wisdom that we set above 
All other skills and gifts to culture dear, 
A virtue round whose forehead we in- 

wreathe 
Laurels that with a living passion breathe 
When other crowns grow, while we twine 
them, sear. 
What brings us thronging these high rites 
to pay, 
And seal these hours the noblest of our year, 
Save that our brothers found this better 
way ? 231 



We sit here in the Promised Land 
That flows with Freedom's honey and 

milk; 
But 't was they won it, sword in hand, 
Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. 
We welcome back our bravest and our 

best ; — 
Ah me ! not all! some come not with the 
rest, 
Who went forth brave and bright as any 

here ! 
I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, 
But the sad strings complain, 240 
And will not please the ear: 
I sweep them for a ptean, but they wane 

Again and yet again 
Into a dirge, and die away, in pain. 
In these brave ranks I only see the gaps, 
Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb 

turf wraps, 
Dark to the triumph which they died to gain: 
Fitlier may others greet the living, 
For me the past is unforgiving; 

I with uncovered head 250 

Salute the sacred dead, 



494 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Who went, and who return not. — Say not 
so! 

'T is not the grapes of Canaan that repay, 

But the high faith that failed not by the 
way; 

Virtue treads paths that end not in the 
grave ; 

No ban of endless night exiles the brave; 
And to the saner mind 

We rather seem the dead that stayed be- 
hind. 

Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! 

For never shall their aureoled presence lack: 

I see them muster in a gleaming row, 261 

With ever-youthful brows that nobler show; 

We find in our dull road their shining 
track; 

In every nobler mood 

We feel the orient of their spirit glow, 

Part of our life 's unalterable good, 

Of all our saintlier aspiration; 

They come transfigured back, 

Secure from change hi their high-hearted 
. ways, 

Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 270 

Of morn on their white Shields of Expecta- 
tion ! 



But is there hope to save 
Even this ethereal essence from the 

grave ? 
What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle 
wrong 
Save a few clarion names, or golden threads 
of song ? 

Before my musing eye 
The mighty ones of old sweep by, 
Disvoiced now and insubstantial things, 
As noisy once as we ; poor ghosts of kings, 
Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust, 
And many races; nameless long ago, 281 
To darkness driven by that imperious 

gust 
Of ever-rushing Time that here doth 

blow: 
O visionary world, condition strange, 
Where naught abiding is but only Change, 
Where the deep-bolted stars themselves 
still shift and range ! 
Shall we to more continuance make pre- 
tence ? 
Renown builds tombs; a life-estate is Wit; 

And, bit by bit, 
The cunning years steal all from us but woe ; 



Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest 

SOW. 29 r 

But, when we vanish hence, 
Shall they lie forceless in the dark be- 
low, 
Save to make green their little length 

of sods, 
Or deepen pansies for a year or two, 
Who now to us are shining-sweet as 

gods ? 
Was dying all they had the skill to do ? 
That were not fruitless: but the Soul 

resents 
Such short-lived service, as if blind 

events 
Ruled without her, or earth could so 
endure; 30 o 

She claims a more divine investiture 
Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents; 
Whate'er she touches doth her nature 

share ; 
Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air, 

Gives eyes to mountains blind, 
Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the 

wind, 
And her clear trump sings succor every- 
where 
By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind ; 
For soul inherits all that soul could dare : 
Yea, Manhood hath a wider span 
And larger privilege of life than man. 3 ir 
The single deed, the private sacrifice, 
So radiant now through proudly-hidden 

tears, 
Is covered up erelong from mortal eyes 
With thoughtless drift of the deciduous 

years; 
But that high privilege that makes all 

men peers, 
That leap of heart whereby a people rise 
Up to a noble anger's height, 
And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, 
but grow more bright, 
That swift validity in noble veins, 320 
Of choosing danger and disdaining 
shame, 

Of being set on flame 
By the pure fire that flies all contact 
base 
But wraps its chosen with angelic might, 
These are imperishable gains, 
Sure as the sun, medicinal as light, 
These hold great futures in their lusty 
reins 
And certify to earth a new imperial race. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



495 



Who now shall sneer ? 
Who dare again to say we trace 330 
Our lines to a plebeian race ? 
Roundhead and Cavalier ! 
Dumb are those names erewhile in battle 

loud; 
Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud, 

They flit across the ear: 
That is best blood that hath most iron 

in't, 
To edge resolve with, pouring without stint 
For what makes manhood dear. 
Tell us not of Plantagenets, 
Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods 
crawl 340 

Down from some victor in a border-brawl ! 

How poor their outworn coronets, 
Matched with one leaf of that plain civic 

wreath 
Our brave for honor's blazon shall be- 
queath, 
Through whose desert a rescued Nation 
sets 
Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears 
Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears 
With vain resentments and more vain 
regrets ! 

XI 

Not in anger, not in pride, 

Pure from passion's mixture rude 350 

Ever to base earth allied, 

But with far-heard gratitude, 

Still with heart and voice renewed, 

To heroes living and dear martyrs dead, 
The strain should close that consecrates 
our brave. 

Lift the heart and lift the head ! 
Lofty be its mood and grave, 
Not without a martial ring, 
Not without a prouder tread 
And a peal of exultation: 3 6o 

Little right has he to sing 
Through whose heart in such an hour 
Beats no march of conscious power, 
Sweeps no tumult of elation ! 
'T is no Man we celebrate, 
By his country's victories great, 

A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 
But the pith and marrow of a Nation 
Drawing force from all her men, 
Highest, humblest, weakest, all, 370 
For her time of need, and then 
Pulsing it again through them, 



Till the basest can no longer cower, 
Feeling his soul sprmg up divinely tall, 
Touched but in passing by her mantle- 
hem. 
Come back, then, noble pride, for 't is 
her dower ! 
How could poet ever tower, 
If his passions, hopes, and fears, 
If his triumphs and his tears, 
Kept not measure with his people ? 380 
Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and 

waves ! 
Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking 

steeple ! 
Banners, adance with triumph, bend your 
staves ! 
And from every mountain-peak 
Let beacon-fire to answering beacon 

speak, 
Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface 
he, 
And so leap on in light from sea to sea, 
Till the glad news be sent 
Across a kindling continent, 
Making earth feel more firm and air breathe 
braver: 390 

' Be proud ! for she is saved, and all have 
helped to save her ! 
She that lifts up the manhood of the 

poor, 
She of the open soul and open door, 
With room about her hearth for all 

mankind ! 
The fire is dreadful in her eyes no 

more; 
From her bold front the helm she doth 

unbind, 
Sends all her handmaid armies back to 

spin, 
And bids her navies, that so lately 

hurled 
Their crashing battle, hold their thun- 
ders in, 
Swimming like birds of calm along the 
iinharmful shore. 400 

No challenge sends she to the elder 

world, 
That looked askance and hated ; a light 

scorn 
Plays o'er her mouth, as round her 

mighty knees 
She calls her children back, and waits 
the morn 
Of nobler day, enthroned between her sub- 
ject seas.' 



49 6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found 
release ! 
Thy God, in these distempered days, 
Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of 
His ways, 
And through thine enemies hath wrought 
thy peace ! 
Bow down in prayer and praise ! 410 
No poorest in thy borders but may now 
Lift to the juster skies a man's enfran- 
chised brow. 
O Beautiful ! my country ! ours once 

more ! 
Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair 
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, 
And letting thy set lips, 
Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, 
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, 
What words divine of lover or of poet 
Could tell our love and make thee know it, 
Among the Nations bright beyond com- 
pare ? 421 
What were our lives without thee ? 
What all our lives to save thee ? 
We reck not what we gave thee; 
We will not dare to doubt thee, 
But ask whatever else, and we will dare ! 
1865. 1865. 



THE MINER 

Down 'mid the tangled roots of things 
That coil about the central fire, 

I seek for that which giveth wings 
To stoop, not soar, to my desire. 

Sometimes I hear, as 't were a sigh, 
The sea's deep yearning far above, 

' Thou hast the secret not,' I cry, 
' In deeper deeps is hid my Love.' 

They think I burrow from the sun, 
In darkness, all alone, and weak; 10 

Such loss were gam if He were won, 
For 't is the sun's own Sun I seek. 

' The earth,' they murmur, ' is the tomb 
That vainly sought his life to prison; 

Why grovel longer in the gloom ? 
He is not here; he hath arisen.' 

More life for me where he hath lain 
Hidden while ye believed him dead, 



Than in cathedrals cold and vain, 

Built on loose sands of It is said. 20 

My search is for the living gold; 

Him I desire who dwells recluse, 
And not his image worn and old, 

Day-servant of our sordid use. 

If him I find not, yet I find 

The ancient joy of cell and church, 

The glimpse, the surety undefined, 
The unquenched ardor of the search. 

Happier to chase a flying goal 

Than to sit counting laurelled gains, 

To guess the Soul within the soul 31 

Than to be lord of what remains. 

Hide still, best Good, in subtile wise, 
Beyond my nature's utmost scope; 

Be ever absent from mine eyes 
To be twice present in my hope ! 



1866. 



TO H. W. L. 1 



ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 27TH FEBRUARY, 1 867 

I need not praise the sweetness of his song, 
Where limpid verse to limpid verse suc- 
ceeds 
Smooth as our Charles, when, fearing lest 

he wrong 
The new moon's mirrored skiff, he slides 
along, 
Full without noise, and whispers in his 
reeds. 

With loving breath of all the winds his 
name 
Is blown about the world, but to his 
friends 
A sweeter secret hides behind his fame, 
And Love steals shyly through the loud 
acclaim 
To murmur a God bless you ! and there 
ends. 10 



1 See Lowell's letter sent with these verses, Febru- 
ary 27, 1867, in the Letters, vol. i, pp. 378, 379. In this 
letter a stanza was added to the poem : — 

A gift of symbol-flowers I meant to bring, 
White for thy candor, for th" kindness red ; 
But Nature here denies them to the Spring, 
And in forced blooms an odorous warmth will cling 
Not artless : take this bunch of verse instead. 

(Life of Longfellow, vol. iii, p. 84.) 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



497 



As I muse backward up the checkered years 
Whereiu so much was given, so much was 
lost, 
Blessings hi both kinds, such as cheapen 

tears, — 
But hush ! this is not for prof aner ears ; 
Let them drink molten pearls nor dream 
the cost. 

Some suck up poison from a sorrow's core, 
As naught but nightshade grew upon 
earth's ground; 
Love turned all his to heart's-ease, and the 

more 
Fate tried his bastions, she but forced a door 
Leading to sweeter manhood and more 
sound. 20 

Even as a wind-waved fountain's swaying 

shade 

Seems of mixed race, a gray wraith shot 

with sun, 

So through his trial faith translucent rayed 

Till darkness, half disnatured so, betrayed 

A heart of sunshine that would fain o'er- 



Surely if skill in song the shears may stay 

And of its purpose cheat the charmed 

abyss, 

If our poor life be lengthened by a lay, 

He shall not go, although his presence may, 

And the next age in praise shall double 

this. 30 

Long days be his, and each as lusty-sweet 
As gracious natures find his song to be; 
May Age steal on with sof tly-cadenced feet 
Falling in music, as for him were meet 
Whose choicest verse is harsher-toned 
than he ! 

1867. 



THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE 
STUDY 1 

' Come forth ! ' my catbird calls to me, 
' And hear me sing a cavatina 

1 I have not felt in the mood to do much during my 
imprisonment. One little poem I have written, ' The 
Nightingale in the Study.' . . . 'T is a dialogue hetween 
my catbird and me — he calling me out of doors, I giv- 
ing my better reasons for staying within. Of course 
my nightingale is Calderon. (Lowell, in a letter to 
Professor C. E. Norton, July 8, 1867. LoweWs Letters, 
Harper and Brothers, vol. i, p. 390.) 



That, in this old familiar tree, 
Shall hang a garden of Alcina. 

' These buttercups shall brim with wine 
Beyond all Lesbian juice or Massic ; 

May not New England be divine ? 
My ode to ripening summer classic ? 

' Or, if to me you will not hark, 

By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing 10 
Till all the alder-coverts dark 

Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing. 

' Come out beneath the unmastered sky, 

With its emancipating spaces, 
And learn to sing as well as I, 

Without premeditated graces. 

' What boot your many-volumed gains, 
Those withered leaves forever turning, 

To win, at best, for all your pains, 

A nature mummy-wrapt in learning ? 20 

' The leaves wherein true wisdom lies 
On living trees the sun are drinking; 

Those white clouds, drowsing through the 
skies, 
Grew not so beautiful by thinking. 

' " Come out ! " with me the oriole cries, 
Escape the demon that pursues you ! 

And, hark, the cuckoo weatherwise, 

Still hiding farther onward, wooes you.' 

' Alas, dear friend, that, all my days, 

Hast poured from that syringa thicket 30 

The quaintly discontinuous lays 
To which I hold a season-ticket, 

' A season-ticket cheaply bought 
With a dessert of pilfered berries, 

And who so oft my soul hast caught 
With morn and evening voluntaries, 

' Deem me not faithless, if all day 
Among my dusty books I linger, 

No pipe, like thee, for June to play 

With fancy-led, half-conscious finger. 40 

' A bird is singing in my brain 

And bubbling o'er with mingled fancies, 
Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain 

Fed with the sap of old romances. 

' I ask no ampler skies than those 
His magic music rears above me, 



49§ 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



No falser friends, no truer foes, — 
And does not Dona Clara love me ? 

1 Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars, 
A rush of feet, and rapiers clashing, 50 

Then silence deep with breathless stars, 
And overhead a white hand flashing. 

' O music of all moods and climes, 

Vengeful, forgiving, sensuous, saintly, 

Where still, between the Clu-istian chimes, 
The Moorish cymbal tinkles faintly ! 

* O life borne lightly in the hand, 

For friend or foe with grace Castilian ! 

O valley safe in Fancy's land, 

Not tramped to mud yet by the million ! 

' Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale 61 

To his, my singer of all weathers, 

My Calderon, my nightingale, 

My Arab soid in Spanish feathers. 

' Ah, friend, these singers dead so long, 
And still, God knows, in purgatory, 

Give its best sweetness to all song, 
To Nature's self her better glory.' 

1867. 1867. 

AN EMBER PICTURE 

How strange are the freaks of memory ! 

The lessons of life we forget, 
While a trifle, a trick of color, 

In the wonderful web is set, — 

Set by some mordant of fancy, 
And, spite of the wear and tear 

Of time or distance or trouble, 
Insists on its right to be there. 

A chance had brdught us together; 

Our talk was of matters-of-course ; 10 
We were nothing, one to the other, 

But a short half-hour's resource. 

We spoke of French acting and actors, 

And their easy, natural way: 
Of the weather, for it was raining 

As we drove home from the play. 

We debated the social nothings 
We bore ourselves so to discuss; 

The thunderous rumors of battle 

Were silent the while for us. 20 



Arrived at her door, we left her 
With a drippmgly hurried adieu, 

And our wheels went crunching the gravel 
Of the oak-darkened avenue. 

As we drove away through the shadow, 
The candle she held in the door 

From rain-varnished tree-trunk to tree- 
trunk 
Flashed fainter, and flashed no more ; — 

Flashed fainter, then wholly faded 

Before we had passed the wood; 30 

But the light of the face behind it 
Went with me and stayed for good. 

The vision of scarce a moment, 
And hardly marked at the time, 

It comes unbidden to haunt me, 
Like a scrap of ballad-rhyme. 

Had she beauty ? Well, not what they call 
so; 

You may find a thousand as fair; 
And yet there 's her face in my memory 

With no special claim to be there. 40 

As I sit sometimes in the twilight, 
And call back to life in the coals 

Old faces and hopes and fancies 

Long buried (good rest to their souls !), 

Her face shines out in the embers; 

I see her holding the light, 
And hear the crunch of the gravel 

And the sweep of the rain that night. 

'T is a face that can never grow older, 
That never can part with its gleam, 50 

'Tis a gracious possession forever, 
For is it not all a dream ? 

1867. 



IN THE TWILIGHT 

Men say the sullen instrument, 

That, from the Master's bow, 

With pangs of joy or woe, 
Feels music's soul through every fibre sent 

Whispers the ravished strings 
More than he knew or meant; 

Old summers m its memory glow; 

The secrets of the wind it sings ; 

It hears the April-loosened springs; 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



499 



And mixes with its mood 10 

All it dreamed when it stood 
In the murmurous pine-wood 
Long ago ! 

The magical moonlight then 

Steeped every bough and cone; 
The roar of the brook in the glen 

Came dim from the distance blown; 
The wind through its glooms sang low, 
And it swayed to and fro 

With delight as it stood, 20 

In the wonderful wood, 
Long ago ! 

O my life, have we not had seasons 
That only said, Live and rejoice ? 
That asked not for causes and reasons, 
But made us all feeling and voice ? 
When we went with the winds in their 
blowing, 
When Nature and we were peers, 
And we seemed to share in the flowing 
Of the inexhaustible years ? 30 

Have we not from the earth drawn juices 
Too fine for earth's sordid uses ? 
Have I heard, have I seen 

All I feel, all I know ? 
Doth my heart overween ? 
Or could it have been 
Long ago ? 

Sometimes a breath floats by me, 

An odor from Dreamland sent, 
That makes the ghost seem nigh me 40 

Of a splendor that came and went, 
Of a life lived somewhere, I know not 

In what diviner sphere, 
Of memories that stay not and go not, 

Like music beard once by an ear 
That cannot forget or reclaim it, 
A something so shy, it would shame it 

To make it a show, 
A something too vague, could I name it, 

For others to know, so 

As if I had lived it or dreamed it, 
As if I had acted or schemed it, 
Long ago ! 

And yet, could I live it over, 
This life that stirs in my brain, 

Could I be both maiden and lover, 

Moon and tide, bee and clover, 

As I seem to have been, once again, 

Could I but speak it and show it, 



This pleasure more sharp than pain, 60 
That baffles and lures me so, 
The world should once more have a poet, 
Such as it had 
In the ages glad, 
Long ago ! 

1868. 

FOR AN AUTOGRAPH 

Though old the thought and oft exprest, 
'T is his at last who says it best, — 
I '11 try my fortune with the rest. 

Life is a leaf of paper white 
Whereon each one of us may write 
His word or two, and then comes night. 

' Lo, time and space enough,' we cry, 
' To write an epic ! ' so we try 
Our nibs upon the edge, and die. 

Muse not which way the pen to hold, 
Luck hates the slow and loves the bold, 
Soon come the darkness and the cold. 

Greatly begin ! though thou have time 
But for a line, be that sublime, — 
Not failure, but low aim, is crime. 

Ah, with what lofty hope we came ! 
But we forget it, dream of fame, 
And scrawl, as I do here, a name. 



(1868.) 



THE FOOT-PATH 



It mounts athwart the windy hill 

Through sallow slopes of upland bare, 

And Fancy climbs with foot-fall still 
Its narrowing curves that end in air. 

By day, a warmer-hearted blue 

Stoops softly to that topmost swell; 

Its thread-like windings seem a clue 
To gracious climes where all is well. 

By night, far yonder, I surmise 

An ampler world than clips my ken, 10 
Where the great stars of happier skies 

Commingle nobler fates of men. 

I look and long, then haste me home, 
Still master of my secret rare; 



5°° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Once tried, the path would end in Rome, 
But now it leads me everywhere. 

Forever to the new it guides, 

From former good, old overmuch; 

What Nature for her poets hides, 

'T is wiser to divine than clutch. 20 

The bird I list hath never come 
Within the scope of mortal ear; 

My prying step would make him dumb, 
And the fair tree, his shelter, sear. 

Behind the hill, behind the sky, 

Behind my inmost thought, he sings; 

No feet avail ; to hear it nigh, 

The song itself must lend the wings. 

Sing on, sweet bird close hid, and raise 
Those angel stairways in my brain, 30 

That climb from these low-vaulted days 
To spacious sunshines far from pain. 

Sing when thou wilt, enchantment fleet, 
I leave thy covert haunt untrod, 

And envy Science not her feat 
To make a twice-told tale of God. 

They said the fairies tript no more, 
And long ago that Pan was dead; 

'T was but that fools preferred to bore 
Earth's rind inch-deep for truth instead. 

Pan leaps and pipes all summer long, 41 
The fairies dance each full-mooned night, 

Would we but doff our lenses strong, 
And trust our wiser eyes' delight. 

City of Elf-land, just without 

Our seeing, marvel ever new, 
Glimpsed in fair weather, a sweet doubt 

Sketched-in, mirage-like, on the blue, 

I build thee in yon sunset cloud, 

Whose edge allures to climb the height; 

I hear thy drowned bells, inly-loud, 51 

From still pools dusk with dreams of 
night. 

Thy gates are shut to hardiest will, 

Thy countersign of long-lost speech, — 
Those fountained courts, those chambers 
still, 
Fronting Time's far East, who shall 
reach ? 



I know not, and will never pry, 
But trust our human heart for all; 

Wonders that from the seeker fly 

Into an open sense may fall. 60 

Hide in thine own soul, and surprise 
The password of the unwary elves; 

Seek it, thou canst not bribe their spies ; 
Unsought, they whisper it themselves. 

1868. 

ALADDIN 

When I was a beggarly boy, 

And lived in a cellar damp, 
I had not a friend nor a toy, 

But I had Aladdin's lamp; 
When I could not sleep for the cold, 

I had fire enough in my brain, 
And builded, with roofs of gold, 

My beautiful castles in Spain ! 

Since then I have toiled day and night, 

I have money and power good store, 
But I 'd give all my lamps of silver bright 

For the one that is mine no more; 
Take, Fortune, whatever you choose, 

You gave, and may snatch again; 
I have nothing 't would pain me to lose, 

For I own no more castles in Spain ! 

1853, 1868. 

TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 1 

AGRO DOLCE 

The wind is roistering out of doors, 

My windows shake and my chimney roars ; 

My Elmwood chimneys seem crooning to 

me, 
As of old, in their moody, minor key, 
And out of the past the hoarse wind blows, 
As I sit in my arm-chair, and toast my toes. 

' Ho ! ho ! nine-and-forty,' they seem to 

sing, 
' We saw you a little toddling thing. 
We knew you child and youth and man, 
A wonderful fellow to dream and plan, 10 
With a great thing always to come, — who 

knows ? 
Well, well ! 't is some comfort to toast 

one's toes. 

1 Written as dedication of the volume Under the 
Willows and other Poems. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



5oi 



' How many times have you sat at gaze 
Till the mouldering fire forgot to blaze, 
Shaping among the whimsical coals 
Fancies and figures and shining goals ! 
What matters the ashes that cover those ? 
While hickory lasts you can toast your toes. 

' O dream-ship-builder ! where are they all, 
Your grand three-deckers, deep - chested 

and tall, 20 

That should crush the waves under canvas 

piles, 
And anchor at last by the Fortunate Isles ? 
There 's gray in your beard, the years turn 

foes, 
While you muse in your arm-chair, and 

toast your toes.' 

I sit and dream that I hear, as of yore, 
My Elmwood chimneys' deep - throated 

roar; 
If much be gone, there is much remains ; 
By the embers of loss I count my gains, 
You and yours with the best, till the old 

hope glows 
In the fanciful flame, as I toast my toes. 30 

Instead of a fleet of broad-browed ships, 
To send a child's armada of chips ! 
Instead of the great guns, tier on tier, 
A freight of pebbles and grass - blades 

sere ! 
' Well, maybe more love with the less gift 

goes,' 
I growl, as, half moody, I toast my toes. 
1868. 1868. 

AGASSIZi 

Come 
Dicesti egli ebbe f non viv' egli ancora ? 
Non fiere gli occhi suoi lo dolce lome ? 



The electric nerve, whose instantaneous 

thrill 
Makes next-door gossips of the antipodes, 

1 See Lowell's letters to Professor Charles Eliot 
Norton, February 2, and February 26, 1874, especially 
the second letter. Lowell was in Florence when Agassiz 
died. 'His death,' he says, 'came home to me in a 
singular way, growing into my consciousness from day 
to day as if it were a graft new-set, that by degrees be- 
came part of my own wood and drew a greater share of 
my sap than belonged to it, as grafts sometimes will.' 
(Lowell's Letters, Harper and Brothers, vol. ii, pp. 115- 
116.) See also the references in note on p. 211. 



Confutes poor Hope's last fallacy of ease, — 
The distance that divided her from ill: 
Earth sentient seems again as when of old 

The horny foot of Pan 
Stamped, and the conscious horror ran 
Beneath men's feet through all her fibres 

cold: 
Space's blue walls are mined; we feel the 

throe 
From underground of our night-mantled 
foe : IO 

The flame-winged feet 
Of Trade's new Mercury, that dry-shod run 
Through briny abysses dreamless of the 
sun, 

Are mercilessly fleet, 
And at a bound annihilate 
Ocean's prerogative of short reprieve; 

Surely ill news might wait, 
And man be patient of delay to grieve: 
Letters have sympathies 
And tell-tale faces that reveal, 20 

To senses finer than the eyes, 
Their errand's purport ere we break the 

seal; 
They wind a sorrow round with circum- 
stance 
To stay its feet, nor all unwarned displace 
The veil that darkened from our sidelong 
glance 

The inexorable face: 
But now Fate stuns as with a mace ; 
The savage of the skies, that men have 
caught 
And some scant use of language 
taught, 

Tells only what he must, — 30 
The steel-cold fact in one laconic thrust. 



So thought I, as, with vague, mechanic eyes, 
I scanned the festering news we half de- 
spise 

Yet scramble for no less, 
And read of public scandal, private fraud, 
Crime flaunting scot-free while the mob 

applaud, 
Office made vile to bribe unworthiness, 

And all the unwholesome mess 
The Land of Honest Abraham serves of 
late 
To teach the Old World how to wait, 
When suddenly, 41 

As happens if the brain, from overweight 
Of blood, infect the eye, 



502 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Three tiny words grew lurid as I read, 
And reeled comniingling: Agassiz is dead. 
As when, beneath the street's familiar jar, 
An earthquake's alien omen rumbles far, 
Men listen and forebode, I hung my head, 

And strove the present to recall, 
As if the blow that stunned were yet to 
fall. c.o 



Uprooted is our mountain oak, 
That promised long security of shade 
And brooding-place for many a winged 
thought; 
Not by Time's softly-cadenced stroke 
With pauses of relenting pity stayed, 
But ere a root seemed sapt, a bough de- 
cayed, 
From sudden ambush by the whirlwind 

caught 
And in his broad maturity betrayed ! 



Well might I, as of old, appeal to you, 

O mountains, woods, and streams, 60 
To help us mourn him, for ye loved him 

too; 
But simpler moods befit our modern 

themes, 
And no less perfect birth of nature can, 
Though they yearn tow'rd him, sympathize 

with man, 
Save as dumb fellow-prisoners through a 

wall; 
Answer ye rather to my call, 
Strong poets of a more unconscious day, 
When Nature spake nor sought nice rea- 
sons why, 
Too much for softer arts forgotten since 
That teach our forthright tongue to lisp 

and mince, 70 

And drown in music the heart's bitter cry ! 
Lead me some steps in your directer way, 
Teach me those words that strike a solid 

root 

Within the ears of men; 
Ye chiefly, virile both to think and feel, 
Deep-chested Chapman and firm-footed 

Ben, 
For he was masculine from head to heel. 
Nay, let himself stand undiminished by 
With those clear parts of him that will not 

die. 
Himself from out the recent dark I claim 
To hear, and, if I flatter him, to blame; 81 



To show himself, as still I seem to see, 
A mortal, built upon the antique plan, 
Brimful of lusty blood as ever ran, 
And taking life as simply as a tree ! 
To claim my foiled good-by let him ap- 
pear, 
Large-limbed and human as I saw him 

near, 
Loosed from the stiffening uniform of 

fame: 
And let me treat him largely : I should fear 
(If with too prying lens I chanced to err, 
Mistaking catalogue for character), 91 

His wise forefinger raised in smiling blame. 
Nor would I scant him with judicial 

breath 
And turn mere critic in an epitaph; 
I choose the wheat, incurious of the chaff 
That swells fame living, chokes it after 

death, 
And would but memorize the shining half 
Of his large nature that was turned to me: 
Fain had I joined with those that honored 

him 
With eyes that darkened because his were 

dim, 100 

And now been silent: but it might not be. 



In some the genius is a thing apart, 
A pillared hermit of the brain, 

Hoarding with incommunicable art 
Its intellectual gain; 
Man's web of circumstance and fate 
They from their perch of self observe, 

Indifferent as the figures on a slate 

Are to the planet's sun-swung curve 
Whose bright returns they calculate; 
Their nice adjustment, part to part, 

Were shaken from its serviceable mood 112 

By unpremeditated stirs of heart 
Or jar of human neighborhood: 

Some find their natural selves, and only 
then, 

In furloughs of divine escape from men, 

And when, by that brief ecstasy left bare, 
Driven by some instinct of desire, 

They wander worldward, 't is to blink and 
stare, 

Like wild things of the wood about a fire, 

Dazed by the social glow they cannot 
share; 121 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



5°3 



His nature brooked no lonely lair, 

But basked and bourgeoned in copartnery, 

Companionsbip, and open-windowed glee: 

He knew, for he had tried, 

Those speculative heights that lure 

The unpractised foot, impatient of a guide, 

Tow'rd ether too attenuately pure 
For sweet unconscious breath, though dear 

to pride, 
But better loved the foothold sure 130 
Of paths that wind by old abodes of men 
Who hope at last the churchyard's peace 

secure, 
And follow time-worn rules, that them 

suffice, 
Learned from their sires, traditionally wise, 
Careful of honest custom's how and when; 
His mind, too brave to look on Truth 

askance, 
No more those habitudes of faith could 

share, 
But, tinged with sweetness of the old Swiss 

manse, 
Lingered around them still and fain would 

spare. 
Patient to spy a sullen egg for weeks, 140 
The enigma of creation to surprise, 
His truer instinct sought the life that 

speaks 
Without a mystery from kindly eyes; 
In no self -spun cocoon of prudence wound, 
He by the touch of men was best inspired, 
And caught his native greatness at rebound 
From generosities itself had fired; 
Then how the heat through every fibre ran, 
Felt in the gathering presence of the man, 
WhUe the apt word and gesture came un- 
hid ! 150 
Virtues and faults it to one metal wrought, 

Fined all his blood to thought, 
And ran the molten man in all he said or 

did. 
All Tully's rules and all Quintilian's too 
He by the light of listening faces knew, 
And his rapt audience all unconscious lent 
Their own roused force to make him elo- 
quent; 
Persuasion fondled in his look and tone; 
Our speech (with strangers prudish) he 

could bring 
To find new charm in accents not her own; 
Her coy constraints and icy hindrances 161 
Melted upon his lips to natural ease, 
As a brook's fetters swell the dance of 

spring. 



Nor yet all sweetness: not in vain he wore, 
Nor in the sheath of ceremony, controlled 
By velvet courtesy or caution cold, 
That sword of honest anger prized of old, 

But, with two-handed wrath, 
If baseness or pretension crossed his path, 
Struck once nor needed to strike more. 



His magic was not far to seek, — 171 
He was so human ! Whether strong or 

weak, 
Far from his kind he neither sank nor 

soared, 
But sate an equal guest at every board: 
No beggar ever felt him condescend, 
No prince presume ; for still himself he bare 
At manhood's simple level, and where'er 
He met a stranger, there he left a friend. 
How large an aspect ! nobly unsevere, 
With freshness round him of Olympian 

cheer, 180 

Like visits of those earthly gods he came ; 
His look, wherever its good-fortune fell, 
Doubled the feast without a miracle, 
And on the hearthstone danced a happier 

flame ; 
Philemon's crabbed vintage grew benign; 
Amphitryon's gold-juice humanized to wine. 



The garrulous memories 
Gather again from all their far-flown 

nooks, 
Singly at first, and then by twos and threes, 
Then in a throng innumerable, as the rooks 

Thicken their twilight files 191 
Tow'rd Tintern's gray repose of roofless 

aisles: 
Once more I see him at the table's head 
When Saturday her monthly banquet 
spread 

To scholars, poets, wits, 
All choice, some famous, loving things, not 

names, 
And so without a twinge at others' fames; 
Such company as wisest moods befits, 
Yet with no pedant blindness to the worth 

Of indeliberate mirth, 200 

Natures benignly mixed of air and earth, 
Now with the stars and now with equal zest 
Tracing the eccentric orbit of a jest. 



5°4 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



I see in vision the warm-lighted hall, 
The living and the dead I see again, 
And but my chair is empty; 'mid them all 
'T is I that seem the dead: they all remain 
Immortal, changeless creatures of the brain: 
Wellnigh I doubt which world is real 

most, 
Of sense or spirit, to the truly sane; 210 
In this abstraction it were light to deem 
Myself the figment of some stronger 

dream; 
They are the real things, and I the ghost 
That glide unhindered through the solid 

door, 
Vainly for recognition seek from chair to 

chair, 
And strive to speak and am but futile air, 
As truly most of us are little more. 



Him most I see whom we most dearly miss, 

The latest parted thence, 
His features poised in genial armistice 220 
And armed neutrality of self-defence 
Beneath the forehead's walled preeminence, 
While Tyro, plucking facts with careless 

reach, 
Settles off-hand our human how and 

whence ; 
The long-trained veteran scarcely wincing 

hears 
The infallible strategy of volunteers 
Making through Nature's walls its easy 

breach, 
And seems to learn where he alone could 

teach. 
Ample and ruddy, the board's end he fills 
As he our fireside were, our light and 

heat, 230 

Centre where minds diverse and various 

skills 
Find their warm nook and stretch unham- 
pered feet; 
I see the firm benignity of face, 
Wide-smiling champaign, without tameness 

sweet, 
The mass Teutonic toned to Gallic grace, 
The eyes whose sunshine runs before the 

lips 
While Holmes's rockets curve their long 

ellipse, 
And burst in seeds of fire that burst 

again 

To drop in scintillating rain. 



There too the face half-rustic, half-divine, 
Self-poised, sagacious, freaked with hu- 
mor fine, 241 
Of him who taught us not to mow and 

mope 
About our fancied selves, but seek our 
scope 
In Nature's world and Man's, nor fade to 
hollow trope, 
Content with our New World and timely 

bold 
To challenge the o'ermastery of the Old; 
Listening with eyes averse 1 see him sit 
Pricked with the cider of the Judge's wit 
(Ripe-hearted homebrew, fresh and fresh 

again), 
While the wise nose's firm-built aquiline 
Curves sharper to restrain 251 

The merriment whose most unruly moods 
Pass not the dumb laugh learned in lis- 
tening woods 

Of silence-shedding pine: 
Hard by is he whose art's consoling spell 
Hath given both worlds a whiff of aspho- 
del, 
His look still vernal 'mid the wintry ring 
Of petals that remember, not foretell, 
The paler primrose of a second spring. 

5 
And more there are: but other forms 

arise 260 

And seen as clear, albeit with dimmer 

eyes: 
First he from sympathy still held apart 
By shrinking over-eagerness of heart, 
Cloud charged with searching fire, whose 

shadow's sweep 
Heightened mean things with sense of 

brooding ill, 
And steeped in doom familiar field and 

hill,— 
New England's poet, soul reserved and 

deep, 
November nature with a name of May, 
Whom high o'er Concord plains we laid 

to sleep, 
While the orchards mocked us in their 

white array 270 

And building robins wondered at our 

tears, 
Snatched in his prime, the shape august 
That should have stood imbent 'neath 

fourscore years, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



5°5 



The noble head, the eyes of furtive trust, 
All gone to speechless dust. 
And he our passing guest, 1 

Shy nature, too, and stung with life's 
unrest, 

Whom we too briefly had but could not 
hold, 

Who brought ripe Oxford's culture to 
our board, 

The Past's incalculable hoard, 280 

Mellowed by scutcheoned panes in clois- 
ters old, 

Seclusions, ivy-hushed, and pavements 
sweet 

With immemorial lisp of musing feet; 

Young head time-tonsured smoother than 
a friar's, 

Boy face, but grave with answerless de- 
sires, 

Poet in all that poets have of best, 

But foiled with riddles dark and cloudy 
aims, 

Who now hath found sure rest, 

Not by still Isis or historic Thames, 

Nor by the Charles he tried to love with 
me, 290 

But, not misplaced, by Arno's hallowed 
brim, 

Nor scorned by Santa Croee's neighbor- 
ing fames, 
Haply not mindless, wheresoe'er he 
be, 

Of violets that to-day I scattered over 
him. 2 

He, too, is there, 8 

After the good centurion fitly named, 

Whom learning dulled not, nor conven- 
tion tamed, 

Shaking with burly mirth his hyacinthine 
hair, 

Our hearty Grecian of Homeric ways, 
Still found the surer friend where least he 
hoped the praise. 300 



1 Arthur Hugh Clough, who lived in Cambridge from 
1852 to 1853. Lowell speaks of him in the ' Introduc- 
tion ' to the Bigloiv Paper*, 18(X>, as among those whose 
opinion and encouragement he most valued : ' With a 
feeling too tender and grateful to be mixed with any 
vanity, I mention as one of these the late A. H. Clough, 
who more than any one of those I have known (no 
longer living), except Hawthorne, impressed me with 
the constant presence of that indefinable thing we call 
genius.' 

2 Clough's grave is in the little Protestant Cemetery 
at Florence, near that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 
and not far from Walter Savage Landor's. 

3 Cornelius C. Felton. See Longfellow's 'Three 
Friends of Mine.' 



Yea truly, as the sallowing years 

Fall from us faster, like frost-loosened 
leaves 

Pushed by the misty touch of shortening 
days, 
And that unwakened winter nears, 

'T is the void chair our surest guest re- 
ceives, 

'T is lips long cold that give #e warm- 
est kiss, 

'T is the lost voice comes oftenest to our 
ears; 

We count our rosary by the beads we 
miss : 
To me, at least, it seemeth so, 

An exile in the land once found divine, 310 
While my starved fire burns low, 

And homeless winds at the loose case- 
ment whine 

Shrill ditties of the snow-roofed Apen- 
nine. 



IV 



Now forth into the darkness all are gone, 
But memory, still unsated, follows on, 
Retracing step by step our homeward walk, 
With many a laugh among our serious 

talk, 
Across the bridge where, on the dimpling 

tide, 
The long red streamers from the windows 

glide, 

Or the dim western moon 320 

Rocks her skiff's image on the broad lagoon, 
And Boston shows a soft Venetian side 
In that Arcadian light when roof and tree, 
Hard prose by daylight, dream in Italy; 
Or haply in the sky's cold chambers wide 
Shivered the winter stars, while all below, 
As if an end were come of human ill, 
The world was wrapt in innocence of snow 
And the cast-iron bay was blind and still; 
These were our poetry ; in him perhaps 33 o 
Science had barred the gate that lets in 

dream, 
And he would rather count the perch and 

bream 
Than with the current's idle fancy lapse; 
And yet he had the poet's open eye 
That takes a frank delight in all it sees, 
Nor was earth voiceless, nor tbe mystic 

sky, 



S° 6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



To hini the life-long friend of fields and 

trees: 
Then came the prose of the suburban street, 
Its silence deepened by our echoing feet, 
And converse such as rambling hazard 

finds ; 340 

Then he who many cities knew and many 

minds, 
And men once world-noised, now mere 

Ossian forms 
Of misty memory, bade them live anew 
As when they shared earth's manifold de- 

light, 
In shape, in gait, in voice, in gesture true, 
And, with an accent heightening as he 

warms, 
Woidd stop forgetful of the shortening 

night, 
Drop my confining arm, and pom" profuse 
Much worldly wisdom kept for others' 

use, 
Not for his own, for he was rash and free, 350 
His purse or knowledge all men's, like the 

sea. 
Still can I hear his voice's shrilling might 
(With pauses broken, while the fitful spark 
He blew more hotly rounded on the dark 
To hint his features with a Rembrandt 

light) 
Call Oken back, or Humboldt, or Lamarck, 
Or Cuvier's taller shade, and many more 
Whom he had seen, or knew from others' 

sight, 
And make them men to me as ne'er be- 
fore: 
Not seldom, as the imdeadened fibre stirred 
Of noble friendships knit beyond the sea, 361 
.German or French thrust by the lagging 

word, 
For a good leash of mother-tongues had 

he. 
At last, arrived at where our paths divide, 
' Good night ! ' and, ere the distance grew 

too wide, 
• Good night ! ' again; and now with cheated 

ear 
I half hear his who mine shall never hear. 



Sometimes it seemed as if New England 

air 
For his large lungs too parsimonious 

were, 
As if those empty rooms of dogma 

drear 37 o 



Where the ghost shivers of a faith austere 

Counting the horns o'er of the Beast, 
Still scaring those whose faith in it is 

least, 
As if those snaps o' th' moral atmosphere 
That sharpen all the needles of the East, 

Had been to him like death, 
Accustomed to draw Europe's freer 
breath 

In a more stable element; 
Nay, even our landscape, half the year 

morose, 
Our practical horizon grimly pent, 3S0 
Our air, sincere of ceremonious haze, 
Forcing hard outlines mercilessly close, 
Our social monotone of level days, 

Might make our best seem banishment; 

But it was nothing so; 

Haply his instinct might divine, 

Beneath our drift of puritanic snow, 

The marvel sensitive and fine 
Of sanguinaria over-rash to blow 
And trust its shyness to an air malign; 390 
Well might he prize truth's warranty and 

pledge 
In the grim outcrop of our granite edge, 
Or Hebrew fervor flashing forth at need 
In the gaunt sons of Calvin's iron breed, 
As prompt to give as skilled to win and 

keep; 
But, though such intuitions might not 

cheer, 
Yet life was good to him, and, there or 
here, 
With that sufficing joy, the day was never 
cheap; 
Thereto his mind was its own ample 

sphere, 

And, like those buildings great that 

through the year 400 

Carry one temperature, his nature large 

Made its own climate, nor could any 

marge 
Traced by convention stay him from his 

bent : 
He had a habitude of mountain air; 
He brought wide outlook where he went, 

And could on sunny uplands dwell 
Of prospect sweeter than the pastures 
fair 
High-hung of viny Neufchatel; 
Nor, surely, did he miss 
Some pale, imaginary bliss 410 
Of earlier sights whose inner landscape still 
was Swiss. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



5°7 



I cannot think he wished so soon to die 
With all his senses lull of eager heat, 
And rosy years that stood expectant by 
To buckle the winged sandals on their 

feet, 
He that was friends with Earth, and 

all her sweet 
Took with both hands unsparingly: 
Truly this life is precious to the root, 
And good the feel of grass beneath the 

foot; 
To lie in buttercups and clover-bloom, 420 

Tenants in common with the bees, 
And watch the white clouds drif t through 

gulfs of trees, 
Is better than long waiting in the tomb; 
Only once more to feel the coming spring 
As the birds feel it, when it bids them 
sing, 
Only once more to see the moon 
Through leaf-fringed abbey-arches of the 
elms 
Curve her mild sickle in the West 
Sweet with the breath of hay-cocks, were 

a boon 
Worth any promise of soothsayer 
realms 430 

Or casual hope of being elsewhere blest; 

To take December by the beard 
And crush the creaking snow with springy 

foot, 
While overhead the North's dumb stream- 
ers shoot, 
Till Winter fawn upon the cheek en- 
deared, 
Then the long evening-ends 
Lingered by cosy chimney-nooks, 
With high companionship of books 
Or slippered talk of friends 
And sweet habitual looks, 44 o 

Is better than to stop the ears with dust: 
Too soon the spectre comes to say, ' Thou 
must ! ' 



When toil-crooked hands are crost upon 
the breast, 
They comfort us with sense of rest; 
They must be glad to lie forever still; 
Their work is ended with their day; 
Another fills their room ; 't is the World's 
ancient way, 



Whether for good or ill; 
But the deft spinners of the brain, 
Who love each added day and find it 

gain, 450 

Them overtakes the doom 
To snap the half-grown flower upon the 

loom 
(Trophy that was to be of life-long pain), 
The thread no other skill can ever knit 

again. 
'T was so with him, for he was glad to 

live, 
'T was doubly so, for he left work begun; 
Could not this eagerness of Fate forgive 

Till all the allotted flax were spun ? 
It matters not; for, go at night or noon, 
A friend, whene'er he dies, has died too 

soon, 460 

And, once we hear the hopeless He is 

dead, 
So far as flesh hath knowledge, all is 

said. 



VI 



I seem to see the black procession go: 
That crawling prose of death too well I 

know, 
The vulgar paraphrase of glorious woe ; 
I see it wind through that unsightly 

grove, 
Once beautiful, but long defaced 
With granite permanence of cockney 

taste 
And all those grim disfigurements we 

love: 
There, then, we leave him: Him? such 

costly waste 47 o 

Nature rebels at: and it is not true 
Of those most precious parts of him we 

knew: 
Could we be conscious but as dreamers be, 
'T were sweet to leave this shifting life 

of tents 
Sunk in the changeless calm of Deity; 
Nay, to be mingled with the elements, 
The fellow-servant of creative powers, 
Partaker in the solemn year's events, 
To share the work of busy - fingered 

hours, 
To be night's silent almoner of dew, 480 
To rise again in plants and breathe and 

grow, 



5 o8 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



To stream as tides the ocean caverns 

through, 
Or with the rapture of great winds to 

blow 
About earth's shaken coignes, were not a 
fate 
To leave us all-disconsolate; 
Even endless slumber in the sweetening 
sod 
Of charitable earth 
That takes out all our mortal stains, 
And makes us cleanlier neighbors of the 
clod, 
Methinks were better worth 490 

Than the poor fruit of most men's wake- 
ful pains, 
The heart's insatiable ache: 
But such was not his faith, 
Nor mine : it may be he had trod 
Outside the plain old path of God thus 
spake, 
But God to him was very God, 
And not a visionary wraith 
Skulking in murky corners of the mind, 
And he was sure to be 499 

Somehow, somewhere, imperishable as He, 
Not with His essence mystically combined, 
As some high spirits long, but whole and 
free, 
A perfected and conscious Agassiz. 
And such I figure liim: the wise of old 
Welcome and own him of their peaceful 

fold, Q 

Not truly with the guilcrenrolled 
Of him who seeking inward guessed 
Diviner riddles than the rest, 
And groping in the darks of thought 
Touched the Great Hand and knew it 
not; 510 

Rather he shares the daily light, 
From reason's charier fountains won, 
Of his great chief, the slow-paced Stagy- 
rite, 
And Cuvier clasps once more his long-lost 
son. 



The shape erect is prone: forever stilled 
The winning tongue; the forehead's high- 
piled heap, 
A cairn which every science helped to 

build, 
Unvalued will its golden secrets keep: 
He knows at last if Life or Death be 
best: 



Wherever he be flown, whatever vest 520 
The being hath put on which lately here 
So many-friended was, so full of cheer 
To make men feel the Seeker's noble zest, 
We have not lost him all; he is not gone 
To the dumb herd of them that wholly 

die; 
The beauty of his better self lives on 
In minds he touched with fire, in many an 

eye 
He trained to Truth's exact severity; 
He was a Teacher: why be grieved for 

him 529 

Whose living word still stimulates the 

air? 
In endless file shall loving scholars come 
The glow of his transmitted touch to share, 
And trace his features with an eye less 

dim 
Than ours whose sense familiar wont 

makes numb. 
1874. 1874. 



SONNET* 

SCOTTISH BORDER 

As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills 

Whose heather-purpled slopes, in glory 
rolled, 

Flush all my thought with momentary 
gold, 

What pang of vague regret my fancy 
thrills ? 

Here 'tis enchanted ground the peasant 
tills, 

Where the shy ballad dared its blooms un- 
fold, 

And memory's glamour makes new sights 
seem old, 

As when our life some vanished dream 
fulfils. 

Yet not to thee belong these painless tears, 

Land loved ere seen: before my darkened 
eyes, 

From far beyond the waters and the years, 

Horizons mute that wait their poet rise ; 

The stream before me fades and disap- 
pears, 

And in the Charles the western splendor 
dies. 

1875. 

1 See Lowell's letter to Howells, March 21, 1875. 
Letters, vol. ii, p. 137. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



5°9 



THREE MEMORIAL POEMS 



' Coscienza f usca 
O della propria o dell' altrui vergogna 
Pur sentira la tua parola brusca.' 

If I let fall a word of bitter mirth l 

When public shames more shameful pardon won, 

Some have misjudged me, and my service done, 

If small, yet faithful, deemed of little worth : 

Through veins that drew their life from Western earth 

Two hundred years and more my blood hath run 

In no polluted course from sire to son ; 

And thus was I predestined ere my birth 

To love the soil wherewith my fibres own 

Instinctive sympathies; yet love it so 

As honor would, nor lightly to dethrone 

Judgment, the stamp of manhood, nor forego 

The son's right to a mother dearer grown 

With growing knowledge and more chaste than snow. 



ODE 2 • 

READ AT THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNI- 
VERSARY OF THE FIGHT AT CONCORD 
BRIDGE 

19TH April, 1875 

I 

Who cometh over the hills, 

Her garments with morning sweet, 

The dance of a thousand rills 

Making music before her feet ? 

Her presence freshens the air; 

Sunshine steals light from her face; 

The leaden footstep of Care 

Leaps to the time of her pace, 

Fairness of all that is fair, 

Grace at the heart of all grace, 10 

Sweetener of hut and of hall, 

Bringer of life out of naught, 

Freedom, oh, fairest of all 

The daughters of Time and Thought ! 



She cometh, cometh to-day: 
Hark ! hear ye not her tread, 
Sending a thrill through your clay, 
Under the sod there, ye dead, 
Her nurslings and champions ? 
Do ye not hear, as she comes, 20 

The bay of the deep-mouthed guns, 
The gathering rote of the drums ? 

1 Alluding to the lines in the second stanza of Low- 
ell's ' Agassiz,' which were written in 1874, when the 
political corruption of that time was being revealed and 
in many cases condoned, — lines which were at the 
time severely criticised as ' unpatriotic' 

2 See Lowell's letter to James B. Thayer, January 
14, 1877. Letters, vol. ii, pp. 188-191. 



The bells that called ye to prayer, 
How wildly they clamor on her, 
Crying, ' She cometh ! prepare 
Her to praise and her to honor, 
That a hundred years ago 
Scattered here in blood and tears 
Potent seeds wherefrom should grow 
Gladness for a hundred years ! ' 30 



Tell me, young men, have ye seen 

Creature of diviner mien 

For true hearts to long and cry for, 

Manly hearts to live and die for ? 

What hath she that others want ? 

Brows that all endearments haunt, 

Eyes that make it sweet to dare, 

Smiles that cheer untimely death, 

Looks that fortify despair, 

Tones more brave than trumpet's breath; 

Tell me, maidens, have ye known 41 

Household charm more sweetly rare, 

Grace of woman ampler blown, 

Modesty more debonair, 

Younger heart with wit full grown ? 

Oh for an hour of my prime, 

The pulse of my hotter years, 

That I might praise her in rhyme 

Would tingle your eyelids to tears, 

Our sweetness, our strength, and our star, 

Our hope, our joy, and our trust, 51 

Who lifted us out of the dust, 

And made us whatever we are ! 



Whiter than moonshine upon snow 
Her raiment is, but round the hem 



5 IQ 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Crimson stained ; and, as to and fro 
Her sandals flash, we see on them, 
And on her instep veined with blue, 
Flecks of crimson, on those fair feet, 
High-arched, Diana-like, and fleet, 60 
Fit for no grosser stain than dew: 
Oh, call them rather chrisms than stains, 
Sacred and from heroic veins ! 
For, in the glory-guarded pass, 
Her haughty and far-shining head 
She bowed to shrive Leonidas 
With his imperishable dead; 
Her, too, Morgarten saw, 
Where the Swiss lion fleshed his icy paw; 
She followed Cromwell's quenchless star 
Where the grim Puritan tread 71 

Shook Marston, Naseby, and Dunbar: 
Yea, on her feet are dearer dyes 
Yet fresh, not looked on with untearful 
eyes. 



Our fathers found her in the woods 
Where Nature meditates and broods, 
The seeds of unexampled things 
Which Time to consummation brings 
Through life and death and man's unstable 

moods ; 
They met her here, not recognized, 80 

A sylvan huntress clothed in furs, 
To whose chaste wants her bow sufficed, 
Nor dreamed what destinies were hers: 
She taught them bee-like to create 
Their simpler forms of Church and State; 
She taught them to endue 
The past with other functions than it knew, 
And turn in channels strange the uncertain 

stream of Fate; 
Better than all, she fenced them in their 

need 
With iron-handed Duty's sternest creed, 90 
'Gainst Self's lean wolf that ravens word 
and deed. 



Why cometh she hither to-day 

To this low village of the plain 

Far from the Present's loud highway, 

From Trade's cool heart and seething 

brain ? 
Why cometh she ? She was not far away. 
Since the soul touched it, not in vain, 
With pathos of immortal gain, 
'T is here her fondest memories stay. 
She loves yon pine-bemurmured ridge 100 



Where now our broad-browed poet sleeps, 
Dear to both Englands ; near him he 
Who wore the ring of Canace; 
But most her heart to rapture leaps 
Where stood that era-parting bridge, 
O'er which, with footfall still as dew, 
The Old Time passed into the New; 
Where, as your stealthy river creeps, 
He whispers to his listening weeds 
Tales of sublimest homespun deeds. no 
Here English law and English thought 
'Gainst the self-will of England fought; 
And here were men (coequal with their 

fate), 
Who did great things, unconscious they 

were great. 
They dreamed not what a die was cast 
With that firs^answering shot ; what then ? 
There was their duty; they were men 
Schooled the soul's inward gospel to obey, 
Though leading to the lion's den. 
They felt the habit-hallowed world give 

way 120 

Beneath their lives, and on went they, 
Unhappy who was last. 
When Buttrick gave the word, 
That awful idol of the unchallenged Past, 
Strong in their love, and in their lineage 

strong, 
Fell crashing: if they heard it not, 
Yet the earth heard, 
Nor ever hath forgot, 
As on from startled throne to throne, 
Where Superstition sate or conscious 

Wrong, 130 

A shudder ran of some dread birth un- 
known. 
Thrice venerable spot ! 
River more fateful than the Rubicon ! 
O'er those red planks, to/ snatch her diadem, 
Man's Hope, star - girdled, sprang with 

them, 
And over ways untried the feet of Doom 

strode on. 



Think you these felt no charms 

In their gray homesteads and embowered 

farms ? 
In household faces waiting at the door 
Their evening step should lighten up no 

more ? 140 

In fields their boyish feet had known ? 
In trees their fathers' hands had set, 
And which with them had grown, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



5ii 



Widening each year their leafy coronet ? 
Felt they no pang of passionate regret 
For those unsolid goods that seem so much 

our own ? 
These things are dear to every man that 

lives, 
And life prized more for what it lends than 

gives. 
Yea, many a tie, through iteration sweet, 
Strove to detain their fatal feet; 150 

And yet the enduring half they chose, 
Whose choice decides a man life's slave or 

king, 
The invisible things of God before the seen 

and known: 
Therefore their memory inspiration blows 
With echoes gathering on from zone to 

zone; 
For manhood is the one immortal thing 
Beneath Time's changeful sky, 
And, where it lightened once, from age to 

age, 
Men come to learn, in grateful pilgrimage, 
That length of days is knowing when to 

die. 160 



What marvellous change of things and 

men ! 
She, a world-wandering orphan then, 
So mighty now ! Those are her streams 
That whirl the myriad, myriad wheels 
Of all that does, and all that dreams, 
Of all that thinks, and all that feels, 
Through spaces stretched from sea to sea; 
By idle tongues and busy brains, 
By who doth right, and who refrains, 
Hers are our losses and our gains; 170 

Our maker and our victim she. 



Maiden half mortal, half divine, 

We triumphed in thy coming; to the brinks 

Our hearts were filled with pride's tumul- 
tuous wine; 

Better to-day who rather feels than thinks. 

Yet will some graver thoughts intrude, 

And cares of sterner mood; 

They won thee : who shall keep thee ? From 
the deeps 

Where discrowned empires o'er their ruins 
brood, 

And many a thwarted hope wrings its weak 
hands and weeps, 180 

I hear the voice as of a mighty wind 



From all heaven's caverns rushing uncon- 

fined, 
' I, Freedom, dwell with Knowledge : I 

abide 
With men whom dust of faction cannot 

blind 
To the slow tracings of the Eternal Mind; 
With men by culture trained and fortified, 
Who bitter duty to sweet lusts prefer, 
Fearless to counsel and obey. 
Conscience my sceptre is, and law my 

sword, 
Not to be drawn in passion or in play, 190 
But terrible to punish and deter; 
Implacable as God's word, 
Like it, a shepherd's crook to them that 

blindly err. 
Your firm-pulsed sires, my martyrs and my 

saints, 
Offshoots of that one stock whose patient 

sense 
Hath known to mingle flux with perma- 
nence, 
Bated my chaste denials and restraints 
Above the moment's dear-paid paradise: 
Beware lest, shifting with Time's gradual 

creep, 
The light that guided shine into your 

eyes. 200 

The envious Powers of ill nor wink nor 

sleep: 
Be therefore timely wise, 
Nor laugh when this one steals, and that 

one lies, 
As if your luck could cheat those sleepless 

spies, 
Till the deaf Fury comes your house to 

sweep ! ' 
I hear the voice, and unaff righted bow; 
Ye shall not be prophetic now, 
Heralds of ill, that darkening fly 
Between my vision and the rainbowed sky, 
Or on the left your hoarse forebodings 

croak 210 

From many a blasted bough 
On Yggdrasil's storm-sinewed oak, 
That once was green, Hope of the West, as 

thou: 
Yet pardon if I tremble while I boast; 
For I have loved as those who pardon most. 



Away, ungrateful doubt, away ! 
At least she is our own to-day. 
Break into rapture, my song, 



512 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Verses, leap forth in the sun, 
Bearing the joyance along 220 

Like a train of fire as ye run ! 
Pause not for choosing of words, 
Let them but blossom and sing 
Blithe as the orchards and birds 
With the new coming of spring ! 
Dance in your jollity, bells ; 
Shout, cannon; cease not, ye drums; 
Answer, ye hillside and dells; 
Bow, all ye people ! She comes, 
Radiant, calm-fronted, as when 230 

She hallowed that April day. 
Stay with us ! Yes, thou shalt stay, 
Softener and strengthener of men, 
Freedom, not won by the vain, 
Not to be courted in play, 
Not to be kept without pain. 
Stay with us ! Yes, thou wilt stay, 
Handmaid and mistress of all, 
Kindler of deed and of thought, 
Thou that to hut and to hall 240 

Equal deliverance brought ! \ 

Souls of her martyrs, draw near, 
Touch our dull lips with your fire, 
That we may praise without fear 
Her our delight, our desire, 
Our faith's inextinguishable star, 
Our hope, our remembrance, our trust, 
Our present, our past, our to be, 
Who will mingle her life with our dust 
And makes us deserve to be free ! 250 
1875. 1875. 



UNDER THE OLD ELM 1 

POEM READ AT CAMBRIDGE ON THE 
HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF WASH- 
INGTON'S TAKING COMMAND OF THE 
AMERICAN ARMY, 3D JULY, 1 775 



Words pass as wind, but where great 

deeds were done 
A power abides transfused from sire to 

son: 

1 I think the ' Old Elm ' the best of the three 
[memorial poems], mainly because it was composed 
after my college duties were over, though even in that 
I was distracted by the intervention of the Commence- 
ment dinner. (Lowell, letter of January 14, 1877.) 

We, too, here in my birthplace, having found out 



The boy feels deeper meanings thrill his 

ear, 
That tingling through his pulse life-long 

shall run, 
With sure impulsion to keep honor clear, 
When, pointing down, his father whispers, 

' Here, 
Here, where we stand, stood he, the purely 

great, 
Whose soul no siren passion could un- 

sphere, 
Then nameless, now a power and mixed 

with fate.' 
Historic town, thou holdest sacred dust, 10 
Once known to men as pious, learned, 

just, 
And one memorial pile that dares to 

last; 
But Memory greets with reverential kiss 
No spot in all thy circuit sweet as this, 
Touched by that modest glory as it past, 
O'er which yon elm hath piously displayed 
These hundred years its monumental shade. 



Of our swift passage through this scenery 
Of life and death, more durable than we, 
What landmark so congenial as a tree 20 
Repeating its green legend every spring, 
And, with a yearly ring, 
Recording the fair seasons as they flee, 
Type of our brief but still-renewed mortal- 

ity? 
We fall as leaves: the immortal trunk re- 
mains, 
Build ed with costly juice of hearts and 

brains 
Gone to the mould now, whither all that 

be 
Vanish returnless, yet are procreant still 
In human lives to come of good or ill, 
And feed unseen the roots of Destiny. 30 

that something happened here a hundred years ago, 
must have our centennial ; and, since my friend and 
townsman Dr. Holmes could n't be had, I felt bound 
to do the poetry for the day. We have still standing 
the elm under which Washington took command of the 
American (till then provincial) army, and under which 
also Whitefield had preached some thirty years before. 
I took advantage of the occasion to hold out a hand of 
kindly reconciliation to Virginia. I could do it with the 
profounder feeling, that no family lost more than mine 
by the Civil War. Three nephews (the hope of our race) 
were killed in one or other of the Virginia battles, 
and three cousins on other of those bloody fields. 
(Lowell, letter of July G, 1875. Quoted by permission 
of Messrs. Harper & Brothers.) 

See also the letters of October 16, 1875, and February 
22, 1877. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



513 



Men's monuments, grown old, forget their 

names 
They should eternize, but the place 
Where shining souls have passed imbibes a 

grace 
Beyond mere earth; some sweetness of 

their fames 
Leaves in the soil its unextinguished trace, 
Pimgent, pathetic, sad with nobler aims, 
That penetrates our lives and heightens 

them or shames. 
This insubstantial world and fleet 
Seems solid for a moment when we stand 
On dust ennobled by heroic feet 40 

Once mighty to sustain a tottering land, 
And mighty still such burthen to upbear, 
Nor doomed to tread the path of things 

that merely were: 
Our sense, refined with virtue of the spot, 
Across the mists of Lethe's sleepy stream 
Recalls him, the sole chief without a blot, 
No more a pallid image and a dream, 
But as he dwelt with men decorously su- 
preme. 

2 
Our grosser minds need this terrestrial 

hint 
To raise long-buried days from tombs of 
print: 50 

' Here stood he,' softly we repeat, 
And lo, the statue shrined and still 
In that gray minster-front we call the Past, 
Feels in its frozen veins our pulses thrill, 
Breathes living air and mocks at Death's 

deceit. 
It warms, it stirs, comes down to us at last, 
Its features human with familiar light, 
A man, beyond the historian's art to kill, 
Or sculptor's to efface with patient chisel- 
blight. 

3 
Sure the dumb earth hath memory, nor for 

naught 60 

Was Fancy given, on whose enchanted loom 
Present and Past commingle, fruit and 

bloom 
Of one fair bough, inseparably wrought 
Into the seamless tapestry of thought. 
So charmed, with undeluded eye we see 
In history's fragmentary tale 



Bright clues of continuity, 
Learn that high natures over Time prevail, 
And feel ourselves a link in that entail 
That binds all ages past with all that are 
to be. 70 



in 



Beneath our consecrated elm 

A century ago he stood, 

Famed vaguely for that old fight in the 

wood 
Whose red surge sought, but could not 

overwhelm 
The life foredoomed to wield our rough- 
hewn helm: 1 — 
From colleges, where now the gown 
To arms had yielded, 2 from the town, 
Our rude self-summoned levies flocked to 

see 
The new-come chiefs and wonder which 

was he. 
No need to question long; close-lipped and 

tall, 80 

Long trained in murder-brooding forests 

lone 
To bridle others' clamors and his own, 
Firmly erect, he towered above them all, 
The incarnate discipline that was to free 
With iron curb that armed democracy. 

2 
A motley rout was that which came to 

stare, 
In raiment tanned by years of sun and 

storm, 
Of every shape that was not uniform, 
Dotted with regimentals here and there; 
An army all of captains, used to pray 90 
And stiff in fight, but serious drill's despair, 
Skilled to debate their orders, not obey; 
Deacons were there, selectmen, men of note 
In half-tamed hamlets ambushed round 

with woods, 
Ready to settle Freewill by a vote, 

1 After the defeat of Braddock, Washington wrote to 
his brother : ' By the all-powerful dispensations of Pro- 
vidence I have been protected beyond all human proba- 
bility or expectation ; for I had four bullets through 
my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet I escaped 
unhurt, although death was levelling my companions 
on every side of me.' (Quoted in the Riverside Litera- 
ture Series.) 

2 Harvard, Hollis, and Massachusetts Halls were used 
as barracks, and the President's house was for a time 
Washington's headquarters. 



SH 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



But largely liberal to its private moods; 
Prompt to assert by manners, voice, or pen, 
Or ruder arms, their rights as Englishmen, 
Nor much fastidious as to how and when: 
Yet seasoned stuff and fittest to create 100 
A thought-staid army or a lasting state: 
Haughty they said he was, at first; severe; 
But owned, as all men own, the steady hand 
Upon the bridle, patient to command, 
Prized, as all prize, the justice pure from 

fear, 
And learned to honor first, then love him, 

then revere. 
Such power there is in clear-eyed self- 
restraint 
And purpose clean as light from every 
selfish taint. 



Musing beneath the legendary tree, 

The years between furl off: I seem to see no 

The sun-flecks, shaken the stirred foliage 

through, 
Dapple with gold his sober buff and blue 
And weave prophetic aureoles round the 

head 
That shines our beacon now nor darkens 

with the dead. 
O man of silent mood, 
A stranger among strangers then, 
How art thou since renowned the Great, 

the Good, 
Familiar as the day in all the homes of men ! 
The winged years, that winnow praise to 

blame, 
Blow many names out: they but fan and 

flame 120 

The self -renewing splendors of thy fame. 



How many subtlest influences unite, 
With spiritual touch of joy or pain, 
Invisible as air and soft as light, 
To body forth that image of the brain 
We call our Country, visionary shape, 
Loved more than woman, fuller of fire than 

wine, 
Whose charm can none define, 
Nor any, though he flee it, can escape ! 129 
All party-colored threads the weaver Time 
Sets in his web, now trivial, now sublime, 
All memories, all forebodings, hopes and 

fears, 



Mountain and river, forest, prairie, sea, 
A hill, a rock, a homestead, field, or tree, 
The casual gleanings of unreckoned years, 
Take goddess-shape at last and there is She, 
Old at our birth, new as the springing 

hours, 
Shrine of our weakness, fortress of our 

powers, 
Consoler, kindler, peerless 'mid her peers, 
A force that 'neath our conscious being 

stirs, 140 

A life to give ours permanence, when we 
Are borne to mingle our poor earth with 

hers, 
And all this glowing world goes with us on 

our biers. 



Nations are long results, by ruder ways 
Gathering the might that warrants length 

of days; 
They may be pieced of half-reluctant 

shares 
Welded by hammer-strokes of broad- 
brained kings, 
Or from a doughty people grow, the heirs 
Of wise traditions widening cautious rings; 
At best they are computable things, 150 
A strength behind us making us feel bold 
In right, or, as may chance, in wrong; 
Whose force by figures may be summed 

and told, 
So many soldiers, ships, and dollars strong, 
And we but drops that bear compulsory 

part 
In the dumb throb of a mechanic heart; 
But Country is a shape of each man's 

mind 
Sacred from definition, unconfined 
By the cramped walls where daily drudger- 
ies grind; 
An inward vision, yet an outward birth 160 
Of sweet familiar heaven and earth; 
A brooding Presence that stirs motions 

blind 
Of wings within our embryo being's shell 
That wait but her completer spell 
To make us eagle-natured, fit to dare 
Life's nobler spaces and untarnished air. 



You, who hold dear this self-conceived 

ideal, 
Whose faith and works alone can make it 

real, 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



5*5 



Bring all your fairest gifts to deck her 

shrine 
Who lifts our lives away from Thine and 
Mine 170 

And feeds the lamp of manhood more di- 
vine 
With fragrant oils of quenchless constancy. 
When all have done their utmost, surely he 
Hath given the best who gives a character 
Erect and constant, which nor any shock 
Of loosened elements, nor the forceful sea 
Of flowing or of ebbing fates, can stir 
From its deep bases in the living rock 
Of ancient manhood's sweet security: 
And this he gave, serenely far from pride 
As baseness, boon with prosperous stars 
allied, 18 1 

Part of what nobler seed shall in our loins 
abide. 



No bond of men as common pride so 

strong, 
In names time-filtered for the lips of song, 
Still operant, with the primal Forces bound 
Whose currents, on their spiritual round, 
Transfuse our mortal will nor are gainsaid: 
These are their arsenals, these the exhaust- 
less mines 
That give a constant heart in great de- 
signs; 
These are the stuff whereof such dreams 
are made 190 

As make heroic men: thus surely he 
Still holds in place the massy blocks he 

laid 
'Neath our new frame, enforcing soberly 
The self-control that makes and keeps a 
people free. 



Oh, for a drop of that Cornelian ink 
Which gave Agricola dateless length of 

days, 
To celebrate him fitly, neither swerve 
To phrase unkempt, nor pass discretion's 

brink, 
With him so statue-like in sad reserve, 
So diffident to claim, so forward to de- 
serve ! 200 
Nor need I shun due influence of his fame 
Who, mortal among mortals, seemed as 
now 



The equestrian shape with unimpassioned 
brow, 

That paces silent on through vistas of ac- 
claim. 



What figure more immovably august 
Than that grave strength so patient and so 

pure, 
Calm in good fortune, when it wavered, 

sure, 
That mind serene, impenetrably just, 
Modelled on classic lines so simple they 

endure ? 
That soul so softly radiant and so white 210 
The track it left seems less of fire than 

light, 
Cold but to such as love distemperature ? 
And if pure light, as some deem, be the 

force 
That drives rejoicing planets on their 

course, 
Why for his power benign seek an impurer 

source ? 
His was the true enthusiasm that burns 

long, 
Domestically bright, 
Fed from itself and shy of human sight, 
The hidden force that makes a lifetime 

strong, 
And not the short-lived fuel of a song. 220 
Passionless, say you ? What is passion for 
But to sublime our natures and control 
To front heroic toils with late return, 
Or none, or such as shames the conqueror ? 
That fire was fed with substance of the 

soul 
And not with holiday stubble, that could 

burn, 
Unpraised of men who after bonfires run, 
Through seven slow years of unadvancing 

war, 
Equal when fields were lost or fields were 

won, 
With breath of popular applause or blame, 
Nor fanned nor damped, unquenchably the 

same, 231 

Too inward to be reached by flaws of idle 

fame. 



Soldier and statesman, rarest unison; 
High-poised example of great duties done 
Simply as breathing, a world's honors worn 
As life's indifferent gifts to all men born; 



5i6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Dumb for himself, unless it were to God, 
But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent, 
Tramping the snow to coral where they 

trod, 
Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content; 240 
Modest, yet firm as Nature's self; un- 

blamed 
Save by the men his nobler temper 

shamed; 
Never seduced through show of present 

good 
By other than unsetting lights to steer 
New-trimmed in Heaven, nor than his 

steadfast mood 
More steadfast, far from rashness as from 

fear; 
Rigid, but with himself first, grasping 

still 
In swerveless poise the wave-beat helm of 

will; 
Not honored then or now because he 

wooed 
The popular voice, but that he still with- 
stood; 250 
Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but 

one, 
Who was all this and ours, and all men's, 

— Washington. 



Minds strong by fits, irregularly great, 
That flash and darken like revolving lights, 
Catch more the vulgar eye unschooled to 

wait 
On the long curve of patient days and 

nights 
Rounding a whole life to the circle fair 
Of orbed fulfilment; and this balanced 

soul, 
So simple in its grandeur, coldly bare 
Of draperies theatric, standing there 260 
In perfect symmetry of self-control, 
Seems not so great at first, but greater 

grows 
Still as we look, and by experience learn 
How grand this quiet is, how nobly stern 
The discipline that wrought through life- 
long throes 
That energetic passion of repose. 

5 
A nature too decorous and severe, 
Too self-respectful in its griefs and joys, 
For ardent girls and boys 
Who find no genius in a mind so clear 270 



That its grave depths seem obvious and 

near, 
Nor a soul great that made so little noise. 
They feel no force in that calm-cadenced 

phrase, 
The habitual full-dress of his well-bred 

mind, 
That seems to pace the minuet's courtly 

maze 
And tell of ampler leisures, roomier length 

of days. 
His firm-based brain, to self so little kind 
That no tumultuary blood could blind, 
Formed to control men, not amaze, 
Looms not bike those that borrow height of 

haze : 280 

It was a world of statelier movement then 
Than this we fret in, he a denizen 
Of that ideal Rome that made a man for 

men. 



VI 



The longer on this earth we live 

And weigh the various qualities of men, 

Seeing how most are fugitive, 

Or fitful gifts, at best, of now and then, 

Wind-wavered corpse-lights, daughters of 

the fen, 
The more we feel the high stern-featured 

beauty 
Of plain devotedness to duty, 290 

Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal 

praise, 
But finding amplest recompense 
For life's ungarlanded expense 
In work done squarely and unwasted days. 
For this we honor him, that he could 

know 
How sweet the service and how free 
Of her, God's eldest daughter here below, 
And choose in meanest raiment which was 

she. 



Placid completeness, life without a fall 
From faith or highest aims, truth's breach- 
less wall, 300 
Surely if any fame can bear the touch, 
His will say ' Here ! ' at the last trumpet's 

call, 
The unexpressive man whose life expressed 
so much. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



5i7 



Never to see a nation born 
Hath been given to mortal man, 
Unless to those who, on that summer morn, 
Gazed silent when the great Virginian 
Unsheathed the sword whose fatal flash 
Shot union through the incoherent clash 
Of our loose atoms, crystallizing them 310 
Around a single will's unpliant stem, 
And making purpose of emotion rash. 
Out of that scabbard sprang, as from its 

womb, 
Nebulous at first but hardening to a star, 
Through mutual share of sunburst and of 

gloom, 
The common faith that made us what we 



That lifted blade transformed our jangling 

clans, 
Till then provincial, to Americans, 
And made a unity of wildering plans; 
Here was the doom fixed: here is marked 

the date 320 

When tbis New World awoke to man's 

estate, 
Burnt its last ship and ceased to look be- 
hind: 
Nor thoughtless was the choice ; no love or 

hate 
Could from its poise move that deliberate 

mind, 
Weighing between too early and too late 
Those pitfalls of the man refused by Fate: 
His was the impartial vision of the great 
Who see not as thev wish, but as thev 

find. y 

He saw the dangers of defeat, nor less 
The incomputable perils of success; 33 o 

The sacred past thrown by, an empty rind; 
The future, cloud-land, snare of prophets 

blind; 
The waste of war, the ignominy of peace; 
On either hand a sullen rear of woes, 
Whose garnered lightnings none could 

guess, 
Piling its thunder-heads and muttering 

« Cease ! ' 
Yet drew not back his hand, but gravely 

chose 
The seeming-desperate task whence our 

new nation rose. 



A noble choice and of immortal seed ! 
Nor deem that acts heroic wait on chance 
Or easy were as in a boy's romance; 341 
The man's whole life preludes the single 

deed 
That shall decide if his inheritance 
Be witb the sifted few of matchless breed, 
Our race's sap and sustenance, 
Or with the unmotived herd that only sleep 

and feed. 
Choice seems a thing indifferent; thus or so, 
What matters it ? The Fates with mock- 
ing face 
Look on inexorable, nor seem to know 
Where the lot lurks that gives life's fore- 
most place. 350 
Yet Duty's leaden casket holds it still, 
And but two ways are offered to our will, 
Toil with rare triumph, ease with safe dis- 
grace, 
The problem still for us and all of human 

race. 
He chose, as men choose, where most dan- 
ger showed, 
Nor ever faltered 'neath the load 
Of petty cares, that gall great hearts the 

most, 
But kept right on the strenuous up-hill 

road, 
Strong to the end, above complaint or boast : 
The popular tempest on his rock-mailed 
coast 360 

Wasted its wind-borne spray, 
The noisy marvel of a day ; 
His soul sate still in its unstormed abode. 

VIII 

Virginia gave us this imperial man 

Cast in the massive mould 

Of those high-statured ages old 

Which into grander forms our mortal metal 

ran; 
She gave us this unblemished gentleman: 
What shall we give her back but love and 

praise 
As in the dear old unestranged days 3 70 
Before the inevitable wrong began ? 
Mother of States and undiminished men, 
Thou gavest us a country, giving him, 
And we owe alway what we owed thee then : 
The boon thou wouldst have snatched from 

us agen 
Shines as before with no abatement dim. 



5*8 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



A great man's memory is the only thing 
With influence to outlast the present whim 
And bind us as when here he knit our 

golden ring. 379 

All of him that was subject to the hours 
Lies in thy soil and makes it part of ours : 
Across more recent graves, 
Where unresentful Nature waves 
Her pennons o'er the shot-ploughed sod, 
Proclaiming the sweet Truce of God, 
We from this consecrated plain stretch out 
Our hands as free from afterthought or 

doubt 
As here the united North 
Poured her embrowned manhood forth 
In welcome of our savior and thy son. 390 
Through battle we have better learned thy 

worth, 
The long-breathed valor and undaunted 

will, 
Which, like his own, the day's disaster 

done, 
Could, safe in manhood, suffer and be still. 
Both thine and ours the victory hardly 

won; 
If ever with distempered voice or pen 
We have misdeemed thee, here we take it 

back, 
And for the dead of both don common 

black. 
Be to us evermore as thou wast then, 
As we forget thou hast not always been, 
Mother of States and unpolluted men, 401 
Virginia, fitly named from England's manly 

queen ! 
1875. 1875. 

AN ODE 

FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY, 1 876 
I 



Entranced I saw a vision in the cloud 
That loitered dreaming in yon sunset sky, 
Full of fair shapes, half creatures of the 

eye, 
Half chance-evoked by the wind's fantasy 
In golden mist, an ever-shifting crowd: 
There, 'mid unreal forms that came and 

went 
In air-spun robes, of evanescent dye, 
A woman's semblance shone preeminent; 
Not armed like Pallas, not like Hera proud, 



But as on household diligence intent, 10 
Beside her visionary wheel she bent 
Like Arete or Bertha, nor than they 
Less queenly in her port: about her knee 
Glad children clustered confident in play: 
Placid her pose, the calm of energy; 
And over her broad brow in many a round 
(That loosened would have gilt her gar- 
ment's hem), 
Succinct, as toil prescribes, the hair was 

wound 
In lustrous coils, a natural diadem. 
The cloud changed shape, obsequious to the 
whim 20 

Of some transmuting influence felt in me, 
And, looking now, a wolf I seemed to see 
Limned in that vapor, gaunt and hunger- 
bold, 
Threatening her charge: resolve in every 

limb, 
Erect she flamed in mail of sun-wove gold, 
Penthesilea's self for battle dight; 
One arm uplifted braced a flickering spear, 
And one her adamantine shield made light; 
Her face, helm-shadowed, grew a thing to 

fear, 
And her fierce eyes, by danger challenged, 
took 30 

Her trident - sceptred mother's dauntless 

look. 
' I know thee now, O goddess-born ! ' I 

cried, 
And turned with loftier brow and firmer 

stride; 
For in that spectral cloud-work I had seen 
Her image, bodied forth by love and pride, 
The fearless, the benign, the mother-eyed, 
The fairer world's toil-consecrated queen. 



What shape by exile dreamed elates the 
mind 

Like hers whose hand, a fortress of the 
poor, 

No blood in vengeance spilt, though lawful, 
stains ? 40 

Who never turned a suppliant from her 
door ? 

Whose conquests are the gains of all man- 
kind ? 

To-day her thanks shall fly on every wind, 

Unstinted, unrebuked, from shore to shore, 

One love, one hope, and not a doubt be- 
hind ! 

Cannon to cannon shall repeat her praise 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



5'9 



Banner to banner flap it forth in flame ; 
Her children shall rise up to bless her 

name, 
And wish her harmless length of days, 
The mighty mother of a mighty brood, 50 
Blessed in all tongues and dear to every 

blood, 
The beautiful, the strong, and, best of all, 

the good. 



Seven years long was the bow 
Of battle bent, and the heightening 
Storm-heaps convulsed with the throe 
Of their uncontainable lightning; 
Seven years long heard the sea 
Crash of navies and wave-borne thunder; 
Then drifted the cloud-rack a-lee, 
And new stars were seen, a world's won- 
der; 60 
Each by her sisters made bright, 
All binding all to their stations, 
Cluster of manifold light 
Startling the old constellations: 
Men looked up and grew pale: 
Was it a comet or star, 
Omen of blessing or bale, 
Hung o'er the ocean afar ? 



Stormy the day of her birth: 
Was she not born of the strong, 
She, the last ripeness of earth, 
Beautiful, prophesied long ? 
Stormy the days of her prime: 
Hers are the pulses that beat 
Higher for perils sublime, 
Making them fawn at her feet. 
Was she not born of the strong ? 
Was she not born of the wise ? 
Daring and counsel belong 
Of right to her confident eyes: 
Human and motherly they, 
Careless of station or race: 
Hearken ! her children to-day 
Shout for the joy of her face. 



No praises of the past are hers, 

No fanes by hallowing time caressed, 

No broken arch that ministers 

To Time's sad instinct in the breast: 



She has not gathered from the years 
Grandeur of tragedies and tears, 90 

Nor from long leisure the unrest 
That finds repose in forms of classic grace: 
These may delight the coming race 
Who haply shall not count it to our crime 
That we who fain would sing are here 

before our time. 
She also hath her monuments; 
Not such as stand decrepitly resigned 
To ruin-mark the path of dead events 
That left no seed of better days behind, 
The tourist's pensioners that show their 
scars 100 

And maunder of forgotten wars; 
She builds not on the ground, but in the 

mind, 
Her open-hearted palaces 
For larger-thoughted men with heaven and 

earth at ease: 
Her march the plump mow marks, the 

sleepless wheel, 
The golden sheaf, the self-swayed com- 
monweal ; 
The happy homesteads hid in orchard trees 
Whose sacrificial smokes through peaceful 

air 
Rise lost in heaven, the household's silent 

prayer; 
What architect hath bettered these ? no 
With softened eye the westward traveller 

sees 
A thousand miles of neighbors side by side, 
Holding by toil-won titles fresh from God 
The lands no serf or seigneur ever trod, 
With manhood latent in the very sod, 
Where the long billow of the wheatfield's 

tide 
Flows to the sky across the prairie wide, 
A sweeter vision than the castled Rhine, 
Kindly with thoughts of Ruth and Bible- 
days benign. 



O ancient commonwealths, that we revere 
Haply because we could not know you 

near, . 121 

Your deeds like statues down the aisles of 

Time 
Shine peerless in memorial calm sublime, 
And Athens is a trumpet still, and Rome ; 
Yet which of your achievements is not foam 
Weighed with this one of hers (below you 

far 
In fame, and born beneath a milder star), 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



That to Earth's orphans, far as curves the 

dome 
Of death-deaf sky, the hounteous West 

means home, 
With dear precedency of natural ties i 3 o 
That stretch from roof to roof and make 

men gently wise ? 
And if the nobler passions wane, 
Distorted to base use, if the near goal 
Of insubstantial gain 
Tempt from the proper race-course of the 

soul 
That crowns their patient breath 
Whose feet, song-sandalled, are too fleet 

for Death, 
Yet may she claim one privilege urbane 
And haply first upon the civic roll, 
That none can breathe her air nor grow 

humane. 1.10 



Oh, better far the briefest hour 

Of Athens self-consumed, whose plastic 

power 
Hid Beauty safe from Death in words or 

stone ; 
Of Rome, fair quarry where those eagles 

crowd 
Whose fulgurous vans about the world had 

blown 
Triumphant storm and seeds of polity; 
Of Venice, fading o'er her shipless sea, 
Last iridescence of a sunset cloud; 
Than this inert prosperity, 
This bovine comfort in the sense alone ! 150 
Yet art came slowly even to such as those, 
Whom no past genius cheated of their 

own 
With prudence of o'ermastering precedent ; 
Petal by petal spreads the perfect rose, 
Secure of the divine event; 
And only children rend the bud half -blown 
To forestall Nature in her cairn intent: 
Time hath a quiver full of purposes 
Which miss not of their aim, to us un- 
known, 
And brings about the impossible with ease : 
Haply for lis the ideal dawn shall break 161 
From where in legend-tinted line 
The peaks of Hellas drink the morning's 

wine, 
To tremble on our lids with mystic sign 
Till the drowsed ichor in our veins awake 
And set our pulse in tune with moods 

divine : 



Long the day lingered in its sea-fringed 

nest, 
Then touched the Tuscan hills with $rolden 

lance 
And paused; then on to Spain and France 
The splendor flew, and Albion's misty 

crest: m 

Shall Ocean bar him from his destined 

West ? 
Or are we, then, arrived too late, 
Doomed with the rest to grope disconsolate. 
Foreclosed of Beauty by our modern date ? 



Ill 



Poets, as their heads grow gray, 
Look from too far behind the eyes, 
Too long-experienced to be wise 
In guileless youth's diviner way; 
Life sings not now, but prophesies; 
Time's shadows they no more behold, »8o 
But, under them, the riddle old 
That mocks, bewilders, and defies: 
In childhood's face the seed of shame, 
In the green tree an ambushed flame, 
In Phosphor a vaunt-guard of Night, 
They, though against their will, divine, 
And dread the care-dispelling wine 
Stored from the Muse's vintage bright, 
By age imbued with second-sight. 
From Faith's own eyelids there peeps out, 
Even as they look, the leer of doubt; 191 
The festal wreath their fancy loads 
With care that whispers and forebodes: 
Nor this our triumph-day can blunt Me- 
erera's goads. 



Murmur of many voices in the air 
Denounces us degenerate, 
Unfaithful guardians of a noble fate, 
And prompts indifference or despair: 
Is this the country that we dreamed in 

youth, 
Where wisdom and not numbers should 

have weight, 200 

Seed-field of simpler manners, braver 

truth, 
Where shams should cease to dominate 
In household, church, and state ? 
Is this Atlantis ? This the unpoisoned soil, 
Sea-whelmed for ages and recovered late, 
Where parasitic greed no more should coil 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



S2i 



Round Freedom's stem to bend awry and 

blight 
What grew so fair, sole plant of love and 

light ? 
Who sit where once in crowned seclusion 

sate 
The long-pYoved athletes of debate 210 

Trained from their youth, as none thinks 

needful now ? 
Is this debating club where boys dispute, 
And wrangle o'er their stolen fruit, 
The Senate, erewhile cloister of the few, 
Where Clay once flashed and Webster's 

cloudy brow 
Brooded those bolts of thought that all the 

horizon knew ? 



Oh, as this pensive moonlight blurs my 
pines, 

Here while I sit and meditate these lines, 

To gray-green dreams of what they are by 
day, 

So would some light, not reason's sharp- 
edged ray, 220 

Trance me in moonshine as before the 
flight 

Of years had won me this unwelcome right 

To see things as they are, or shall be 
soon, 

In the frank prose of undissembling noon ! 



Back to my breast, ungrateful sigh ! 

Whoever fails, whoever errs, 

The penalty be ours, not hers! 

The present still seems vulgar, seen too 

nigh; 
The golden age is still the age that 's past: 
I ask no drowsy opiate 230 

To dull my vision of that only state 
Founded on faith in man, and therefore 

sure to last. 
For, O my country, touched by thee, 
The gray hairs gather back their gold; 
Thy thought sets all my pulses free ; 
The heart refuses to be old; 
The love is all that I can see. 
Not to thy natal-day belong 
Time's prudent doubt or age's wrong, 
But gifts of gratitude and song: 240 

Unsummoned crowd the thankful words, 
As sap in spring-time floods the tree, 
Foreboding the return of birds, 
For all that thou hast been to me ! 



Flawless his heart and tempered to the 

core 
Who, beckoned by the forward-leaning 

wave, 
First left behind him the firm-footed shore, 
And, urged by every nerve of sail and 

oar, 
Steered for the Unknown which gods to 

mortals gave, 249 

Of thought and action the mysterious door, 
Bugbear of fools, a summons to the brave : 
Strength found he in the unsympathizing 

sun, 
And strange stars from beneath the horizon 

won, 
And the dumb ocean pitilessly grave: 
High-hearted surely he; 
But bolder they who first off-cast 
Their moorings from the habitable Past 
And ventured chartless on the sea 
Of storm-engendering Liberty: 
For all earth's width of waters is a span, 260 
And their convulsed existence mere re- 
pose, 
Matched with the unstable heart of man, 
Shoreless in wants, mist-girt in all it 

knows, 
Open to every wind of sect or clan, 
And sudden-passionate in ebbs and flows. 



They steered by stars the elder shipmen 

knew, 
And laid their courses where the currents 

draw 
Of ancient wisdom channelled deep in law, 
The undaunted few 
Who changed the Old World for the 

New, 270 

And more devoutly prized 
Than all perfection theorized 
The more imperfect that had roots and 

grew. 
They founded deep and well, 
Those danger-chosen chiefs of men 
Who still believed in Heaven and Hell, 
Nor hoped to find a spell, 
In some fine flourish of a pen, 
To make a better man 
Than long-considering Nature will or can, 
Secure against his own mistakes, 281 

Content with what life gives or takes, 



522 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And acting still on some fore-ordered plan, 
A cog of iron in an iron wheel, 
Too nicely poised to think or feel, 
Dumb motor in a clock-like common- 
weal. 
They wasted not their brain in schemes 
Of what man might be in some bubble- 
sphere, 
As if he must be other than he seems 
Because he was not what he should be 
here, 290 

Postponing Time's slow proof to petulant 

dreams: 
Yet herein they were great 
Beyond the incredulous lawgivers of yore, 
And wiser than the wisdom of the shelf, 
That they conceived a deeper-rooted state, 
Of hardier growth, alive from rind to 

core, 
By making man sole sponsor of himself. 



DEATH OF QUEEN MERCEDES 1 

Hers all that Earth could promise or be- 
stow, — 

Youth, Beauty, Love, a crown, the beckon- 
ing years, 

Lids never wet, unless with joyous tears, 

A life remote from every sordid woe, 

And by a nation's swelled to lordlier flow. 

What lurking-place, thought we, for doubts 
or fears, 

When, the day's swan, she swam along the 
cheers 

Of the Alcala, five happy months ago ? 

The guns were shouting Io Hymen then 

That, on her birthday, now denounce her 
doom; 

The same white steeds that tossed their 
scorn of men 

To-day as proudly drag her to the tomb. 

Grim jest of fate ! Yet who dare call it 
blind, 

Knowing what life is, what our human-kind? 

1878. . (1888.) 

1 Anything more tragic than the circumstances of 
her death it would be hard to imagine. She was actu- 
ally receiving extreme unction while the guns were 
firing in honor of her eighteenth birthday, and four 
days later we saw her dragged to her dreary tomb at 
the Escorial, followed by the coach and its eight white 
horses in which she had driven in triumph from the 
church to the palace on the day of her wedding. The 
poor brutes tossed their snowy plumes as haughtily 
now as then. (Lowell, in a letter to his daughter, 
Mabel Lowell Burnett, July 26, 1878. Quoted by per- 
mission of Messrs. Harper and Brothers.) 



God of our fathers, Thou who wast, 

Art, and shalt be when those eye-wise who 

flout 
Thy secret presence shall be lost 300 

In the great light that dazzles them to 

doubt, ■ 

We, sprung from loins of stalwart men 
Whose strength was in their trust 
That Thou wouldst make thy dwelling in 

their dust 
And walk with those a fellow-citizen 
Who build a city of the just, 
We, who believe Life's bases rest 
Beyond the probe of chemic test, 
Still, like our fathers, feel Thee near, 
Sure that, while lasts the immutable decree, 
The land to Human Nature dear 3 n 

Shall not be unbeloved of Thee. 



1876. 



1876. 



PHOEBE 2 

Eke pales in Heaven the morning star 
A bird, the loneliest of its kind, 

Hears Dawn's faint footfall from afar 
While all its mates are dumb and blind. 

It is a wee sad-colored thing, 

As shy and secret as a maid, 
That, ere in choir the robins sing, 

Pipes its own name like one afraid. 

It seems pain-prompted to repeat 

The story of some ancient ill, 10 

But Phcebe ! Phos.be I sadly sweet 
Is all it says, and then is still. 

It calls and listens. Earth and sky, 
Hushed by the pathos of its fate, 

Listen: no whisper of reply 

Comes from its doom-dissevered mate. 

Phcebe! it calls and calls again, 

And Ovid, could he but have heard, 

Had hung a legendary pain 

About the memory of the bird; 20 

A pain articulate so long, 

In penance of some mouldered crime 

2 For Lowell's careful revision of this poem, see his 
letters to Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, September 4, 5, 
6, 8, and 12, and October 24, 1881; quoted in the Cam- 
bridge Edition of Lowell, pp. 480-481. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



5 2 3 



Whose ghost still flies the Furies' thong 
Down the waste solitudes of time. 

Waif of the young World's wonder-hour, 
When gods found mortal maidens fair, 

And will malign was joined with power 
Love's kindly laws to overbear, 

Like Progne, did it feel the stress 

And coil of the prevailing words 30 

Close round its being, and compress 
Man's ampler nature to a bird's ? 

One only memory left of all 

The motley crowd of vanished scenes, 
Hers, and vain impulse to recall 

By repetition what it means. 

Phcebe ! is all it has to say 

In plaintive cadence o'er and o'er, 

Like children that have lost their way, 
And know their names, but nothing more. 

Is it a type, since Nature's Lyre 41 

Vibrates to every note in man, 

Of that insatiable desire, 

Meant to be so since life began ? 

I, in strange lands at gray of dawn, 

Wakeful, have heard that fruitless plaint 

Through Memory's chambers deep with- 
drawn 
Renew its iterations faint. 

So nigh ! yet from remotest years 

It summons back its magic, rife 50 

With longings unappeased, and tears 
Drawn from the very source of life. 

1881. 1881. 



TO WHITTIER 

ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY 

New England's poet, rich in love as years, 
Her hills and valleys praise thee, her swift 

brooks 
Dance in thy verse; to her grave sylvan 

nooks 
Thy steps allure us, which the wood-thrush 

hears 
As maids their lovers', and no treason fears; 
Through thee her Merrimacs and Agio- 

chooks 



And many a name uncouth win gracious 

looks, 
Sweetly familiar to both Englands' ears: 

Peaceful by birthright as a virgin lake, 
The lily's anchorage, which no eyes behold 
Save those of stars, yet for thy brother's 

sake 
That lay in bonds, thou blewst a blast as 

bold 
As that wherewith the heart of Roland 

brake, 
Far heard across the New World and the 

Old. 
1882. 1882. 



TO HOLMES 

ON HIS SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY 

Dear Wendell, why need count the years 
Since first your genius made me thrill, 

If what moved then to smiles or tears, 
Or both contending, move me still ? 

What has the Calendar to do 

With poets ? What Time's fruitless tooth 
With gay immortals such as you 

Whose years but emphasize yoiir youth ? 

One air gave both their lease of breath; 

The same paths lured our boyish feet; 10 
One earth will hold us safe in death 

With dust of saints and scholars sweet. 

Our legends from one source were drawn, 
I scarce distinguish yours from mine, 

And don't we make the Gentiles yawn 
With ' You remembers ? ' o'er our wine ! 

If I, with too senescent air, 

Invade your elder memory's pale, 

You snub me with a pitying ' Where 

Were you in the September Gale ? ' 20 

Both stared entranced at Lafayette, 
Saw Jackson dubbed with LL. D. 

What Cambridge saw not strikes us yet 
As scarcely worth one's while to see. 

Ten years my senior, when my name 
In Harvard's entrance-book was writ, 

Her halls still echoed with the fame 
Of you, her poet and her wit. 



5 2 4 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



'T is fifty years from then to now : 

But your Last Leaf renews its green, 30 

Though, for the laurels on your brow 
(So thick they crowd), 't is hardly seen. 

The oriole's fledglings fifty times 
Have flown from our familiar elms; 

As many poets with their rhymes 
Oblivion's darkling dust o'erwhelms. 

The birds are hushed, the poets gone 
Where no harsh critic's lash can reach, 

And still your winged brood sing on 

To all who love our English speech. 40 

Nay, let the foolish records be 

That make believe you 're seventy-five : 
You 're the old Wendell still to me, — 

And that 's the youngest man alive. 

The gray-blue eyes, I see them still, 
The gallant front with brown o'erhung, 

The shape alert, the wit at will, 

The phrase that stuck, but never stung. 

You keep your youth as you Scotch firs, 
Whose gaunt line my horizon hems, 50 

Though twilight all the lowland blurs, 
Hold sunset in their ruddy stems. 

You with the elders ? Yes, 't is true, 

But in no sadly literal sense, 
With elders and coevals too, 

Whose verb admits no preterite tense. 

Master alike in speech and song 
Of fame's great antiseptic — Style, 

You with the classic few belong 

Who tempered wisdom with a smile. 60 

Outlive us all ! Who else like you 
Could sift the seedcorn from our chaff, 

And make us with the pen we knew 
Deathless at least in epitaph ? 

1S84. 1884. 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT 

In vain we call old notions fudge, 

And bend our conscience to our deal- 
ing; 

The Ten Commandments will not budge, 
And stealing will continue stealing. 

1885. 18S6. 



SIXTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY 

As life runs on, the road grows strange 
With faces new, and near the end 
The milestones into headstones change, 
'Neath every one a friend. 

1887. 



INSCRIPTION 

PROPOSED FOR A SOLDIERS' AND 
SAILORS' MONUMENT IN BOSTON 

To those who died for her on land and 

sea, 
That she might have a country great and 

free, 
Boston builds this: build ye her monument 
In lives like theirs, at duty's summons 

spent. 

1887. 



ENDYMION 1 

A MYSTICAL COMMENT ON TITIAN'S 
'SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE ' 



My day began not till the twilight fell, 
And, lo, in ether from heaven's sweetest 

well, 
The New Moon swam divinely isolate 
In maiden silence, she that makes my fate 
Haply not knowing it, or only so 
As I the secrets of my sheep may know; 
Nor ask I more, entirely blest if she, 
In letting me adore, ennoble me 
To height of what the Gods meant making 

man, 
As only she and her best beauty can. 10 
Mine be the love that in itself can find 
Seed of white thoughts, the lilies of the 

mind, 
Seed of that glad surrender of the will 
That finds in service self's true purpose 

still; 
Love that in outward fairness sees the tent 
Pitched for an inmate far more excellent; 
Love with a light irradiate to the core, 
Lit at her lamp, but fed from inborn store; 

1 See Scudder's Life of Lowell, vol. ii, pp. 371, 372, 
and also two letters from Lowell to Mr. Garrison, on 
' Endymion,' quoted in Greenslet's Lowell, pp. 217, 218. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



525 



Love thrice-requited with the single joy 19 
Of an immaculate vision naught could cloy, 
Dearer because, so high beyond my scope, 
My life grew rich with her, unbribed by 

hope 
Of other guerdon save to think she knew 
One grateful votary paid her all her due; 
Happy if she, high-radiant there, resigned 
To his sure trust her image in his mind. 
O fairer even than Peace is when she 

comes 
Hushing War's tumult, and retreating 

drums 
Fade to a murmur like the sough of bees 
Hidden among the noon-stilled linden-trees, 
Briuger of quiet, thou that canst allay 31 
The dust and din and travail of the day, 
Strewer of Silence, Giver of the dew 
That doth our pastures and our souls re- 
new, 
Still dwell remote, still on thy shoreless sea 
Float unattained in silent empery, 
Still light my thoughts, nor listen to a 

prayer 
Would make thee less imperishably fair ! 



Can, then, my twofold nature find content 
In vain conceits of airy blandishment ? 40 
Ask I uo more ? Since yesterday I task 
My storm-strewn thoughts to tell me what 

I ask: 
Faint premonitions of mutation strange 
Steal o'er my perfect orb, and, with the 

change, 
Myself am changed; the shadow of my 

earth 
Darkens the disk of that celestial worth 
Which only yesterday could still suffice 
Upwards to waft my thoughts in sacrifice; 
My heightened fancy with its touches 

warm 
Moulds to a woman's that ideal form; 50 
Nor yet a woman's wholly, but divine 
With awe her purer essence bred in mine. 
Was it long brooding on their own surmise, 
Which, of the eyes engendered, fools the 

eyes, 
Or have I seen through that translucent air 
A Presence shaped in its seclusions bare, 
My Goddess looking on me from above 
As look our russet maidens when they love, 
But high-uplifted o'er our human heat 
And passion-paths too rough for her pearl 

feet ? 60 



Slowly the Shape took outline as I gazed 
At her full-orbed or crescent, till, bedazed 
With wonder-working light that subtly 

wrought 
My brain to its own substance, steeping 

thought 
In trances such as poppies give, I saw 
Things shut from vision by sight's ' sober 

law, 
Amorphous, changeful, but defined at last 
Into the peerless Shape mine eyes hold fast. 
This, too, at first I worshipt: soon, bike 

wine, 
Her eyes, in mine poured, frenzy-philtred 

mine; 70 

Passion put Worship's priestly raiment on 
And to the woman knelt, the Goddess gone. 
Was I, then, more than mortal made ? or 

she 
Less than divine that she might mate with 

me? 
If mortal merely, could my nature cope 
With such o'ermastery of maddening hope ? 
If Goddess, could she feel the blissful woe 
That women in their self -surrender know ? 

Ill 

Long she abode aloof there in her heaven, 
Far as the grape-bunch of the Pleiad seven 
Beyond my madness' utmost leap ; but 
here 81 

Mine eyes have feigned of late her rapture 

near, 
Moulded of mind-mist that broad day dis- 
pels, 
Here in these shadowy woods and brook- 
lulled dells. 

Have no heaven-habitants e'er felt a void 
In hearts sublimed with ichor unalloyed ? 
E'er longed to mingle with a mortal fate 
Intense with pathos of its briefer date ? 
Could she partake, and live, our human 

stains ? 
Even with the thought there tingles through 

my veins 9 o 

Sense of unwarned renewal; I, the dead, 
Receive and house again the ardor fled, 
As once Alcestis ; to the ruddy brim 
Feel masculine virtue flooding every limb, 
And life, like Spring returning, brings the 

key 
That sets my senses from their winter free, 
Dancing like naked fauns too glad for 

shame. 



526 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Her passion, purified to palest flame, 
Can it thus kindle ? Is her purpose this ? 
I will not argue, lest I lose a bliss ioo 

That makes me dream Tithonus' fortune 

mine 
(Or what of it was palpably divine 
Ere came the fruitlessly immortal gift) ; 
I cannot curb my hope's imperious drift 
That wings with fire my dull mortality; 
Though fancy-forged, 't is all I feel or see. 



My Goddess sinks; round Latmos' darken- 
ing brow 
Trembles the parting of her presence now, 
Faint as the perfume left upon the grass 
By her limbs' pressure or her feet that 

pass no 

By me conjectured, but conjectured so 
As things I touch far fainter substance 

show. 
Was it mine eyes' imposture I have seen 
Flit with the moonbeams on from shade to 

sheen 
Through the wood-openings ? Nay, I see 

her now 
Out of her heaven new-lighted, from her 

brow 
The hair breeze-scattered, like loose mists 

that blow 
Across her crescent, goldening as they go 
High-kirtled for the chase, and what was 

shown, 
Of maiden rondure, like the rose half- 
blown. 1 20 
If dream, turn real ! If a vision, stay ! 
Take mortal shape, my philtre's spell obey ! 
If hags compel thee from thy secret sky 
With gruesome incantations, why not I, 
Whose only magic is that I distil 
A potion, blent of passion, thought, and 

will, 
Deeper in reach, in force of fate more 

rich, 
Than e'er was juice wrung by Thessalian 

witch 
From moon-enchanted herbs, — a potion 

brewed 
Of my best life in each diviner mood ? 130 
Myself the elixir am, myself the bowl 
Seething and mantling with my soul of soul. 
Taste and be humanized: what though the 

cup, 
With thy lips frenzied, shatter ? Drink it 

up ! 



If but these arms may clasp, o'erquited so, 
My world, thy heaven, all life means I 
shall know. 



Sure she hath heard my prayer and granted 

half, 
As Gods do who at mortal madness laugh. 
Yet if life's solid things illusion seem, 
Why may not substance wear the mask of 

dream ? i 4 o 

In sleep she comes; she visits me in 

dreams, 
And, as her image in a thousand streams, 
So hi my veins, that her obey, she sees, 
Floating and flaming there, her images 
Bear to my little world's remotest zone 
Glad messages of her, and her alone. 
With silence-sandalled Sleep she comes to 

me 
(But softer-footed, sweeter-browed, than 

she), 
In motion gracious as a seagull's wing, 
And all her bright limbs, moving, seem to 

sing. 150 

Let me believe so, then, if so I may 
With the night's bounty feed my beggared 

day. 
In dreams I see her lay the goddess down 
With bow and quiver, and her crescent- 
crown 
Flicker and fade away to dull eclipse 
As down to mine she deigns her longed-for 

lips; 
And as her neck my happy arms enfold, 
Flooded and lustred with her loosened gold, 
She whispers words each sweeter than a 

kiss: 
Then, wakened with the shock of sudden 

bliss, 160 

My arms are empty, my awakener fled, 
And, silent in the silent sky o'erhead, 
But coldly as on ice-plated snow, she 

gleams, 
Herself the mother and the child of dreams. 

VI 

Gone is the time when phantasms could 

appease 
My quest phantasmal and bring cheated 

ease; 
When, if she glorified my dreams, I felt 
Through all my limbs a change immortal 

melt 
At touch of hers illuminate with soul. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



5 2 7 



Not long could I be stilled with Fancy's 

dole; 170 

Too soon the mortal mixture in me caught 

Red fire from her celestial flame, and 

fought 
For tyrannous control hi all my veins: 
My fool's prayer was accepted; what re- 
mains ? 
Or was it some eidolon merely, sent 
By her who rules the shades in banishment, 
To mock me with her semblance ? Were 

it thus, 
How 'scape I shame, whose will was trai- 
torous ? 
What shall compensate an ideal dimmed ? 
How blanch again my statue virgin-limbed, 
Soiled with the incense-smoke her chosen 
priest 181 

Poured more profusely as within decreased 
The fire unearthly, fed with coals from far 
Within the soul's shrine ? Could my fallen 

star 
Be set in heaven again by prayers and tears 
And quenchless sacrifice of all my years, 
How would the victim to the flamen leap, 
And life for life's redemption paid hold 
cheap ! 

But what resource when she herself de- 
scends 

From her blue throne, and o'er her vassal 
bends 190 

That shape thrice-deified by love, those eyes 

Wherein the Lethe of all others lies ? 

When my white queen of heaven's remote- 
ness tires, 

Herself against her other self conspires, 

Takes woman's nature, walks in mortal 
ways, 

And finds in my remorse her beauty's 
praise ? 

Yet all would I renounce to dream again 

The dream in dreams fulfilled that made 
my pain, 

My noble pain that heightened all my years 

With crowns to win and prowess-breeding 
tears ; 200 

Nay, would that dream renounce once more 
to see 

Her from her sky there looking down at me ! 



Goddess, reclimb thy heaven, and be once 

more 
An inaccessible splendor to adore, 



A faith, a hope of such transcendent worth 
As bred ennobling discontent with earth; 
Give back the longing, back the elated 

mood 
That, fed with thee, spurned every meaner 

good; 
Give even the spur of impotent despair 
That, without hope, still bade aspire and 

dare; 210 

Give back the need to worship, that still 

pours 
Down to the soul the virtue it adores ! 

Nay, brightest and most beautiful, deem 
naught 

These frantic words, the reckless wind of 
thought: 

Still stoop, still grant, — I live but in thy 
will; 

Be what thou wilt, but be a woman still ! 

Vainly I cried, nor could myself believe 

That what I prayed for I would fain re- 
ceive. 

My moon is set; my vision set with her; 

No more can worsbip vain my pulses stir. 

Goddess Triform, I own thy triple spell, 221 

My heaven's queen, — queen, too, of my 
earth and hell ! 

1887. ! 1888. 



AUSPEX 

My heart, I cannot still it, 
Nest that had song-birds in it; 
And when the last shall go, 
The dreary days, to fill it, 
Instead of lark or linnet, 
Shall whirl dead leaves and snow. 

Had they been swallows only, 
Without the passion stronger 
That skyward longs and sings, — 
Woe 's me, I shall be lonely 
When I can feel no longer 
The impatience of their wings ! 

A moment, sweet delusion, 

Like birds the brown leaves hover; 

But it will not be long 

Before the wild confusion 

Fall wavering down to cover 

The poet and his song. 

(1888.) 
1 Parts of the poem were written much earlier. 



528 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



THE PREGNANT COMMENT 

Opening one day a book of mine, 
I absent, Hester found a line 
Praised with a pencil-mark, and this 
She left transfigured with a kiss. 

When next upon the page I chance, 
Like Poussin's nymphs my pulses dance, 
And whirl my fancy where it sees 
Pan piping 'neath Arcadian trees, 
Whose leaves no winter-scenes rehearse, 
Still young and glad as Homer's verse. 
' What mean,' I ask, ' these sudden joys ? 
This feeling fresher than a boy's ? 
What makes this line, familiar long, 
New as the first bird's April song ? 
I could, with sense illumined thus, 
Clear doubtful texts in iEschylus ! ' 

Laughing, one day she gave the key, 
My riddle's open-sesame; 
Then added, with a smile demure, 
Whose downcast lids veiled triumph sure, 
' If what I left there give you pain, 
You — you — can take it off again ; 
'T was for my poet, not for him, 
Your Doctor Donne there ! ' 

Earth grew dim 
And wavered in a golden mist, 
As rose, not paper, leaves I kissed. 
Donne, you forgive ? I let you keep 
Her precious comment, poet deep. 

(1888.) 

TELEPATHY 

' And how could you dream of meeting ? ' 
Nay, how can you ask me, sweet ? 

All day my pulse had been beating 
The tune of your coming feet. 

And as nearer and ever nearer 
I felt the throb of your tread, 

To be in the world grew dearer, 
And my blood ran rosier red. 

Love called, and I could not linger, 
But sought the forbidden tryst, 

As music follows the finger 
Of the dreaming lutanist. 

And though you had said it and said it, 
' We must not be happy to-day,' 



Was I not wiser to credit 

The fire in my feet than your Nay ? 

(1888.) 

THE SECRET 

I have a fancy: how shall I bring it 
Home to all mortals wherever they be ? 
Say it or sing it ? Shoe it or wing it, 
So it may outrun or outfly Me, 
Merest cocoon- web whence it broke free ? 

Only one secret can save from disaster, 
Only one magic is that of the Master: 
Set it to music ; give it a tune, — 
Tune the brook sings you, tune the breeze 

brings you, 
Tune the wild columbines nod to in June ! 

This is the secret: so simple, you see ! 

Easy as loving, easy as kissing, 

Easy as — well, let me ponder — as miss- 
ing, 

Known, since the world was, by scarce two 
or three. 

1888. 



MONNA LISA 

She gave me all that woman can, 
Nor her soul's nunnery forego, 
A confidence that man to man 
Without remorse can never show. 

Rare art, that can the sense refine 
Till not a pulse rebellious stirs, 
And, since she never can be mine, 
Makes it seem sweeter to be hers ! 

(188, c 



THE NOBLER LOVER 

If he be a nobler lover, take him ! 

You in you I seek, and not myself; 
Love with men 's what women choose to 
make him, 

Seraph strong to soar, or fawn-eyed elf: 
All I am or can, your beauty gave it, 

Lifting me a moment nigh to you, 
And my bit of heaven, I fain would save 
it — 

Mine I thoiight it was, I never knew. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



5 2 9 



What you take of ine is yours to serve 
you, 
All I give, you gave to me before; 
Let him win you ! If I but deserve you, 
I keep all you grant to him and more: 
You shall make me dare what others dare 
not, 
You shall keep my nature pure as snow, 
And a light from you that others share 
not 
Shall transfigure me where'er I go. 

Let me be your thrall ! However lowly 

Be the bondsman's service I can do, 
Loyalty shall make it high and holy ; 

Naught can be unworthy, done for you. 
Men shall say, ' A lover of this fashion 

Such an icy mistress well beseems.' 
Women say, ' Could we deserve such pas- 
sion, 

We might be the marvel that he dreams.' 

(1895.) 



'FRANCISCUS DE VERULAMIO 
SIC COGITAVIT' 

That 's a rather bold speech, my Lord 
Bacon, 
For, indeed, is 't so easy to know 
Just how much we from others have 
taken, 
And how much our own natural flow ? 

Since your mind bubbled up at its foun- 
tain, 
How many streams made it elate, 
While it calmed to the plain from the 
mountain, 
As every mind must that grows great ? 

While you thought 't was You thinking as 
newly 
As Adam still wet with God's dew, 10 
You forgot in your self-pride that truly 
The whole Past was thinking through 
you. 

Greece, Rome, nay, your namesake, old 
Roger, 
With Truth's nameless delvers who 
wrought 
In the dark mines of Truth, helped to prod 
your 
Fine brain with the goad of their thought. 



As mummy was prized for a rich hue 

The painter no elsewhere could find, 
So 't was buried men's thinking with which 
you 
Gave the ripe mellow tone to your 
mind. 20 

I heard the proud strawberry saying, 
' Only look what a ruby I 've made ! ' 

It forgot how the bees in their maying 
Had brought it the stuff for its trade. 

And yet there 's the half of a truth in it, 
And my Lord might Ms copyright sue; 

For a thought 's his who kindles new youth 
in it, 
Or so puts it as makes it more true. 

The birds but repeat without ending 

The same old traditional notes, 30 

Which some, by more happily blending, 
Seem to make over new in their throats; 

And we men through our old bit of song 
run, 

Until one just improves on the rest, 
And we call a thing his, in the long run, 

Who utters it clearest and best. 



IN A COPY OF OMAR KHAYYAM 

These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs 

were bred, 
Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; 
The diver Omar plucked them from their 

bed, 
Fitzgerald strung them on an English 

thread. 

Fit rosary for a queen, in shape and hue, 
When Contemplation tells her pensive 

beads 
Of mortal thoughts, forever old and new. 
Fit for a queen ? Why, surely then for 

you! 

The moral ? Where Doubt's eddies toss 

and twirl 
Faith's slender shallop till her footing reel, 
Plunge: if you find not peace beneath the 

whirl, 
Groping, you may like Omar grasp a pearl. 

1888. 



53° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



TURNER'S OLD TEMERAIRE 

UNDER A FIGURE SYMBOLIZING THE 
CHURCH 

Thou wast the fairest of all man-made 

things ; 
The breath of heaven bore up thy cloudy 

wings, 
And, patient in their triple rank, 
The thunders crouched about thy flank, 
Their black lips silent with the doom of 

kings. 

The storm-wind loved to rock him in thy 

pines, 
And swell thy vans with breath of great 

designs; 
Long-wildered pilgrims of the main 
By thee relaid their course again, 
Whose prow was guided by celestial signs. 

How didst thou trample on tumultuous 

seas, ii 

Or, like some basking sea-beast stretched 

Let the bull-fronted surges glide 
Caressingly along thy side, 
Like glad hounds leaping by the hunts- 
man's knees ! 

Heroic feet, with fire of genius shod, 
In battle's ecstasy thy deck have trod, 
While from their touch a f ulgor ran 
Through plank and spar, from man to man, 
Welding thee to a thunderbolt of God. 20 

Now a black demon, belching fire and 

steam, 
Drags thee away, a pale, dismantled 

dream, 
And all thy desecrated hulk 
Must landlocked lie, a helpless bulk, 
To gather weeds in the regardless stream. 

Woe 's me, from Ocean's sky-horizoned air 
To this ! Better, the flame-cross still aflare, 
Shot-shattered to have met thy doom 
Where thy last lightnings cheered the 

gloom, 
Than here be safe in dangerless despair. 30 

Thy drooping symbol to the flagstaff 

clings, 
Thy rudder soothes the tide to lazy rings, 



Thy thunders now but birthdays greet, 
Thy planks forget the martyrs' feet, 
Thy masts what challenges the sea-wind 
brings. 

Thou a mere hospital, where human 

wrecks, 
Like winter-flies, crawl those renowned 

decks, 
Ne'er trodden save by captive foes, 
And wonted sternly to impose 
God's will and thine on bowed imperial 

necks ! 40 

Shall nevermore, engendered of thy fame, 
A new sea-eagle heir thy conqueror name, 
And with commissioned talons wrench 
From thy supplanter's grimy clench 
His sheath of steel, his wings of smoke 
and flame ? 

This shall the pleased eyes of our children 

see; 
For this the stars of God long even as 

we; 
Earth listens for his wings ; the Fates 
Expectant lean; Faith cross-propt waits, 
And the tired waves of Thought's insur- 
gent sea. 5° 

1888. 

ON A BUST OF GENERAL 
GRANT 1 

Strong, simple, silent are the [steadfast] 

laws 
That sway this universe, of none withstood, 
Unconscious of man's outcries or applause, 
Or what man deems his evil or his good; 

1 This poem is the last, so far as isknowrii written by 
Mr . Lowell. He laid it aside for revision, leaving two 
of the verses incomplete. In a pencilled fragment of 
the poem the first verse appears as follows : — 

Strong, simple, silent, such are Nature's Laws. 

In the final copy, from which the poem is now printed, 
the verse originally stood : — 

Strong, steadfast, silent are the laws, 

but 'steadfast' is crossed out, and 'simple' written 
above. 

A similar change is made in the ninth verse of the 
stanza, where ' simpleness ' is substituted for ' stead- 
fastness.' The change from ' steadfast ' to ' simple ' 
was not made, probably through oversight, in the first 
verse of the second stanza. There is nothing to indi- 
cate what epithet Mr. Lowell would have chosen to 
complete the first verse of the third stanza. (Note by 
Professor C. E. Norton, in Last Poems of James Rus- 
sell Lowell.) 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



53i 



And when the Fates ally them with a cause 
That wallows in the sea-trough and seems 

lost, 
Drifting in danger of the reefs and sands 
Of shallow counsels, this way, that way, 

tost, 
Strength, silence, simpleness, of these three 

strands 
They twist the cable shall the world hold 

fast 10 

To where its anchors clutch the bed-rock 

of the Past. 

Strong, simple, silent, therefore such was 

he 
Who helped us in our need; the eternal law 
That who can saddle Opportunity 
Is God's elect, though many a mortal flaw 
May minish him in eyes that closely see, 
Was verified in him: what need we say 
Of one who made success where others 

failed, 
Who, with no light save that of common 

day, 
Struck hard, and still struck on till For- 
tune quailed, 20 
But that (so sift the Norns) a desperate 

van 
Ne'er fell at last to one who was not wholly 
man. 

A face all prose where Time's [benignant] 

haze 
Softens no raw edge yet, nor makes all fair 
With the beguiling light of vanished days; 
This is relentless granite, bleak and bare, 
Ptoughhewn, and scornful of aesthetic 

phrase ; 
Nothing is here for fancy, nought for 

dreams, 
The Present's hard uncompromising light 
Accents all vulgar outlines, flaws, and 
seams, 30 

Yet vindicates some pristine natural right 
O'ertopping that hereditary grace 
Which marks the gain or loss of some time- 
fondled race. 

So Marius looked, methinks, and Crom- 
well so, 
Not in the purple born, to those they led 
Nearer for that and costlier to the foe, 
New moulders of old forms, by nature 
bred 



The exhaustless life of manhood's seeds to 

show, 
Let but the ploughshare of portentous 

times 
Strike deep enough to reach them where 

they lie : 4 o 

Despair and danger are their fostering 

climes, 
And their best sun bursts from a stormy 

sky: 
He was our man of men, nor would abate 
The utmost due manhood could claim of 

fate. 

Nothing ideal, a plain-people's man 

At the first glance, a more deliberate 

ken 
Finds type primeval, theirs in whose veins 

ran 
Such blood as quelled the dragon in his 

den, 
Made harmless fields, and better worlds 

began: 
He came grim-silent, saw and did the 

deed 50 

That was to do; in his master-grip 
Our sword flashed joy; no skill of words 

could breed 
Such sure conviction as that close-clamped 

lip; 
He slew our dragon, nor, so seemed it, 

knew 
He had done more than any simplest man 

might do. 

Yet did this man, war-tempered, stern as 

steel 
Where steel opposed, prove soft in civil 

sway; 
The hand hilt-hardened had lost tact to 

feel 
The world's base coin, and glozing knaves 

made prey 
Of him and of the entrusted Common- 
weal ; 60 
So Truth insists and will not be denied. 
We turn our eyes away, and so will 

Fame, 
As if in his last battle he had died 
Victor for us and spotless of all blame, 
Doer of hopeless tasks which praters shirk, 
One of those still plain men that do the 

world's rough work. 
1891. 1892. 



/'..? u 






CU^k, 64*4-*«4) 



/3e**yvtfj>t».r 



WALT WHITMAN 



[The selections from Whitman are printed by the kind permission of Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co., the author- 
ized publishers of his works ; and of Messrs. Horace L. Traubel and Thomas B. Harned, his literary executors.] 



THERE 



WAS A CHILD 
FORTH i 



WENT 



There was a child went forth every 

day, 
And the first object he look'd upon, that 

object he became, 
And that object became part of him for the 

day or a certain part of the day, 
Or for many years or stretching cycles of 

years. 

The early lilacs became part of this child, 
And grass and white and red morning- 
glories, and white and red clover, and the 

song of the phcebe-bird, 
And the Third-month lambs and the sow's 

pink-faint litter, and the mare's foal and 

the cow's calf, 
And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by 

the mire of the pond-side, 
And the fish suspending themselves so 

curiously below there, and the beautiful 

curious liquid, 
And the water-plants with their graceful 

flat heads, all became part of him. 10 

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and 

Fifth-month became part of him, 
Winter-grain sprouts and those of the 

light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots 

of the garden, ■ 
And the apple-trees cover'd with blossoms 

and the fruit afterward, and wood-ber- 
• ries, and the commonest weeds by the 

road, 
And the old drunkard staggering home from 

the outhouse of the tavern whence he 

had lately risen, 
And the schoolmistress that pass'd on her 

way to the school, 

1 In the first edition, 1855, without title. In the 
second edition, 1856, called ' Poem of The Child That 
Went Forth and Always Goes Forth Forever and For- 
ever.' 



And the tidy and fresh-cheek'd girls, and 

the barefoot negro boy and girl, 
And all the changes of city and country 

wherever he went. 
And the friendly boys that pass'd, and the 

quarrelsome boys, 
His own parents, he that had father'd him 

and she that had conceiv'd him in her 

womb and birth'd him, 
They gave this child more of themselves 

than that, 20 

They gave him afterward every day, they 

became part of him. 

The mother at home quietly placing the 

dishes on the supper-table, 
The mother with mild words, clean her cap 

and gown, a wholesome odor falling off 

her person and clothes as she walks by, 
The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, 

mean, anger'd, unjust, 
The blow, the quick loud word, the tight 

bargain, the crafty lure, 
The family usages, the language, the com- 
pany, the furniture, the yearning and 

swelling heart, 
Affection that will not be gainsay'd, the 

sense of what is real, the thought if after 

all it should prove unreal, 
The doubts of day-time and the doubts of 

night-time, the curious whether and how, 
Whether that which appears so is so, or is 

it all flashes and specks ? 
Men and women crowding fast in the streets, 

if they are not flashes and specks what 

are they ? 30 

The streets themselves and the facades of 

houses, and goods in the windows, 
Vehicles, teams, the heavy-plank'd wharves, 

the huge crossing at the ferries, 
The village on the highland seen from afar 

at sunset, the river between, 
Shadows, aureola and mist, the light falling 

on roofs and gables of white or brown two 

miles off, 



WALT WHITMAN 



533 



The schooner near by sleepily dropping 
down the tide, the little boat slack-tow'd 
astern, 

The hurrying tumbling waves, quick-broken 
crests, slapping, 

The strata of color'd clouds, the long bar of 
maroon-tint away solitary by itself, the 
spread of purity it lies motionless in, 

The horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the 
fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud, 

These became part of that child who went 
forth every day, and who now goes, and 
will always go forth every day. 1 

1855. 

i 

SONG OF MYSELF 2 J 



I celebrate myself, and sing myself, 
And what I assume you shall assume, 
For every atom belonging to me as good 
belongs to you. 

1 In the early editions, the following line was added 
at the end of the poem: — 

Aud these become part of him or her that peruses them now. 

- In 1855, without title. In 1856, as the ' Poem of 
Walt Whitman, an American. ' In the third edition, 1860, 
with the title, ' Walt Whitman,' and so in the following 
editions until 18S1, when the present title was first 
used. 

The sections were first numbered in 1867. 

It must be noted from the beginning that Whitman 
celebrates himself not as an isolated individual, but 
as the type of all individual selves, claiming for them 
all absolute equality. Compare the poem beginning: — 

One's-self I sing, a simple separate person, 

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. 

One of Whitman's early fragments {Notes and Frag- 
ments, p. 36, no. 112) reads : — 

I celebrate myself to celebrate you ; 

I say the same word for every man and woman living. 

Compare also Whitman's Preface to the 1S76 edition 
of Leaves of Grass : ' Then I meant " Leaves of Grass," 
as published, to be the Poem of average Identity (of 
yours, whoever you are, now reading these lines). . . . 
All serves, helps — but in the centre of all, absorbing 
all, giving, for your purpose, the only meaning and vi- 
tality to all, master or mistress of all, under the law, 
stands Yourself. To sing the Song of that law of aver- 
age Identity, and of Yourself, consistently with the 
divine law of the universal, is a main intention of these 
" Leaves." ' 

In his ' myself ' he means to picture the typical demo- 
cratic self. It was both by temperament, and also with 
a definite purpose in view, that he chose to speak in 
the first person. One of his early fragmentary notes 
reads : ' Ego-style. First-person-style. Style of com- 
position an animated ego-style — "I do not think" " I 
perceive " — or something involving self-esteem, de- 
cision, authority — as opposed to the current third per- 
son style, essayism, didactic, removed from animation, 
stating general truths in a didactic, well-smoothed . . .' 
(Notes and Fragments, p. 179.) 



I loafe and invite my soul, 
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a 
spear of summer grass. 

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd 
from this soil, this air, 

Born here of parents born here from par- 
ents the same, and their parents the same, 

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect 
health begin, 

Hoping to cease not till death. 

Creeds and schools in abeyance, io 

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they 

are, but never forgotten, 
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak 

at every hazard, 
Nature without check with original energy. 3 



A child said What is the grass ? fetching it 

to me with full hands; 
How could I answer the child ? I do not 

know what it is any more than he. 

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, 
out of hopeful green stuff woven. 

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the 
Lord, 

A scented gift and remembrancer design- 
edly dropt, 

Bearing the owner's name someway in the 
corners, that we may see and remark, and 
say Whose ? 

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the 
produced babe of the vegetation. 

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, 
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad 

zones and narrow zones, 

Growing among black folks as among white, 

Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I 

give them the same, I receive them the 

same. ' n 

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut 
haii- of graves. 

Tenderly will I use you curling grass, 
It may be you transpire from the breasts of 
young men, 

3 The last eight lines of section 1 are not found in 
the earlier editions, and were not added until 1881. 



534 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



It may be if I had known them I would 

have loved them, 
It may be you are from old people, or from 

offspring taken soon out of their mothers' 

laps, 
And here you are the mothers' laps. 

This grass is very dark to be from the 

white heads of old mothers, 
Darker than the colorless beards of old men, 
Dark to come from under the faint red 

roofs of mouths. 20 

I perceive after all so many uttering 
tongues, 

And I perceive they do not come from the 
roofs of mouths for nothing. 

1 wish I could translate the hints about the 
dead young men and women, 

And the hints about old men and mothers, 
and the offspring taken soon out of their 
laps. 

What do you think has become of the young 

and old men ? 
And what do you think has become of the 

women and children ? 

They are alive and well somewhere, 

The smallest sprout shows there is really 

no death, 
And if ever there was it led forward life, 

and does not wait at the end to arrest it, 
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. 30 

All goes onward and outward, nothing col- 
lapses, 

And to die is different from what any one 
supposed, and luckier. 



Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? 
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as 
lucky to die, and I know it. 

I pass death with the dying and birth with 
the new-wash'd babe, and am not con- 
tain'd between my hat and boots, 

And peruse manifold objects, no two alike 
and every one good, 

The earth good and the stars good, and their 
adjuncts all good. 

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an 
earth, 



I am the mate and companion of people, all 
just as immortal and fathomless as my- 
self, 

(They do not know how immortal, but I 
know.) 

Every kind for itself and its own, for me 

mine male and female, 
For me those that have been boys and that 

love women, 10 

For me the man that is proud and feels how 

it stings to be slighted, 
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, 

for me mothers and the mothers of 

mothers, 
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have 

shed tears, 
For me children and the begetters of chil- 
dren. . 

Undrape ! you are not guilty to me, nor 
stale nor discarded, 

I see through the broadcloth and gingham 
whether or no, 

And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tire- 
less, and cannot be shaken away. 

8 
The little one sleeps in its cradle, 
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and 
silently brush away flies with my hand. 

The youngster and the red-faced girl turn 

aside up the bushy hill, 
I peeringly view them from the top. 

The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of 

the bedroom, 
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, 

I note where the pistol has fallen. 



The big doors of the country barn stand 

open and ready, 
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads 

the slow-drawn wagon, 
The clear light plays on the brown gray 

and green intertinged, 
The armfuls are pack'd to the sagging 



I am there, I help, I came stretch'd atop 

of the load, 
I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the 

other, 



WALT WHITMAN 



535 



I jump from the cross-beams and seize the 

clover and timothy, 
And roll head over heels and tangle my 

hair full of wisps. 



Alone far in the wilds and mountains I 

hunt, 
Wandering amazed at my own lightness 

and glee, 
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot 

to pass the night, 
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill'd 

game, 
Falling asleep on the gather'd leaves with 

my dog and gun by my side. 

The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, 

she cuts the sparkle and scud, 
My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow 

or shout joyously from the deck. 

The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early 

and stopt for me, 
I tuck'd my trowser-ends in my boots and 

went and had a good time; 
You should have been with us that day 

round the chowder-kettle. 10 

I saw the marriage of the trapper in the 
open air in the far west, the bride was a 
red girl, 

Her father and her friends sat near cross- 
legged and dumbly smoking, they had 
moccasins to their feet and large thick 
blankets hanging from their shoulders, 

On a bank lounged the trapper, he was 
drest mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard 
and curls protected his neck, he held his 
bride by the hand, 

She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, 
her coarse straight locks descended upon 
her voluptuous limbs and reach'd to her 
feet. 

The runaway slave came to my house and 

stopt outside, 
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of 

the woodpile, 
Through the swung half -door of the kitchen 

I saw him limpsy and weak, 
And went where he sat on a log and led 

him in and assured him, 
And brought water and fill'd a tub for his 

sweated body and bruis'd feet, 



And gave him a room that enter'd from my 
own, and gave him some coarse clean 
clothes, 20 

And remember perfectly well his revolving 
eyes and his awkwardness, 

And remember putting plasters on the galls 
of his neck and ankles ; 

He staid with me a week before he was re- 
cuperated and pass'd north, 

I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock 
lean'd in the corner. 



14 

The wild gander leads his flock through the 

cool night, 
Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me 

like an invitation, 
The pert may suppose it meaningless, but 

I, listening close, 
Find its purpose and place up there toward 

the wintry sky. 
The sharp-hoof'd moose of the north, the 

cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the 

prairie-dog, 
The litter of the grunting sow as they tug 

at her teats, 
The brood of the turkey-hen and she with 

her half-spread wings, 
I see in them and myself the same old law. 

The press of my foot to the earth springs a 

hundred affections, 
They scorn the best I can do to relate them. 

I am enamour'd of growing out-do'ors, 1 1 
Of men that live among cattle or taste of 

the ocean or woods, 
Of the builders and steerers of ships and 

the wielders of axes and mauls, and the 

drivers of horses, 
I can eat and sleep with them week in and 

week out. 

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easi- 
est, is Me, 

Me going in for my chances, spending for 
vast returns, 

Adorning myself to bestow myself on the 
first that will take me, 

Not asking the sky to come down to my 
good will, 

Scattering it freely forever. 



536 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



I am of old and young, of the foolish as 
much as the wise. 

Regardless of others, ever regardful of 
others, 

Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well 
as a man. 

StufPd with the stuff that is eoarse and 
stuif'd with the stuff that is tine. 

One of the Nation of many nations, the 
smallest the same and the largest the 
same. 

A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a 
planter nouehalant and hospitable down 
by the Oeonee 1 live, 

A Yankee bound my own way ready for 
trade, my joints the limberest joints on 
earth and the sternest joints on earth, 

A Kentuekiau walking the vale of the Elk- 
horn in my deer-skin leggings, a Louisi- 
anian or Georgian. 

A boatman over lakes or bays or along 
eoasts, a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye J 

At home on Kanadian snow-shoes or up in 
the bush, or with fishermen off New- 
foundland, 10 

At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing 
with the rest and tacking, 

At home on the hills of Vermont or in the 
woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch, 

Comrade of Californians, comrade of free 
North-Westerners (loving their big pro- 
portions'). 

Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, com- 
rade of all who sbake hands and welcome 
to drink and meat, 

A learner with the simplest, a teacher of 
the thoughtfullest. 

A novice beginning yet experient of myriads 
of seasons, 

Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank 
and religion, 

A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, 
sailor, quaker, 

Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physi- 
cian, priest. 

1 resist any thing better than my own 
diversity, 20 

Breathe the air but leave plenty after me. 
And am not stuck up, and am iu my 
place. 

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their 
place, 



The bright suns 1 see and the dark suns I 
cannot see are in their place. 

The palpable is in its place and the impal- 
pable is in its place. "l 



These are really the thoughts of all men in 

all ages and lands, they are not original 

with me. 
If they are not yours as much as mine they 

are nothing, or next to nothing, 
If they are not the riddle and the untying 

of the riddle they are nothing. 
If they are not just as close as they are 

distant they are nothing. 

This is the grass that grows wherever the 

land is and the water is. 
This the common air that bathes the 

globe. 



With music strong 1 come, with my cornets 
and my drums, 

I play not marches for accepted victors 
only, 1 play marches for conquer 'd and 
slain persons. 1 

Have von heard that it was good to gain 

the ilay ? 
I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost 

in the same spirit in which they are 

won. 

I beat and pomid for the dead, 
I blow through my embouchures my loud- 
est and gayest for them. 1 

Vivas to those who have fail'd ! 

And to those whose war-vessels sank m the 

sea ! 
And to those themselves who sank in the 

sea ! 

1 Instead of these two lines, the original edition has : 

This is the breath of laws am! sonars ami behaviour, 

Tins is the tasteless water of souls . . . this is the true sus- 
tenance, 

it is for the illiterate ... it is for the judges of the supreme 
eourt . . . it is for the federal capiiol and the state eapitols. 

It is for the admirable communes of literary men and com- 
posers and singers and leetnrers and engineers and savans. 

It is for the endless raees of working people and farmers nnd 
seamen. 

This is the trill of a thousand clear cornets and scream of the 
octavo flute and strike of triangles, 

I play not a march for victors only ... 1 play great marches 
for conquered and slain persons. 

3 I sound triumphal drums for the dead. 

1 flinar through my embouchures the loudest and gayest 
music to them. (1S55.) 



WALT WHITMAN 



537 



And to all generals that lost engagements, 

and all overcome heroes ! 

And the numberless unknown heroes equal 
to the greatest heroes known ! 



In all people I see myself, none more and 

not one a barley-corn less, 
And the good or bad I say of myself I say 

of them. 

I know I am solid and sound, 

To me the converging objects of the uni- 
verse perpetually How, 

All are written to me, and I must get what 
the writing means. 

I know I am deathless, 

I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept 

by a carpenter's compass, 
I know I shall not pass like a child's carla- 

cue cut with a burnt stick at night. 

I know I am august, 

I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself 
or be understood, 10 

I see that the elementary laws never apolo- 
gize, 

(I reckon I behave no prouder than the 
level I plant my house by, after all.) 

I exist as I am, that is enough, 

If no other in the world be aware I sit 

content, 
And if each and all be aware I sit content. 

One world is aware and by far the largest 

to me, and that is myself, 
And whether I come to my own to-day or 

in ten thousand or ten million years, 
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal 

cheerfulness I can wait. 

My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in 

granite, 
I laugh at what you call dissolution, 20 

And I know the amplitude of time. 



I am the poet of the Body and I am the 

poet of the Soul, 
The pleasures of heaven are with me and 

the pains of hell are with me, 



The first I graft and increase upon myself, 
the latter I translate into a new tongue. 

I am the poet of the woman the same as 

the man, 
A ml I say it is as great to be a woman as 

to be a man, 
And I say there is nothing greater than the 

mother of men. 

I chant the chant of dilation or pride, 1 
We have had ducking and deprecating 

about enough, 
I show that size is only development. 

Have you outstript the rest ? are you the 
President ? 10 

It is a trifle, they will more than arrive 
there every one, and still pass on. 

I am he that walks with the tender and 

growing night, 2 
I call to the earth and sea half-held by the 

night. 
Press close bare-bosom'd night — press 

close magnetic nourishing night ! 
Night of south winds — night of the large 

few stars ! 
Still nodding night — mad naked summer 

night. 

Smile voluptuous cool-breath 'd earth ! 
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees ! 
Earth of departed sunset — earth of the 
mountains misty-torjt ! 



1 Among Whitman's early memoranda of the essen- 
tial things not to be omitted from Leaves of Grass we 
find : ' Boldness — Nonchalant east-, and indifference. 
To encourage me or any one else continually to strike 
out alone.' {Notes arid Fragments, p. .77.; 

- The original form of this beautiful apostrophe to 
Night is to be found in Notes and Fragments, p. 17 : — 

Right of south wind*— night of the large few stars ! 
Still Hlurnberous night — mad, naked summer night ! 

Smile, O voluptuous, procreant earth I 

Earth of the nodding and liquid trees I 

Earth of the mountains, rnisty-top't 

Earth of departed sunset — Earth of shine and dark, mottling 

the tide of the river ! 
Earth of the vitreous fall of the full moon just tinged with 

blue : 
Earth of the limpid (.-ray of elouds purer and clearer for my 

sakel 
Eurth of far arms — rich, apple-blossomed earth ! 
Smile, for your lover cornea 1 

round me earth ! Spread with your curtained hours; 

Take me as manv a time you 've taken ; 



Spread .„» 

Take me as many a time you 've taken ; 

Till springing up in . . . 

Prodigal, you have given me love ; 
Siisti-niniee, happiness, health have given ; 
Therefore I to yon give love ; 
O unspeakable, passionate love 1 



538 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon 

just tinged with blue ! 20 

Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide 

of the river ! 
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter 

and clearer for my sake ! 
Far-swooping elbow'd earth — rich apple- 

blossom'd earth ! 
Smile, for your lover comes. 

Prodigal, you have given me love — there- 
fore I to you give love ! 
O unspeakable passionate love ! 



You sea ! I resign myself to you also — I 
guess what you mean, 

I behold from the beach your crooked in- 
viting fingers, 

I believe you refuse to go back without 
feeling of me, 

We must have a turn together, I undress, 
hurry me out of sight of the land, 

Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy 
drowse, 

Dash me with amorous wet, I can repay 
you. 

Sea of stretch'd ground-swells, 

Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths, 

Sea of the brine of life and of unshovell'd 

yet always-ready graves, 
Howler and scooper of storms, capricious 

and dainty sea, 
I am integral with you, I too am of one 

phase and of all phases. 



3° 
All truths wait in all things, 
They neither hasten their own delivery nor 

resist it, 
They do not need the obstetric forceps of 

the surgeon, 
The insignificant is as big to me as any, 
(What is less or more than a touch ?) 

Logic and sermons never convince, 
The damp of the night drives deeper into 
my soul. 

(Only what proves itself to every man and 

woman is so, 
Only what nobody denies is so.) 



A minute and a drop of me settle my 
brain, 

I believe the soggy clods shall become 
lovers and lamps, 

And a compend of compends is the meat of 
a man or woman, 

And a summit and flower there is the feel- 
ing they have for each other, 

And they are to branch boundlessly out of 
that lesson until it becomes omnific, 

And until one and all shall delight us, and 
we them. 

31 
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the 

journey-work of the stars, 
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a 

grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, 
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'ceuvre for the 

highest, 
And the running blackberry would adorn 

the parlors of heaven, 
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts 

to scorn all machinery, 
And the cow crunching with depress'd head 

surpasses any statue, 
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger 

sextillions of infidels. 



33 
Space and Time ! now I see it is true, what 

I guess'd at, 
What I guess'd when I loaf 'd on the grass, 
What I guess'd while I lay alone in my bed, 
And again as I walk'd the beach under the 

paling stars of the morning. 

My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows 

rest in sea-gaps, 
I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents, 
I am afoot with my vision. 

By the city's quadrangular houses — in log 
huts, camping with lumbermen, 

Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry 
gulch and rivulet bed, 

Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of 
carrots and parsnips, crossiug savannas, 
trailing in forests, , 10- 

Prospecting, gold-digging, girdling the trees 
of a new purchase, 

Scorch'd ankle-deep by the hot sand, haul- 
ing my boat down the shallow river, 



WALT WHITMAN 



539 



Where the panther walks to and fro on 

a limb overhead, where the buck turns 

furiously at the hunter, 
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length 

on a rock, where the otter is feeding on 

fish, 
Where the alligator in bis tough pimples 

sleeps by the bayou, 
Where the black bear is searching for roots 

or honey, where the beaver pats the mud 

with his paddle-shaped tail; 
Over the growing sugar, over the yellow- 

flower'd cotton plant, over the rice in its 

low moist field, 
Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its 

scallop'd scum and slender shoots from 

the gutters, 
Over the western persimmon, over the long- 

leav'd corn, over the delicate blue-flower 

flax, 
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a 

hummer and buzzer there with the rest, 
Over the dusky green of the rye as it rip- 
ples and shades in the breeze; 21 
Scaling mountains, pulling myself cau- 
tiously up, holding on by low scragged 

limbs, 
Walking the path worn in the grass and 

beat through the leaves of the brush, 
Where the quail is whistling betwixt the 

woods and the wheat-lot, 
Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month 

eve, where the great gold-bug drops 

through the dark, 
Where the brook puts out of the roots of 

the old tree and flows to the meadow, 
Where cattle stand and shake away flies 

with the tremidous shuddering of their 

hides, 
Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, 

where andirons straddle the hearth-slab, 

where cobwebs fall in festoons from the 

rafters ; 
Where trip-hammers crash, where the press 

is whirling its cylinders, 
Wherever the human heart beats with ter- 
rible throes under its ribs, 30 
Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating 

aloft (floating in it myself and looking 

composedly down), 
Where the life-car is drawn on the slip- 
noose, where the heat hatches pale-green 

eggs in the dented sand, 
Where the she-whale swims with her calf 

and never forsakes it, 



Where the steam-ship trails hind-ways its 
long pennant of smoke, 

Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black 
chip out of the water, 

Where the half-burn'd brig is riding on un- 
known currents, 

Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where 
the dead are corrupting below; 

Where the dense-starr'd flag is borne at the 
head of the regiments, 

Approaching Manhattan up by the long- 
stretching island, 

Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a 
veil over my countenance, 40 

Upon a door-step, upon the horse-block of 
hard wood outside, 

Upon the race-course, or enjoying pic- 
nics or jigs or a good game of base-l 
ball, 

At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironi- 
cal license, bull-dances, drinking, laugh- 
ter, 

At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the 
brown mash, sucking the juice through a 
straw, 

At apple-peelings wanting kisses for all the 
red fruit I find, 

At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, 
huskings, house-raisings; 

Where the mocking-bird sounds his deli- 
cious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps, 

Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, 
where the dry-stalks are scatter'd, where 
the brood-cow waits in the hovel, 

Where the bull advances to do his mascu- 
line work, where the stud to the mare, 
where the cock is treading the hen, 

Where the heifers browse, where geese 
nip their food with short jerks, 50 

Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the 
limitless and lonesome prairie, 

Where herds of buffalo make a crawling ; 
spread of the square miles far and near, I 

Where the humming-bird shimmers, where 
the neck of the long-lived swan is curv- 
ing and winding, 

Where the laughing-gull scoots by the 
shore, where she laughs her near-human 
laugh, 

Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in 
the garden half hid by the high weeds, 

Where band-neck'd partridges roost in a 
ring on the ground with their heads out, 

Where burial coaches enter the arch'd gates 
of a cemetery, 



54° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of 
snow and icicled trees, 

Where the yellow-crown'd heron comes to 
the edge of the marsh at night and feeds 
upon small crabs, 

Where the splash of swimmers and divers 
cools the warm noon, 60 

Where the katy-did works her chromatic 
reed on the walnut-tree over the well, 

Through patches of citrons and cucumbers 
with silver-wired leaves, 

Through the salt-lick or orange glade, or 
under conical firs, 

Through the gymnasium, through the cur- 
tain'd saloon, through the office or public 
hall; 

Pleas'd with the native and pleas'd with tbe 
foreign, pleas'd with the new and old, 

Pleas'd with the homely woman as well as 
the handsome, 

Pleas'd with the quakeress as she puts off 
her bonnet and talks melodiously, 

Pleas'd with the tune of the choir of the 
whitewash'd church, 

Pleas'd with the earnest Words of the sweat- 
ing Methodist preacher, impress'd seri- 
ously at the camp-meeting; 

Looking in at the shop-windows of Broad- 
way the whole forenoon, flatting the flesh 
of my nose on the thick plate glass, 7 o 

Wandering the same afternoon with my 
face turn'd up to the clouds, or down a 
lane or along the beach, 

My right and left arms round the sides of 
two friends, and I in the middle; 

Coming home with the silent and dark- 
cheek'd bush-boy, (behind me he rides at 
the drape of the day,) 

Far from the settlements studying the 
print of animals' feet, or the moccasin 
print, 

By the cot in the hospital reaching lemon- 
ade to a feverish patient, 

Nigh the coffin'd corpse when all is still, 
examining with a candle; 

Voyaging to every port to dicker and ad- 
venture, 

Hurrying with the modern crowd as eager 
and fickle as any, 

Hot toward one I hate, ready in my mad- 
ness to knife him, 

Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my 
thoughts gone from me a long while, 80 

Walking the old hills of Judaea with the 
beautiful gentle God by my side, 



Speeding through space, speeding through 
heaven and the stars, 

Speeding amid the Seven satellites and the 
broad ring, and the diameter of eighty 
thousand miles, 

Speeding with tail'd meteors, throwing fire- 
balls like the rest, 

Carrying the crescent child that carries its 
own full mother in its belly, 1 

Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cau- 
tioning, 

Backing and filling, appearhig and disap- 
pearing, 

I tread day and night such roads. 

I visit the orchards of spheres and look at 

the product, 2 
And look at quintillions ripen'd and look at 

quintillions green. 90 

I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing 

soul, 
My course runs below the soundings of 

plummets. 

I help myself to material and immate- 
rial, 

No guard can shut me off, no law prevent 
me. 

I anchor my ship for a little while only, 
My messengers continually cruise away or 
bring their returns to me. 

I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping 
chasms with a pike pointed staff, clinging 
to topples of brittle and blue. 

I ascend to the foretruck, 

I take my place late at night in the crow's- 
nest, 

We sail the arctic sea, it is plenty light 
enough, 100 

Through the clear atmosphere I stretch 
around on the wonderful beauty, 

The enormous masses of ice pass me and 
I pass them, the scenery is plain in all 
directions, 

The white-topt mountains show in the dis- 
tance, I fling out my fancies toward them, 

1 Compare the old ballad: — 

Last night I saw the new moon 
With the old moon in her arms. 

2 I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric pro- 

duct. (1S55.) 



WALT WHITMAN 



54i 



We are approaching some great battle- 
field in which we are soon to be engaged, 

We pass the colossal outposts of the en- 
campment, we pass with still feet and 
caution, 

Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast 
and ruin'd city, 

The blocks and fallen architecture more 
than all the living cities of the globe. 



I understand the large hearts of heroes, 

The courage of present times and all times, 

How the skipper saw the crowded and rud- 
derless wreck of the steam-ship, and 
Death chasing it up and down the storm, 

How he knuckled tight and gave not back 
an inch, and was faithful of days and 
faithful of nights, m 

And chalk'd in large letters on a board, Be 
of good cheer, we will not desert you ; 

How he follow'd with them and tack'd with 
them three days and would not give it 
up, 

How he saved the drifting company at 
last, 

How the lank loose-gown'd women look'd 
when boated from the side of their pre- 
pared graves, 

How the silent old-faced infants and the 
lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp'd unshaved 
men; 

All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it 
well, it becomes mine, 

I am the man, I suffer'd, I was there. 

The disdain and calmness of martyrs, 
The mother of old, condemn'd for a witch, 

burnt with dry wood, her children gazing 

on, 120 

The hounded slave that flags in the race, 

leans by the fence, blowing, cover'd with 

sweat, 
The twinges that sting like needles his legs 

and neck, the murderous buckshot and 

the bullets, 
All these I feel or am. 

I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite 

of the dogs, 
Hell and despair are upon me, crack and 

again crack the marksmen, 
I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore 

dribs, thinn'd with the ooze of my skin, 
I fall on the weeds and stones, 



The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul 

close, 
Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently 

over the head with whip-stocks. 

Agonies are one of my changes of gar- 
ments, 130 

I do not ask the wounded person how he 
feels, I myself become the wounded per- 
son, 

My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a 
cane and observe. 

I am the mash'd fireman with breast-bone 
broken, 

Tumbling walls buried me in their ddbris, 

Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yell- 
ing shouts of my comrades, 

I heard the distant click of their picks and 
shovels, 

They have clear'd the beams away, they 
tenderly lift me forth. 

I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the 

pervading hush is for my sake, 
Painless after all I lie exhausted but not so 

unhappy, 
White and beautiful are the faces around 

me, the heads are bared of their fire-caps, 
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of 

the torches. 141 

Distant and dead resuscitate, 
They show as the dial or move as the hands 
of me, I am the clock myself. 

I am an old artillerist, I tell of my fort's 

bombardment, 
I am there again. 

Again the long roll of the drummers, 
Again the attacking cannon, mortars, 
Again to my listening ears the camion re- 
sponsive. 

I take part, I see and hear the whole, 
The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well- 

aim'd shots, 150 

The ambulanza slowly passing trailing its 

red drip, 
Workmen searching after damages, making 

indispensable repairs, 
The fall of grenades through the rent roof, 

the fan-shaped explosion, 
The whizz of limbs, heads, stone, wood, iron, 

high in the air. 



542 . 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Again gurgles the mouth of my dying 
general, he furiously waves with his 
hand, 

He gasps through the clot Mind not me — 
mind — the entrenchments. 

34 
Now I tell what I knew in Texas in my 

early youth, 1 
(I tell not the fall of Alamo, 
Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo, 
The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at 

Alamo,) 
'T is the tale of the murder in cold blood of 

four hundred and twelve young men. 

Retreating they had form'd in a hollow 
square with their baggage for breast- 
works, 

Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding 
enemies, nine times their number, was 
the price they took in advance, 

Their colonel was wounded and their am- 
munition gone, 

They treated for an honorable capitulation, 
receiv'd writing and seal, gave up their 
arms and march'd back prisoners of war. 

They were the glory of the race of ran- 
gers, IO 

Matchless with horse, rifle, song, supper, 
courtship, 

Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, 
proud, and affectionate, 

Bearded, sunburnt, drest in the free cos- 
tume of hunters, 

Not a single one over thirty years of age. 

The second First-day morning they were 
brought out in squads and massacred, it 
was beautiful early summer, 

The work commenced about five o'clock and 
was over by eight. 

None obey'd the command to kneel, 
Some made a mad and helpless rush, some 

stood stark and straight, 
A few fell at once, shot in the temple or 

heart, the living and dead lay together, 

1 Instead of the first five lines of this section, the 
original edition has: — 

I tell not the fall of Alamo . . . not one escaped to tell the 

fall of Alamo, 
The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo. 

Hear now the tale of a jet-black sunrise, 
Hear of the murder in cold-blood of four hundred and twelve 
young men. 



The maim'd and mangled dug hi the dirt, 

the new-comers saw them there, 20 

Some half-kill'd attempted to crawl away, 
These were despatch'd with bayonets or 

batter'd with the blunts of muskets, 
A youth not seventeen years old seiz'd his 

assassin till two more came to release 

him, 
The three were all torn and cover'd with 

the boy's blood. 

At eleven o'clock began the burning of the 

bodies; 
That is the tale of the murder of the four 

hundred and twelve young men. 2 

Would you hear of an old-time sea- 
fight ? 8 

Would you learn who won by the light of 
the moon and stars ? 

List to the yarn, as my grandmother's 
father the sailor told it to me. 

Our foe was no skulk in his ship I tell you 

(said he), 
His was the surly English pluck, and there 

is no tougher or truer, and never was, 

and never will be ; 
Along the lower'd eve he came horribly 

raking us. 

We closed with him, the yards entangled, 

the cannon touch'd, 
My captain lash'd fast with his own hands. 

We had receiv'd some eighteen pound shots 
under the water, 

On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces 
had burst at the first fire, killing all 
around and blowing up overhead. 10 

Fighting at sun-down, fighting at dark, 
Ten o'clock at night, the full moon well up, 

our leaks on the gain, and five feet of 

water reported, 
The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners 

confined in the after-hold to give them a 

chance for themselves. 

2 In the original edition there was added the line: — 

And that was a jet-black sunrise. 

3 Did you read in the sea-books of the old-fa6hioned frigate- 

fight ? (1855.) 



WALT WHITMAN 



543 



The transit to and from the magazine is 

now stopt by the sentinels, 
They see so many strange faces they do 

not know whom to trust. 

Our frigate takes fire, 
The other asks if we demand quarter ? 
If our colors are struck and the fighting 
done ? 

Now I laugh content, for I hear the voice 
of my little captain, 

iWe have not struck, he composedly cries, 
we have just begun our part of the fight- 
ing. 

Only three guns are in use, 21 

One is directed by the captain himself 

against the enemy's mainmast, 
Two well serv'd with grape and canister 

silence his musketry and clear his decks. 

The tops alone second the fire of this little 
battery, especially the main-top, 

They hold out bravely during the whole of 
the action. 

Not a moment's cease, 
The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire 
eats toward the powder-magazine. 

One of the pumps has been shot away, it is 
generally thought we are sinking. 

Serene stands the little captain, 

He is not hurried, his voice is neither high 

nor low, . 30 

His eyes give more light to us than our 

battle-lanterns. 

Toward twelve there in the beams of the 
moon they surrender to us. 

36 
Stretch'd and still lies the midnight, 
Two great hulls motionless on the breast of 

the darkness, 
Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, 

preparations to pass to the one we have 

conquer'd, 
The captain on the quarter-deck coldly 

giving his orders through a countenance 

white as a sheet, 
Near by the corpse of the child that serv'd 

in the cabin, 



The dead face of an old salt with long white 
hair and carefully curl'd whiskers, 

The flames spite of all that can be done 
flickering aloft and below, 

The husky voices of the two or three offi- 
cers yet fit for duty, 

Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by 
themselves, dabs of flesh upon the masts 
and spars, 

Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight 
shock of the soothe of waves, 

Black and impassive guns, litter of pow- 
der-parcels, strong scent, 

A few large stars overhead, silent and 
mournful shining, 

Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy 
grass and fields by the shore, death-mes- 
sages given in charge to survivors, 

The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnaw- 
ing teeth of his saw, 

Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short 
wild scream, and long, dull, tapering 
groan, 

These so, these irretrievable. 



44 
It is time to explain myself — let us stand 
up. 

What is known I strip away, 
I launch all men and women forward with 
me into the Unknown. 



The clock indicates the moment ■ 
does eternity indicate ? x 



but what 



We have thus far exhausted trillions of 

winters and summers, 
There are trillions ahead, and trillions 

ahead of them. 

Births have brought us richness and va- 
riety, 

And other births will bring us richness and 
variety. 

I do not call one greater and one smaller, 
That which fills its period and place is equal 
to any. 10 

1 After this line there followed, in the original edi- 
tion, another paragraph of two lines : — 

Eternity lies in bottomless reservoirs ... its buckets are 

rising forever and ever. 
They pour and they pour and they exhale away. 



544 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Were mankind murderous or jealous upon 
you, my brother, my sister ? 

I am sorry for you, they are not murder- 
ous or jealous upon me, 

All has been gentle with me, I keep no ac- 
count with lamentation, 

(What have I to do with lamenta- 
tion ?) 

V 

I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and 
I an encloser of things to be. 

My feet strike an apex of the apices of the 

stairs, 
On every step bunches of ages, and larger 

bunches between the steps, 
All below duly travel'd, and still I mount 

and mount. 

i 

Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind 

me, 
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing, I 

know I was even there, 20 

I waited unseen and always, and slept 

through the lethargic mist, 1 
And took my time, and took no hurt from 

the fetid carbon. 

Long I was hugg'd close — long and long. 

Immense have been the preparations for 

me, 
Faithful and friendly the arms that have 

help'd me. 

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and row- 
ing like cheerful boatmen, 

For room to me stars kept aside in their 
own rings, 

They sent influences to look after what was 
to hold me. 

Before I was born out of my mother gen- 
erations guided me, 

My embryo has never been torpid, nothing 
could overlay it. 30 

For it the nebula cohered to an orb, 
The long slow strata piled to rest it on, 
Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, 
Monstrous sauroids transported it in their 
mouths and deposited it with care. 

1 I waited unseen and always, and slept while God car- 
ried me through the lethargic mist. (1855.) 



All forces have been steadily employ'd to 

complete and delight me, 
Now on this spot I stand with my robust 

soul. 



46 
I know I have the best of time and space, 
and was never measured and never will 
be measured. 

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen 

all!) 
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, 

and a staff cut from the woods, 
No friend of mine takes his ease in my 

chair, 
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy, 
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, 

exchange, 
But each man and each woman of you I 

lead upon a knoll, 
My left hand hooking you round the waist, 
My right hand pointing to landscapes of 

continents and the public road. 

Not I, not any one else can travel that road 
for you, 10 

You must travel it for yourself. 

It is not far, it is within reach, 

Perhaps you have been on it since you were 

born and did not know, 
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on 

land. 

Shoulder your duds, dear son, and I will 

mine, and let us hasten forth, 
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall 

fetch as we go. 

If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest 
the chuff of your hand on my hip, 

And in due time you shall repay the same 
service to me, 

For after we start we never lie by again. 

This day before dawn I ascended a hill and 
look'd at the crowded heaven, 20 

And I said to my spirit When we become 
the enfolders of those orbs, and the plea- 
sure and knowledge of every thing in them, 
shall we be filVd and satisfied then ? 

And my spirit said No, we but level that lift 
to pass and continue beyond. 



WALT WHITMAN 



545 



You are also asking me questions and I hear 

you, 
I answer that I cannot answer, you must 

find out for yourself. 

Sit a while dear son, 

Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk 
to drink, 

But as soon as you sleep and renew your- 
self in sweet clothes, I kiss you with a 
good-by kiss and open the gate for your 
egress hence. 

Long enough have you dream 'd contempt- 
ible dreams, 
Now I wash the gum from your eyes, 
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of 
the light and of every moment of jour 
life. 3° 

Long have you timidly waded holding a 

plank by the shore, 
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, 
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise 

again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly 

dash with your hair. 

47 
I am the teacher of athletes, 
He that by me spreads a wider breast 

than my own proves the width of my 

own, 
He most honors my style who learns under 

it to destroy the teacher. 

The boy I love, the same becomes a man 

not through derived power, but in his 

own right, 
Wicked rather than virtuous out of confor- 
mity or fear, 
Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his 

steak, 
Unrequited love or a slight cutting him 

worse than sharp steel cuts, 
First-rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull's 

eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play 

on the banjo, 
Preferring scars and the beard and faces 

pitted with small-pox over all lather- 

ers, 
And those well-tann'd to those that keep 

out of the sun. io 

I teach straying from me, yet who can 
stray from me ? 



I follow you whoever you are from the 
present hour, 

My words itch at your ears till you under- 
stand them. 

I do not say these things for a dollar or to 
fill up the time while I wait for a boat, 

(It is you talking just as much as myself, 
I act as the tongue of you, 

Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be 
loosen'd.) 

I swear I will never again mention love or 

death inside a house, 
And I swear I will never translate myself 

at all, only to him or her who privately 

stays with me in the open air. 

If you would understand me go to the 

heights or water-shore, 
The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a 

drop or motion of waves a key, 2 o 

The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second 

my words. 

No shutter'd room or school can commune 

with me, 
But roughs and little children better than 

they. 

The young mechanic is closest to me, he 

knows me well, 
The woodman that takes his axe and jug 

with him shall take me with him all day, 
The farm-boy ploughing in the field feels 

good at the soimd of my voice, 
In vessels that sail my words sail, I go with 

fishermen and seamen and love them. 

The soldier camp'd or upon the march is 

mine, 
On the night ere the pending battle many 

seek me, and I do not fail them, 
On that solemn night (it may be their last) 

those that know me seek me. 1 30 

My face rubs to the hunter's face when he 
lies down alone in his blanket, 

The driver thinking of me does not mind 
the jolt of his wagon, 

The young mother and old mother compre- 
hend me, 

The giil and the wife rest the needle a 
moment and forget where they are, 

They and all would resume what I have 
told them. 
1 These three lines appeared first in the edition of 1867. 






546 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 






I have said that the soul is not more than 

the body, 1 
And I have said that the body is not more 

than the soul, 
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than 

one's self is, 
And whoever walks a furlong without sym- 
pathy walks to his own funeral drest in 

his shroud, 
And I or you pocketless of a dime may 

purchase the pick of the earth, 
And to glance with an eye or show a bean 

in its pod confounds the learning of all 

times, 
And there is no trade or employment but 

the young man following it may become 

a hero, 
And there is no object so soft but it makes 

a hub for the wheel'd universe, 
And I say to any man or woman, Let your 

soul stand cool and composed before a 

million universes. 

1 Compare, in Notes and Fragments, p. 36, No. 112 of 
the ' First Drafts and Rejected Lines ' for Leaves of 
Grass. Compare also, as the best possible commentary 
on this section, two passages of Whitman's prose, the 
first a note written probably between 1850 and 1855, the 
second from the Preface to the 1876 edition of Leaves of 
/ Grass : — 
/\a All through writings preserve the equilibrium of the 
truth that the material world, and all its laws, are as 
grand and superb as the spiritual world and all its laws. 
Most writers have disclaimed the physical world, and 
they have not over-estimated the other, or soul, but 
have under-estimated the corporeal. How shall my eye 
separate the beauty of the blossoming buckwheat field 
from the stalks and heads of tangible matter ? How 
shall I know what the life is except as I see it in the 
flesh ? I will not praise one without the other or more 
than the other. 

Do not argue at all or compose proofs to demonstrate 
things. State nothing which it will not do to state as 
apparent to all eyes. {Notes and Fragments, p. 56.) 

It was originally my intention, after chanting in 
' Leaves of Grass ' the songs of the body and exist- 
ence, to then compose a further, equally needed vol- 
ume, based on those Convictions of perpetuity and con- 
servation which, enveloping all precedents, make the 
unseen soul govern absolutely at last. I meant, while 
in a sort continuing the theme of my first chants, to 
shift the slides, and exhibit the problem and paradox of 
the same ardent and fully appointed personality enter- 
ing the sphere of the resistless gravitation of spiritual 
law, and with cheerful face estimating death, not at all 
as the cessation, but as somehow what I feel it must 
be, the entrance upon by far the greatest part of exist- 
ence, and something that life is at least as much for, as 
it is for itself. But the full construction of such a 
work is beyond my powers, and must remain for some 
bard in the future. The physical and the sensuous, in 
themselves or in their immediate continuations, retain 
holds upon me which I think are never entirely re- 
leas'd ; and those holds I have not only not denied, but 
hardly wish'd to weaken. {Complete Prose Works, pp. 
273, 274.) 



And I say to mankind, Be not curious about 

God, 2 
For I who am curious about each am not 

curious about God, 
(No array of terms can say how much I am 

at peace about God and about death.) 

I hear and behold God in every object, yet 
understand God not in the least, 

Nor do 1 understand who there can be 
more wonderful than myself. 

Why should I wish to see God better than 

this day ? 
I see something of God each hour of the 

twenty-four, and each moment then, 
In the faces of men and women I see God, 

and in my own face in the glass, 
I find letters from God dropt in the street, 

and every one is sigu'd by God's name, 
And I leave them where they are, for I 

know that wheresoe'er I go, 
Others will punctually come for ever and 

ever. 



5i 
The past and present wilt — I have fill'd 

them, emptied them, 
And proceed to fill my next fold of the 

future; 

Listener up there ! what have you to con- 
fide to me ? 

Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of 
evening. 

(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and 
I stay only a minute longer.) 

2 Compare the original sketch for these lines in 
Notes and Fragments, p. 24 : — 

There is no word in any tongue, 

No array, no form of symbol, 

To tell his infatuation 

Who would define the scope and purpose of God. 

Mostly this we have of God ; we have man. 

Lo, the Sun ; 

Its glory floods the moon 

Which "of a night shines in some turbid pool, 

Shaken by soughing winds ; 

And there are sparkles mad and tossed and broken 

And their archetype is the sun. 

Of God I know not ; 

But this I know ; 

I can comprehend no being more wonderful than man ; 

Man, before the rage of whose passions the storms of Heaven 
are but a breath ; 

Before whose caprices the lightning is slow and less fatal ; 

Man, microcosm of all Creation's wildness, terror, beauty and 
power, 

And whose folly and wickedness are in nothing else ex- 
istent. 






WALT WHITMAN 



547 



Do I contradict myself ? 

Very well then I contradict myself, 

(I am large, I contain multitudes.) 

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I 
wait on the door-slab. 

Who has done his day's work? who will 

soonest be through with his supper ? 
Who wishes to walk with me ? 

Will you speak before I am gone ? will 
you prove already too late ? 

5 2 
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses 
me, he complains of my gab and my 
loitering. 

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untrans- 
latable, 

1 sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs 
of the world. 1 

The last scud of day holds back for me, 
It flings my likeness after the rest and true 

as any on the shadow'd wilds, 
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. 

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at 

the runaway sun, 
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in 

lacy jags. 

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from 

the grass I love, 
If you want me again look for me under 

your boot-soles. 

You will hardly know who I am or what I 
mean, 

But I shall be good health to you neverthe- 
less, 

And filter and fibre your blood. 

Failing to fetch me at first keep encour- 



Missing me one place search another, 
I stop somewhere waiting for you. 

1855. 

1 Compare the original sketch for these lines, in 
Notes and Fragments, p. 36 : — 

The spotted hawk salutes the approaching night ; 
He sweeps by me and rebukes me hoarsely with his invita- 
tion ; 
He complains with sarcastic voice of my lagging. 

I feel apt to clip it and go ; 
1 am not half tamed yet. 



SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD 2 



Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open 

road, 
Healthy, free, the world before me, 
The long brown path before me leading 

wherever I choose. 

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I my- 
self am good-fortune, 

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone 
no more, need nothing, 

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, 
querulous criticisms, 3 

Strong and content I travel the open road. 

The earth, that is sufficient, 
I do not want the constellations any nearer, 
I know they are very well where they are, 
I know they suffice for those who belong to 
them. 1 1 

(Still here I carry my old delicious bur- 
dens, 

I carry them, men and women, I carry 
them with me wherever I go, 

I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of 
them, 

I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them 
in return.) 



You road I enter upon and look around, I 

believe you are not all that is here, 
I believe that much unseen is also here. 4 

Here the profound lesson of reception, nor 
preference nor denial, 

The black with his woolly head, the felon, 
the diseas'd, the illiterate person, are not 
denied; 

The birth, the hasting after the physician, 
the beggar's tramp, the drunkard's stag- 
ger, the laughing party of mechanics, 2 o 

2 A great recreation, the past three years, has been 
in taking long walks out from Washington, five, seven, 
perhaps ten miles and back ; generally with my friend 
Peter Doyle, who is as fond of it as I am. Fine moon- 
light nights, over the perfect military roads, hard and 
smooth — or Sundays — we had these delightful walks, 
never to be forgotten. (Whitman, Specimen Days, 
December 10th, 1S65. Complete Prose Works, p. 70.) 

This poem first appeared in 1856, with the title ' Poem 
of the Road.' 

3 This line was added in the edition of 1881. 

1 In the first form of the poem, 1856, this line read : 
I believe that something unseen is also here. 



548 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 






The escaped youth, the rich person's car- 
riage, the fop, the eloping couple, 

The early market-man, the hearse, the mov- 
ing of furniture into the town, the re- 
turn back from the town, 

They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, 
none can be interdicted, 

None but are accepted, none but shall be 
dear to me. 



You air that serves me with breath to 
speak ! 

You objects that call from diffusion my 
meanings and give them shape ! 

You light that wraps me and all things in 
delicate equable showers ! 1 

You paths worn hi the irregular hollows by 
the roadsides ! 

I believe you are latent with unseen exist- 
ences, you are so dear to me. 

You flagg'd walks of the cities ! you strong 
curbs at the edges ! 30 

You ferries ! you planks and posts of 
wharves ! you timber-lined sides ! you 
distant ships ! 

You rows of houses ! you window-pierc'd 
fagades ! you roofs ! 

You porches and entrances! you copings and 
iron guards ! 

You windows whose transparent shells 
might expose so much ! 

You doors and ascending steps ! you arches ! 

You gray stones of interminable pave- 
ments ! you trodden crossings ! 

From all that has touch'd you I believe 
you have imparted to yourselves, and now 
would impart the same secretly to me, 

From the living and the dead you have peo- 
pled your impassive surfaces, and the 
spirits thereof would be evident and ami- 
cable with me. 



The earth expanding right hand and left 

hand, 
The picture alive, every part in its best 

light, 40 

1 In the first form of the poem there followed here 
three lines which were omitted in 1871 and in the follow- 
ing editions : — 

You animals moving serenely over the earth ! 
You birds that wing yourselves through the air ! you insects ! 
You sprouting growths from the farmers' fields 1 you stalks 
and weeds by the fences I 



The music falling hi where it is wanted, 
and stopping where it is not wanted, 

The cheerful voice of the public road, the 
gay fresh sentiment of the road. 

highway I travel, do you say to me Do 

not leave me f 
Do you say Venture not — if you leave me 

you are lost? 
Do you say i" am already prepared, I am 

well-beaten and undented, adhere to^ie f 

public road, I say back I am not afraid 
to leave you, yet I love you, 

You express me better than I can express 

myself, 
You shall be more to me than my poem. 

1 think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in 
the open air, and all free poems also, 

I think I could stop here myself and do 
miracles, 50 

I think whatever I shall meet on the road 
I shall like, and whoever beholds me 
shall like me, 

I think whoever I see must be happy. 



5 
From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of 

limits and imaginary lines, 2 
Going where I list, my own master total 

and absolute, 
Listening to others, considering well what 

they say, 
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplat- 

Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting 
myself of the holds that would hold 



I inhale great draughts of space, 
The east and the west are mine, and the 
north and the south are mine. 

I am larger, better than I thought, 60 

I did not know I held so much goodness. 

All seems beautiful to me, 

I can repeat over to men and women You 

have done such good to me I would do 

the same to you, 
I will recruit for myself and you as I go, 

3 In the edition of 1856 this section began : — 

From this hour, freedom ! 

From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits, etc. 



WALT WHITMAN 



549 



I will scatter myself among men and wo- 
men as I go, 

I will toss a new gladness and roughness 
among them, 

Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me, 

Whoever accepts me he or she shall be 
blessed and shall bless me. 



Now if a thousand perfect men were to ap- 
pear it would not amaze me, 

Now if a thousand beautiful forms of wo- 
men appear'd it would not astonish me. 70 

Now I see the secret of the making of the 

best persons, 
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and 

sleep with the earth. 

Here a great personal deed has room, x 
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the 

whole race of men, 
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms 

law and mocks all authority and all 

argument against it.) 

Here is the test of wisdom, 

Wisdom is not finally tested in schools, 

Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having 
it to another not having it, 

Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of 
proof, is its own proof, 

Applies to all stages and objects and quali- 
ties and is content, 80 

Is the certainty of the reality and immortal- 
ity of things, and the excellence of things ; 

Something there is in the float of the sight 
of things that provokes it out of the soul. 

Now I re-examine philosophies and re- 
ligions, 

They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet 
not prove at all under the spacious clouds 
and along the landscape and flowing cur- 
rents. 

Here is realization, 

Here is a man tallied — he realizes here 

what he has in him? 
The past, the future, majesty, love — if 

they are vacant of you, you are vacant of 

them. 2 

1 Here is space — here a great personal deed has 

room. (1856.) 

2 The animals, the past, the future, light, space, 



Only the kernel of every object nourishes; 
Where is he who tears off the husks for 

you and me ? 
Where is he that undoes stratagems and 

envelopes for you and me ? 9 o 

Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously 
fashion 'd, it is apropos; 

Do you know what it is as you pass to be 
loved by strangers ? 

Do you know the talk of those turning eye- 
balls ? 



Here is the efflux of the soul, 

The efflux of the soid comes from within 
through embower'd gates, ever provok- 
ing questions, 

These yearnings why are they ? these 
thoughts in the darkness why are they ? 

Why are there men and women that while 
they are nigh me the sunlight expands 
my blood ? 

Why when they leave me do my pennants 
of joy sink flat and lank ? 

Why are there trees I never walk under 
but large and melodious thoughts descend 

.___ upon me ? 

(I think they hang there winter and sum- 
mer on those trees and always drop fruit 
as I pass ;) 100 

What is it I interchange so suddenly with 
strangers ? 

What with some driver as I ride on the 
seat by his side ? 

What with some fisherman drawing his 
seine by the shore as I walk by and pause ? 

What gives me to be free to a woman's and 
man's good-will ? what gives them to be 
free to mine ? 



The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is 

happiness, 
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at 

all times, 
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly 

charged. 

Here rises the fluid and attaching character, 
The fluid and attaching character is the 
freshness and sweetness of man and wo- 
man, 

majesty, love, if they are vacant of you, you are 
vacant of them. (1856.) 



55° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



(The herbs of the morning sprout no 
fresher and sweeter every day out of 
the roots of themselves, than it sprouts 
fresh and sweet continually out of it- 
self.) no 

Toward the fluid and attaching character 

exudes the sweat of the love of young 

and old, 
From it falls distill'd the charm that mocks 

beauty and attainments, 
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing 

ache of contact. 



Allons ! whoever you are come travel with 

me ! 
Traveling with me you find what never 

tires. 

The earth never tires, 

The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible 
at first, Nature is rude and incomprehen- 
sible at first, 

Be not discouraged, keep on, there are di- 
vine things well envelop'd, 

I swear to you there are divine things more 
beautiful than words can tell. 

Allons ! we must not stop here, 120 

However sweet these laid-up stores, how- 
ever convenient this dwelling we cannot 
remain here, 

However shelter'd this port and however 
calm these waters we must not anchor 
here, 

However welcome the hospitality that sur- 
rounds us we are permitted to receive it 
but a little while. 



Allons ! the inducements shall be greater, 

We will sail pathless and wild seas, 

We will go where winds blow, waves dash, 

and the Yankee clipper speeds by under 

full sail. 

Allons ! with power, liberty, the earth, the 
elements, 

Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curi- 
osity; 

Allons ! from all formules ! 

From your formules, O bat-eyed and ma- 
terialistic priests. l 130 
1 The 1856 edition has ' formulas ' in both these lines. 



The stale cadaver blocks up the passage — 
the burial waits no longer. 

Allons ! yet take warning ! 

He traveling with me needs the best blood, 
thews, endurance, 

None may come to the trial till he or she 
bring courage and health, 

Come not here if you have already spent 
the best of yourself, 

Only those may come who come in sweet 
and determin'd bodies, 

No diseas'd person, no rum-drinker or ven- 
ereal taint is permitted here. 

(I and mine do not convince by arguments, 

similes, rhymes, 
We convince by our presence.) 



Listen ! I will be honest with you, 140 

I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but 

offer rough new prizes, 
These are the days that must happen to 

you: 
You shall not heap up what is call'd riches, 
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that 

you earn or achieve, 
You but arrive at the city to which you 

were destin'd, you hardly settle yourself 

to satisfaction before you are call'd by an 

irresistible call to depart, 
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles 

and mockings of those who remain behind 

you, 
What beckonings of love you receive you 

shall only answer with passionate kisses 

of parting, 
You shall not allow the hold of those who 

spread their reach'd hands toward you. 



Allons ! after the great Companions, and to 

belong to them ! 
They too are on the road — they are the 

swift and majestic men — they are the 

greatest women, 2 150 

Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas, 
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a 

mile of land, 

2 Here began in the 1856 edition a new paragraph : 

Over that which hindered therr, over that which retarded, 

passing impediments large or small, 
Committers of crimes, committers of many beautiful virtues, 
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas, . . . 

The first two lines were omitted from 1881 on. 



WALT WHITMAN 



S5i 



Habitues of many distant countries, habi- 
tues of far-distant dwellings, 

Trusters of men and women, observers of 
cities, solitary toilers, 

Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blos- 
soms, shells of the shore, 

Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of 
brides, tender helpers of children, bearers 
of children, 

Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping 
graves, lowerers-down of coffins, 

Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over 
the years, the curious years each emer- 
ging from that which preceded it, 

Journeyers as with companions, namely 
their own diverse phases, 

Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized 
baby-days, 160 

Journeyers gayly with their own youth, 
journeyers with their bearded and well- 
grain'd manhood, 

Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, 
isurpass'd, content, 

jneyers with their own sublime old age 
manhood or womanhood, 
'■ c age, calm, expanded, broad with the 
ughty breadth of the universe, 

Old 'age, flowing free with the delicious 
ucar-by freedom of death. 

x 3 . 
ns ! to that which is endless as it was 
jginningless, 
To mdergo much, tramps of days, rests of 

i ghts, 
To nerge all in the travel they tend to, and 

^e days and nights they tend to, 
i v ain to merge them in the start of supe- 

ior journeys, 
'< see nothing anywhere but what you 
lay reach it and pass it, i 7 o 

conceive no time, however distant, but 
hat you may reach it and pass it, 
ook up or down no road but it stretches 
i id waits for you, however long but it 
retches and waits for you, 
ee no being, not God's or any, but you 
so go thither, 
1 k. ;ee no possession but you may possess 
, enjoying all without labor or purchase, 
>stracting the feast yet not abstracting 
le particle of it, 

ake the best of the farmer's farm and 

I e rich man's elegant villa, and the 

laste blessings of the well-married 



couple, and the fruits of orchards and 

flowers of gardens, 
To take to your use out of the compact 

cities as you pass through, 
To carry buildings and streets with you 

afterward wherever you go, 
To gather the minds of men out of their 

brains as you encounter them, to gather 

the love out of their hearts, 
To take your lovers on the road with you, 

for all that you leave them behind you, 
To know the universe itself as a road, as 

many roads, as roads for traveling souls. 1 

All parts away for the progress of souls, 181 
All religion, all solid things, arts, govern- 
ments — all that was or is apparent upon 
this globe, or any globe falls into niches 
and corners before the procession of souls 
along the grand roads of the universe. 

Of the progress of the souls of men and 
women along the grand roads of the uni- 
verse, all other progress is the needed 
emblem and sustenance. 

Forever alive, forever forward, 

Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, 

mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied, 
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by 

men, rejected by men, 
They go ! they go ! I know that they go, 

but I know not where they go, 
But I know that they go toward the best — 

toward something great. 

Whoever you are, come forth ! or man or 
woman come forth ! 

You must not stay sleeping and dallying 
there in the house, though you built it, 
or though it has been built for you. i 9 o 

Out of the dark confinement ! out from be- 
hind the screen ! 

It is useless to protest, I know all and ex- 
pose it. 

Behold through you as bad as the rest, 
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, sup- 
ping, of people, 

1 In the early editions, down to 1881, there follows 
here another brief paragraph : — 

The soul travels, 

The body does not travel as much as the soul. 
The body has just as great a work as the soul, and parts 
away at last for the journeys of the soul. 



552 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of 

those wash'd and trinmi'd faces, 
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair. 

No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to 

hear the confession, 
Another self, a duplicate of every one, 

skulking and hiding it goes, 
Formless and wordless through thestreetsof 

the cities, polite and bland in the parlors, 
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in 

the public assembly, 200 

Home to the houses of men and women, at 

the table, in the bedroom, everywhere, 
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form 

upright, death vmder the breast-bones, 

hell under the skull-bones, 
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the 

ribbons and artificial flowers, 
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not 

a syllable of itself, 
Speaking of any thing else but never of 

itself. 

14 
Allons ! through struggles and wars ! 
The goal that was named cannot be coun- 
termanded. 

Have the past struggles succeeded ? 

What has succeeded ? yourself ? your na- 
tion ? Nature ? 

Now understand me well — it is provided 
in the essence of things that from any 
fruition of success, no matter what, shall 
come forth something to make a greater 
struggle necessary. 210 

My call is the call of battle, I nourish active 

rebellion, 
He going with me must go well arm'd, 
He going with me goes often with spare 

diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions. 

Allons ! the road is before us ! 
It is safe — I have tried it — my own feet 
have tried it well — be not detain 'd ! 

Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, 
and the book on the shelf unopen'd ! 

Let the tools remain in the workshop ! let 
the money remain unearn'd ! 

Let the school stand ! mind not the cry of 
the teacher ! 



Let the preacher preach in his pulpit ! let 
the lawyer plead in the court, and the 
judge expound the law. 

Camerado, I give you my hand ! 220 

I give you my love more precious than 

money, 
I give you myself before preaching or law ; 
Will you give me yourself ? will you come 

travel with me ? 
Shall we stick by each other as long as we 

live ? 

1856. 

MIRACLES 1 

Why, who makes much of a miracle ? 
As to me I know of nothing else but 

miracles, 
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, 
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses 

toward the sky, 
Or wade with naked feet along the beach 

just in the edge of the water, 1 

Or stand under trees in the woods, 
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep 

in the bed at night with any one I love, 
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, ' 
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in 

the car, 
Or watch honey-beQS busy around the hive 

of a summer forenoon, 
Or animals feeding in the fields, 
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in 

the air, 
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or 

of stars shining so quiet and bright, 
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the 

new moon in spring; 
These with the rest, one and all, are to me 

miracles, 
The whole referring, yet each distinct and 

in its place. 2 

1 In the 185G edition, with the title ' Poem of Perfect 
Miracles.' In its first form the poem began with a 
paragraph since omitted : — 

Realism is mine, my miracles, 

Take all of the re6t — take freely —I keep but my own — I 

give only of them, 
I offer them without end — I offer them to you wherever your 

feet can carry you, or your eyes reach. 

2 Compare the original Preface to Leaves of Grass, 
the first edition, 1855 : ' . . . every motion and every 
spear of grass, and the frames and spirits of men and 
women and all that concerns them, are unspeakably 
perfect miracles, all referring to all, and each distinct 
and in its place'.' 

See also the longer passage at the end of the fifth 
paragraph of this Preface, on the miracle of eyesight. 



WALT WHITMAN 



553 



To me every hour of the light and dark is 

a miracle, 
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, 
Every square yard of the surface of the 

earth is spread with the same, 
Every foot of the interior swarms with the 

same. 

To me the sea is a continual miracle, 

The fishes that swim — the rocks — the 

motion of the waves — the ships with 

men in them, 
What stranger miracles are there ? 

1856. 



ASSURANCES 1 

I need no assurances, I am a man who is 
pre-occupied of his own soul; a 

I do not doubt that from under the feet and 
beside the hands and face I am cogni- 
zant of, are now looking faces I am not 
cognizant of, calm and actual faces, 

I do not doubt but the majesty and beauty 
of the world are latent in any iota of the 
world, 3 

I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the 
universes are limitless, in vain I try to 
think how limitless, 

I do not doubt that the orbs and the sys- 
tems of orbs play their swift sports 
through the air on purpose, and that I 
shall one day be eligible to do as much 
as they, and more than they, 4 

I do not doubt that temporary affairs keep 
on and on millions of years, 

I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, 
and exteriors have their exteriors, and 
that the eyesight has another eyesight, 

1 In the 1856 edition, with the title ' Faith Poem ; ' in 
1860 as No. vii, Leaves of Grass. 

2 In the 1856 edition there followed the line (omitted 
in 1867) : — 

I do not doubt that whatever I know at a given time, there 
waitB for me more which I do not know. 

3 In the 1856 edition there followed the line (omitted 
in 1867) : — 

I do not doubt there are realizations I have no idea of, wait- 
in? for me through time and through the universes —also 
upon this earth. 

4 Here followed, in the 1S56 edition, the lines (omitted 
in 1867) : — 

I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects, vulgar 

persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds, rejected refuse, than I have 

supposed ; 
I do not doubt there is more in myself than I have supposed 

— and more in all men and women —and more in my poems 

than I have supposed. 



and the hearing another hearing, and the 
voice another voice, 

I do not doubt that the passionately-wept 
deaths of young men are provided for, 
and that the deaths of young women and 
the deaths of little children are provided 
for, 

(Did you think Life was so well provided 
for, and Death, the purport of all Life, is 
not well provided for ?) 

I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no 
matter what the horrors of them, no 
matter whose wife, child, husband, father, 
lover, has gone down, are provided for, 
to the minutest points, 5 

I do not doubt that whatever can possibly 
happen anywhere at any time, is pro- 
vided for in the inherences of things, 

I do not think Life provides for all and for 
Time and Space, but I believe Heavenly 
Death provides for all. 6 

1856. 



CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY 7 



Flood-tide below me ! I see you face to 

face ! 
Clouds of the west — sun there half an 

hour high — I see you also face to face. 

Here followed, in 1856, the lines (omitted in 1871) : 

I do not doubt that shallowness, meanness, malignance, are 
provided for; 

I do not doubt that cities, you, America, the remainder of the 
earth, politics, freedom, degradations, are carefully pro- 
vided for. 

6 The last line of the poem, and the fourth line from 
the end, in parenthesis, appeared first in the edition of 
1S71, where the poem was included among the Whispers 
of Heavenly Death. 

7 Living in Brooklyn or New York city from this 
time forward, my life, then, and still more the follow- 
ing years, was curiously identified with Fulton ferry, 
already becoming the greatest of its sort in the world 
for general importance, volume, variety, rapidity, and 
picturesqueness. Almost daily, later ('50 to '60), I 
cross'd on the boats, often up in the pilot-houses where 
I could get a full sweep, absorbing shows, accompani- 
ments, surroundings. What oceanic currents, eddies, 
underneath — the great tides of humanity also, with 
ever-shifting movements ! Indeed, I have always had a 
passion for ferries; to me they afford inimitable, stream- 
ing, never-failing, living poems. The river and bay 
scenery, all about New York island, any time of a fine 
day — the hurrying, splashing sea-tides — the changing 
panorama of steamers, all sizes, often a string of big 
ones outward bound to distant ports — the myriads of 
white sail'd schooners, sloops, skiffs, and the marvel- 
lously beautiful yachts — the majestic Sound boats as 
they rounded the Battery and came along towards 5, 
afternoon, eastward bound — the prospect off towards 
Staten Island, or down the Narrows, or the other way 
up the Hudson — what refreshment of spirit such sights 



554 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Crowds of men and women attired in the 
usual costumes, how curious you are to 
me ! 

On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hun- 
dreds that cross, returning home, are 
more curious to me than you suppose, 

And you that shall cross from shore to shore 
years hence are more to me, and more in 
my meditations, than you might suppose. 



The impalpable sustenance of me from all 
things at all hours of the day, 

The simple, compact, well-join'd scheme, 
myself disintegrated, every one disin- 
tegrated yet part of the scheme, 

The similitudes of the past and those of the 
future, 

The glories strung like beads on my small- 
est sights and hearings, on the walk in 
the street and the passage over the river, 

The current rushing so swiftly and swim- 
ming with me far away, 10 

The others that are to follow me, the ties 
between me and them, 

The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, 
hearing of others. 

Others will enter the gates of the ferry and 

cross from shore to shore, 
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide, 
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan 

north and west, and the heights of Brook- 
lyn to the south and east, 
Others will see the islands large and small ; 
Fifty years hence, others will see them as 

they cross, the sun half an hour high, 
A hundred years hence, or ever so many 

hundred years hence, others will see 

them, 
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the 

flood-tide, the falling-back to the sea of 

the ebb-tide. 



It avails not, time nor place — distance 
avails not, 20 

and experiences gave me years ago (and many a time 
since) ! My old pilot friends, the Balsirs, Johnny 
Cole, Ira Smith, William White, and my young ferry 
friend, Tom Gere — how well I remember them all ! 
(Whitman, Specimen Days. Complete Prose Works, 
Small, Maynard & Co., p. 11.) 

In 1856 the poem was entitled ' Sun-down Poem,' and 
the first line read: — 

Flood-tide of the river, flow on ! I watch you, face to face I 



I am with you, you men and women of a 

generation, or ever so many generations 

hence, 
Just as you feel when you look on the river 

and sky, so I felt, 
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, 

I was one of a crowd, 
Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness 

of the river and the bright flow, I was 

refresh'd, 
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet 

hurry with the swift current, I stood yet 

was hurried, 
Just as you look on the numberless masts 

of ships and the thick-stemm'd pipes of 

steamboats, I look'd. 

I too many and many a time cross'd the 

river of old, 
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw 

them high in the air floating with mo- 
tionless wings, oscillating their bodies, 
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up 

parts of their bodies and left the rest in 

strong shadow, 
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the 

gradual edging toward the south, 30 

Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the 

water, 
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering 

track of beams, 
Look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of 

light round the shape of my head in the 

sunlit water, 
Look'd on the haze on the hills southward 

and south-westward, 
Look'd on the vapor as it flew in fleeces 

tinged with violet, 
Look'd toward the lower bay to notice the 

vessels arriving, 
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that 

were near me, 
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, 

saw the ships at anchor, 
The sailors at work in the rigging or out 

astride the spars, 
The round masts, the swinging motion of 

the hulls, the slender serpentine pen- 
nants, 40 
The large and small steamers in motion, 

the pilots in their pilot-houses, 
The white wake left by the passage, the 

quick tremulous whirl of the wheels, 
The flags of all nations, the falling of them 

at sunset, 



WALT WHITMAN 



555 



The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, 
the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and 
glistening, 

The stretch afar growing dimmer and dim- 
mer, the gray walls of the granite store- 
houses by the docks, 

On the river the shadowy group, the big 
steam-tug closely flank'd on each side by 
the barges, the hay-boat, the belated 
lighter, 

On the neighboring shore the fires from the 
foundry chimneys burning high and glar- 
ingly into the night, 

Casting their flicker of black contrasted 
with wild red and yellow light over the 
tops of houses, and down into the clefts 
of streets. 

4 

These and all else were to me the same as 
they are to you, 

I loved well those cities, loved well the 
stately and rapid river, 50 

The men and women I saw were all near to 
me, • 

Others the same — others who look back 
on me because I look'd forward to them 

(The time will come, though I stop here to- 
day and to-night). 

5 
What is it then between us ? 
What is the count of the scores or hundreds 
of years between us ? 

Whatever it is, it avails not — distance 

avails not, and place avails not, 
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was 

mine, 
I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan island, 

and bathed in the waters around it, 
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings 

stir withm me, 
In the day among crowds of people some- 
times they came upon me, 60 
In my walks home late at night or as I lay 

in my bed they came upon me, 
I too had been struck from the float forever 

held in solution, 
I too had receiv'd identity by my body, 
That I was I knew was of my body, and 

what I should be I knew I should be of 

my body. 

6 
It is not upon you alone the dark patches 

fall, 



The dark threw its patches down upon me 

also, 
The best I had done seem'd to me blank 

and suspicious, 
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were 

they not in reality meagre ? 
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to 

be evil, 
I am he who knew what it was to be evil, 70 
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety, 
Blabb'd, blush'd, resented, lied, stole, 

grudg'd, 
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared 

not speak, 
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, 

cowardly, malignant, 
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting 

in me, 
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the 

adulterous wish, not wanting, 
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, 

laziness, none of these wanting, 
Was one with the rest, the days and haps 

of the rest, 1 
Was call'd by my nighest name by clear 

loud voices of young men as they saw me 

approaching or passing, 
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or 

the negligent leaning of their flesh against 

me as I sat, 80 

Saw many I loved in the street or ferry-boat 

or public assembly, yet never told them 

a word, 
Lived the same life with the rest, the same 

old laughing, gnawing, sleeping, 
Play'd the part that still looks back on the 

actor or actress, 
The same old role, the role that is what we 

make it, as great as we like, 
Or as small as we like, or both great and 

small. 

7 
Closer yet I approach you, 
What thought you have of me now, I had 

as much of you — I laid in my stores in 

advance, 
I consider 'd long and seriously of you be- 
fore you were born. 

Who was to know what should come home 

to me? 
Who knows but I am enjoying this ? 90 

1 Instead of this line the 1856 edition has : — 
But I was a Manhattanese, free, friendly, and proud ! 
and this line begins a new paragraph. 



55 6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Who knows, for all the distance, but I am 
as good as looking at you now, for all 
you cannot see me ? 1 

8 

Ah, what can ever be more stately and ad- 
mirable to me than mast-hemm'd Man- 
hattan ? 

River and sunset and scallop-edg'd waves 
of flood-tide ? 

The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the 
hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated 
lighter ? 

What gods can exceed these that clasp me 
by the hand, and with voices I love call 
me promptly and loudly by my nighest 
name as I approach ? 

What is more subtle than this which ties 
me to the woman or man that looks in 
my face ? 

Which fuses me into you now, and pours 
my meaning into you ? 2 

We understand, then, do we not ? 

What I promis'd without mentioning it, 
have you not accepted ? 

What the study could not teach — what the 
preaching coidd not accomplish is accom- 
plish'd, is it not ? 3 ioo 



Flow on, river ! flow with the flood-tide, 

and ebb with the ebb-tide ! 
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg'd waves ! 
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset ! drench 

with your splendor me, or the men and 

women generations after me ! 
Cross from sbore to shore, countless crowds 

of passengers ! 

1 There follow at this point in the 1856 edition two 
Other brief paragraphs' : — 

It is not yon alone, nor I alone, 

Not a few races, not a few generations, not a few centuries, 

It is that each came, or comes, or shall come, from its due 

emission, without fail, either now, or then, or henceforth. 

Everything indicates— the smallest does, and the largest 

does, 
A necessary film envelops all, and envelops the soul for a 

proper time. 

These lines seem necessary to the understanding of line 
121, which has been retained in all editions. 

2 Remember, the book arose out of my life in Brook- 
lyn and New York from 1S38 to 1855, absorbing a million 
people with an intimacy, an eagerness, an abandon, prob- 
ably never equalled. (Whitman, Bucke's IAfe, p. 67.) 

3 In the 185C edition this paragraph ends with a line 
unhappily omitted from the latest editions : — 

What the push of reading could not start is started by me 
personally, is it not f 



Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta ! stand 

up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn ! 
Throb, baffled and curious brain ! throw 

out questions and answers ! 
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float 

of solution ! 
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house 

or street or public assembly ! 
Sound out, voices of young men ! loudly and 

musically call me by my nighest name ! 
Live, old life ! play the part that looks 

back on the actor or actress ! no 

Play the old role, the role that is great or 

small according as one makes it ! 
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I 

may not hi unknown ways be looking 

upon you; 
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those 

who lean idly, yet haste with the hasting 

current; 
Fly on, sea-birds ! fly sideways, or wheel 

in large circles high in the air; 
Receive the summer sky, you water, and 

faithfully hold it till all downcast eyes 

have time to take it from you ! 
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the 

shape of my head, or any one's head, in 

the sunlit water ! 
Come on, ships from the lower bay ! pass 

up or down, white-sail 'd schooners, sloops, 

lighters ! 
Flaunt away, flags of all nations ! be duly 

lower'd at sunset ! 
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys ! 

cast black shadows at nightfall ! cast red 

and yellow light over the tops of the 

houses ! 
Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate 

what you are, 120 

You necessary film, continue to envelop the 

soul, 
About my body for me, and your body for 

you, be hung our divinest aromas, 
Thrive, cities — bring your freight, bring 

your shows, ample and sufficient rivers, 
Expand, being than which none else is per- 
haps more spiritual, 
Keep your places, objects than which none 

else is more lasting. 4 

4 At this point a paragraph has been omitted from 
the 1881 and later editions : — 

We descend upon you and all things, we arrest you all. 

We realize the soul only by you, you faithful solids and 

fluids, 
Through you color, form, location, sublimity, ideality, 
Through you every proof, comparison, and all the sugges- 
tions and determinations of ourselves. 



WALT WHITMAN 



557 



You have waited, you always wait, you 
dumb, beautiful ministers, 

We receive you with free sense at last, and 
are insatiate henceforward, 

Not you any more shall be able to foil us, 
or withhold yourselves from us, 

We use you, and do not cast you aside — we 
plant you permanently within us, 

We fathom you not — we love you — there 
is perfection in you also, 130 

You furnish your parts toward eternity, 

Great or small, you furnish your parts to- 
ward the soul. 



i 



1856. 



OUT OF THE CRADLE END- 






LESSLY ROCKING 1 



Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, 

Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musi- 
cal shuttle, 

Out of the Ninth- month midnight, 

Over the sterile sands and the fields be- 
yond, where the child leaving his bed 
wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot, 

Down from the shower'd halo, 

Up from the mystic play of shadows twin- 
ing and twisting as if they were alive, 

Out from the patches of briers and black- 
berries, 

From the memories of the bird that chanted 
to me, 

From your memories sad brother, from the 
fitful risings and fallings I heard, 

From under that yellow half-moon late- 
risen and swollen as if with tears, 10 

From those beginning notes of yearning 
and love there in the mist, 

From the thousand responses of my heart 
never to cease, 

From the myriad thence-arous'd words, 

From the word stronger and more delicious 
than any, 

From such as now they start the scene re- 
visiting, 

As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead 
passing, 

1 First published in the New York Saturday Press, 
December 24, 1859, with the title ' A Child's Reminis- 
cence.' In 1860 it appears with the new title, ' A Word 
Out of the Sea,' for the whole poem, and with the sub- 
title, ' Reminiscences,' for the part beginning with the 
second paragraph. 

In the earlier versions, up to 1871, the first line 
read : — 

Out of the rocked cradle. 



Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly, 
A man, yet by these tears a little boy 

again, 
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting 

the waves, 
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here 

and hereafter, 20 

Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly 
1 leaping beyond them, 
A reminiscence sing. 

Once Paumanok, 

When the lilac-scent was in the air 2 and 

Fifth-month grass was growing, 
Up this seashore in some briers, 
Two feather'd guests from Alabama, two 

together, 
And their nest, and four light-green eggs 

spotted with brown, 
And every day the he-bird to and fro near 

at hand, 
And every day the she-bird crouch'd on her 

nest, silent, with bright eyes, 
And every day I, a curious boy, never too 

close, never disturbing~them, 30 

Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating. 

Shine ! shine ! shine ! 

Pour down your warmth, great sun ! 

While we bask, we two together. 

Two together ! 

Winds blow south, or winds blow north, 

Day come white, or night come black, 

Home, or rivers and mountains from home, 

Singing all time, minding no time, 

While we two keep together. 40 

Till of a sudden, 

May-be kill'd, unknown to her mate, 

One forenoon the she-bird crouch'd not on 

the nest, 
Nor return'd that afternoon, nor the next, 
Nor ever appear'd again. 

And thenceforward all summer in the • 

sound of the sea, 
And at night under the full of the moon 

in calmer weather, 
Over the hoarse surging of the sea, 
Or flitting from brier to brier by day, 
I saw, I heard at intervals the remaining 

one, the he-bird, 5 o 

The solitary guest from Alabama. 

2 When the snows had melted. (1859-60.) 



558 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Blow ! blow ! blow ! 

Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok , s shore; 
I wait and I icait till you blow my mate to 
me. 

Yes, when the stars glisten'd, 

All night long on the prong of a moss-scal- 

lop'd stake, 
Down almost amid the slapping waves, 
Sat the lone singer wonderful causing tears. 

He call'd on his mate, 

He pour'd forth the meanings which I of 
all men know. 60 

Yes my brother I know, 

The rest might not, but I have treasur'd 

every note, 
For more than once dimly down to the 

beach gliding, 
Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending 

myself with the shadows, 
Recalling now the obscure shapes, the 

echoes, the sounds and sights after their 

sorts, 
The white arms out in the breakers tire- 
lessly tossing, 
I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting 

my hair, 
Listen'd long and long. 

Listen'd to keep, to sing, now translating 

the notes, 
Following you my brother. 70 

Soothe ! soothe ! soothe ! 
Close on its wave soothes the ivave behind, 
And again another behind embracing and lap- 
ping, every one close, 
But my love soothes not me, not me. 

Low hangs the mobn, it rose late, 
It is lagging — O I think it is heavy with love, 
with love. 

madly the sea pushes upon the land, 
With love, with love. 

night ! do I not see my love fluttering out 

among the breakers f 
What is that little black thing I see there in 

the white ? So 

Loud ! loud ! loud I . 
Loud I call to you, my love ! 



High a7id clear I shoot my voice over the 

waves, 
Surely you must know ivho is here, is here, 
You must know ivho L am, my love. 

Low-hanging moon ! 

What is that dusky spot in your brown yellow ? 
it is the shape, the shape of my mate ! 
moon do not keep her from me any longer. 

Land ! land ! land ! go 

Whichever way 1 turn, I think you could 
give me my mate back again if you only 
would, 
For L am almost sure I see her dimly which- 
ever way I look. 

rising stars ! 

Perhaps the one I want so much will rise, ivill 
rise with some of you. 

throat ! trembling throat ! 
Sound clearer through the atmosphere I 
Pierce the woods, the earth, 
Somewhere listening to catch you must be the 
one L ivant. 

Shake out carols ! 

Solitary here, the night's carols I 100 

Carols of lonesome love! death's carols! 
Carols under that lagging, yellow, waning 

moon ! 
under that moon where she droops almost 

down into the sea ! 
reckless despairing carols. 

But soft ! sink loio ! 

Soft ! let me just murmur, 

And do you wait a moment you husky-nois'd 
sea, 

For somewhere I believe L heard my mate re- 
sponding to me, 

So faint, I must be still, be still to listen, 

But not altogether still, for then she might not 
come immediately to me. no 

Hither my love ! 
Here I am ! here ! 

With this just-sustain' d note I announce my- 
self to you, 
This gentle call is for you my love, for you. 

Do not be decoy' d elsewhere, 
That is the whistle of the ivind, it is not my 
voice, 



WALT WHITMAN 



559 



That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the 

spray, 
Those are the shadows of leaves. 

darkness ! in vain ! 

I am very sick and sorrowful. 120 

brown halo in the sky near the moon, 

drooping upon the sea ! 
troubled reflection in the sea ! 
throat ! throbbiny heart ! 
And I singing uselessly, uselessly all the 

night. 

past ! happy life ! songs of joy ! 
In the air, in the ivoods, over fi elds, 
Loved ! loved ! loved ! loved ! loved ! 
But my mate no more, no more with me I 
We two together no more. 

The aria sinking, 130 

All else continuing, the stars shining, 

The winds blowing, the notes of the bird 
continuous echoing, 

With angry moans the fierce old mother in- 
cessantly moaning, 

On the sands of Paumanok's shore gray 
and rustling, 

The yellow half-moon enlarged, sagging 
down, drooping, the face of the sea al- 
most touching, 

The boy ecstatic, with his bare feet the 
waves, with his hair the atmosphere dal- 
lying, 

The love in the heart long pent, now loose, 
now at last tumultuously bursting, 

The aria's meaning, the ears, the soul, 
swiftly depositing, 

The strange tears down the cheeks 
coursing, 

The colloquy there, the trio, each uttering, 

The undertone, the savage old mother in- 
cessantly crying, 141 

To the boy's soul's questions sullenly 
timing, some drown'd secret hissing, 

To the outsetting bard. 

Demon or bird (said the boy's soul) ! 

Is it indeed toward your mate you sing ? 

or is it really to me ? 
For I, that was a child, my tongue's use 

sleeping, now I have heard you, 
Now in a moment I know what I am for, I 

awake, 
And already a thousand singers, a thousand 



songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful 
than yours, 
A thousand warbling echoes have started 
to life within me, never to die. 

O you singer solitary, singing by yourself, 

projecting me, 150 

O solitary me listening, never more shall I 

cease perpetuating you, 
Never more shall I escape, never more the 

reverberations, 
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be 

absent from me, 
Never again leave me to be the peaceful 

child I was before what there in the night, 
By the sea under the yellow and sagging 

moon, 
The messenger there arous'd, the fire, the 

sweet hell within, 
The unknown want, the destiny of me. 

O give me the clew (it lurks in the night 

here somewhere) ! 
O if I am to have so much, let me have more ! 

A word then (for I will conquer it), 160 
The word final, superior to all, 
Subtle, sent up — what is it ? — I listen; 
Are you whispering it, and have been all 

the time, you sea-waves ? 
Is that it from your liquid rims and wet 

sands ? 

Whereto answering, the sea, 

Delaying not, hurrying not, 

Whisper'd me through the night, and very 
plainly before daybreak, 

Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word 
death, 

And again death, death, death, death, 

Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor 
like my arous'd child's heart, 170 

But edging near as privately for me rus- 
tling at my feet, 

Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and 
laving me softly all over, 

Death, death, death, death, death. 

Which I do not forget, 

But fuse the song of my dusky demon and 
brother, 

That he sang to me in the moonlight on 
Paumanok's gray beach, 

With the thousand responsive songs at ran- 
dom, 



S6o 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 






My own songs awaked from that hour, 
And with them the key, the word up from 

the waves, 
The word of the sweetest song and all 

songs, i So 

That strong and delicious word which, 

creeping to my feet, 
(Or like some old crone rocking the cradle, 

swathed in sweet garments, bending 

aside,) 
The sea whisper'd me. 

1859. (I860.) 1 



FACING WEST FROM CALIFOR- 
NIA'S SHORES 2 ~ 

Facing west from California's shores, 

Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet un- 
found, 

I, a child, very old, over waves, towards 
the house of maternity, the land of mi- 
grations, look afar, 

Look off the shores of my Western sea, the 

__ circle almost circled ; 

For starting westward from Hindustan, 
from the vales of Kashmere, 

From Asia, from the north, from the God, 
the sage, and the hero, 

From the south, from the flowery penin- 
sulas and the spice islands, 

Long having wander'd since, round the 
earth having wander'd, 

Now I face home again, very pleas'd and 
joyous. 

(But where is what I started for so long 



ago I 
And why is it yet unf ound ?) 



1860. 



I HEAR AMERICA SINGING 

I hear America singing, the varied carols 

I hear, 
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as 

it should be blithe and strong, 
The carpenter singing his as he measures his 

plank or beam, 

1 For Whitman the date of publication in book form 
is the most important. This has therefore been added, 
in parentheses, when the poem was published earlier 
in a periodical. 

2 In the 1S60 edition, without separate sub-title, as 
No. 10 of the section entitled Enfans cFAdam. In 
this edition the poem began with what is now the sec- 
ond line. The first line was added in 1867. 



The mason singing his as he makes ready 
for work, or leaves off work, 

The boatman singing what belongs to him 
in his boat, the deckhand singing on the 
steamboat deck, 

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his 
bench, the hatter singing as he stands, 

The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on 
his way in the morning, or at noon inter- 
mission or at sundown, 

The delicious singing of the mother, or of 
the young wife at work, or of the girl 
sewing or washing, 

Each singing what belongs to him or her 
and to none else, 

The day what belongs to the day — at 
night the party of young fellows, robust, 
friendly, 

Singing with open mouths their strong me- 
lodious songs. 

1860. 

POETS TO COME 

Poets to come ! orators, singers, musicians 
to come ! 

Not to-day is to justify me and answer what 
I am for, 

But you, a new brood, native, athletic, con- 
tinental, greater than before known, 

Arouse ! for you must justify me. 

I myself but write one or two indicative 

words for the future, 
I but advance a moment only to wheel and 

hurry back in the darkness. 

I am a man who, sauntering along without 
fully stopping, turns a casual look upon 
you and then averts his face, 
Leaving it to you to prove and define it, 
Expecting the main things from you. 

1860. 



ME IMPERTURBE 

Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature, 
Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb hi 

the midst of irrational things, 
Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent 

as they, 
Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, 

foibles, crimes, less important than I 

thought, 



WALT WHITMAN 



56i 



Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Man- 
nahatta or the Tennessee, or far north or 
inland, 

A river man, or a man of the woods or of 
any farm-life of these States or of the 
coast, or the lakes of Kanada, 

Me wherever my life is lived, O to be self- 
balanced for contingencies, 

To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, 
accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and ani- 
mals do. 

1860. 

FOR YOU O DEMOCRACY 1 

Come, I will make the continent indissol- 
uble, 

I will make the most splendid race the sun 
ever shone upon, 

1 This and the eight following poems belong to the 
section of Whitman's work devoted to the celebration 
of ' the dear lore of comrades,' and entitled ' Calamus.' 
'The Sweet Flag or Calamus,' says W. S. Kennedy, in 
explaining Whitman's use of this title, ' belongs among 
the grasses, and like them suggests equality and broth- 
erhood. It is found in vast masses in marshy ground, 
growing in fascicles of three, four, or five blades, 
which cling together for support, shoulder to shoulder 
and back to back, the delicate " pink-tinged " roots 
exhaling a faint fragrance, not only when freshly 
gathered, but after having been kept many years.' 

With these poems should be read the volume entitled 
Calamus, a Series of Letters written during the Years 
1868-1880 by Walt Whitman to a Young Friend. 

' For you O Democracy ' is a revised and improved 
version of the last lines of a much longer poem with the 
title ' States,' in the 1SG0 edition, the whole of which is 
worth preserving : — 

States ! 

Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers ? 

By an agreement on a paper ? Or by arms ? 

Away ! 

I arrive, bringing these, beyond all the forces of courts and 

arms, 
These I to hold you together as firmly as the earth itself is 

held together. 

The old breath of life, ever new, 

Here ! I pass it by contact to you, America. 

O mother ! have you done much for me ? 

Behold, there shall from me be much done for you. 

There shall from me be a new friendship — It shall be called 

after my name, 
It shall circulate through The States, indifferent of place, 
It shalltwist and intertwist them through and around each 

other— Compact shall they be, showing new signs, 
Affection shall solve every one of the problems ot freedom, 
Those who love each other shall be invincible, 
They shall finally make America completely victorious, in 

my name. 

One from Massachusetts shall be comrade to a Missourian, 
One from Maine or Vermont, and a Carolinian and an Ore- 

gonese, shall be friends triune, more precious to each other 

than all the riches of the earth. 
To Michigan shall be wafted perfume from Florida, 
To the Mannnhatta from Cuba or Mexico, 
Not the perfume of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond 

death. 

No danger shall balk Columbia's lovers, 
If need be, a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves 
for one, 



I will make divine magnetic lands, 
With the love of comrades, 

With the life-long love of comrades. 

I will plant companionship thick as trees 
along all the rivers of America, and 
along the shores of the great lakes, and 
all over the prairies, 
I will make inseparable cities with their 
arms about each other's necks, 
By the love of comrades, 

By the manly love of comrades. 

For you these from me, O Democracy, to 

serve you ma f emme ! 
For you, for you I am trilling these songs. 

1860. 

RECORDERS AGES HENCE 

Recorders ages hence, 2 

Come, I will take you down underneath 

this impassive exterior, I will tell you 

what to say of me, 
Publish my name and hang up my picture 

as that of the tenderest lover, 
The friend the lover's portrait, of whom 

his friend his lover was fondest, 

The Kanuck shall be willing to lav down his life for the 
Kansian, and the Kansian for the Kanuck, on due need. 

It shall be customary in all directions, in the houses and 

streets, to see manly affection, 
The departing brother or friend shall salute the remaining 

brother or friend with a kiss. 

There shall be innovations, 

There shall be countless linked hands — namely, the North- 
easterner's, and the Northwesterner's, and the South- 
westerner's, and those of the interior, and all their brood, 

These shall be masters of the world under a new power, 

They shall laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of 
the world. 

The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly, 
The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers, 
The continuance of Equality shall be comrades. 

These shall tie and band stronger than hoops of iron, 
I, ecstatic, O partners ! O lands ! henceforth with the love of 
lovers tie you. 

I will make the continent indissoluble, 

I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone 

upon, 
I will make divine magnetic lands. 

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers 
of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all 
over the prairies, 

I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each 
other's necks. 

For you these, from me, O Democracy, to serve you. ma 

femme ! 
For you ! for you, I am trilling these songs. 

2 Instead of this line, the edition of 1860 reads : — 

You bards of ages hence ! when you refer to me, mind not so 

much my poems, 
Nor speak of me that I prophesied of The States, and led 

them the way of their glories. 



562 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Who was not proud of his songs, but of the 
measureless ocean of love within him, 
and freely pour'd it forth, 

Who often walk'd lonesome walks thinking 
of his dear friends, his lovers, 

Who pensive away from one he lov'd often 
lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night, 

Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest 
the one he lov'd might secretly be indif- 
ferent to him, 

Whose happiest days were far away through 
fields, in woods, on hills, he and another 
wandering hand in hand, they twain apart 
from other men, 

Who oft as he saunter'd the streets curv'd 
with his arm the shoulder of his friend, 
while the arm of his friend rested upon 
him also. 

1860. 

WHEN I HEARD AT THE CLOSE 
OF THE DAY 

When I heard at the close of the day how 

my name had been receiv'd with plaudits 

in the capitol, still it was not a happy 

night for me that follow'd, 
And else when I carous'd, or when my 

plans were accomplish'd, still I was not 

happy, 
But the day when I rose at dawn from the 

bed of perfect health, refresh'd, singing, 

inhaling the ripe breath of autumn, 
When I saw the full moon in the west 

grow pale and disappear in the morning 

light, 
When I wander'd alone over the beach, 

and undressing bathed, laughing with the 

cool waters, and saw the sun rise, 
And when I thought how my dear friend 

my lover was on his way coming, O then 

I was happy, 

then each breath tasted sweeter, and all 
that day my food nourish 'd me more, and 
the beautiful day pass'd well, 

And the next came with equal joy, and with 
the next at evening came my friend, 

And that night while all was still I heard 
the waters roll slowly continually up the 
shores, 

1 heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and 

sands as directed to me whispering to 
congratulate me, 
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me 
under the same cover in the cool night, 



In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams 
his face was inclined toward me, 

And his arm lay lightly around my breast 
— and that night I was happy. 

1860. 



I SAW IN LOUISIANA A LIVE- 
OAK GROWING 

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing, 

All alone stood it and the moss hung down 
from the branches, 

Without any companion it grew there utter- 
ing joyous leaves of dark green, 

And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made 
me think of myself, 

But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous 
leaves standing alone there without its 
friend near, for I knew I could not, 

And I broke off a twig with a eertain num- 
ber of leaves upon it, and twined around 
it a little moss, 

And brought it away, and I have placed 
it in sight in my room, 

It is not needed to remind me as of my 
own dear friends, 

(For I believe lately I think of little else 
than of them,) 

Yet it remains to me a curious token, it 
makes me think of manly love; 

For all that, and though the live-oak glis- 
tens there in Louisiana solitary in a wide 
flat space, 

Uttering joyous leaves all its life without a 
friend a lover near, 

I know very well I could not. 

1860. 



I HEAR IT WAS CHARGED 
AGAINST ME 

I hear it was charged against me that I 

sought to destroy institutions, 
But really I am neither for nor against in- 
stitutions, 
(What indeed have I in common with them ? 

or what with the destruction of them ?) 
Only I will establish in the Mannahatta 

and in every city of these States inland 

and seaboard, 
And in the fields and woods, and above 

every keel little or large that dents the 

water, 



WALT WHITMAN 



563 



Without edifices or rules or trustees or any 
argument, 

The institution of the dear love of com- 
rades. 

1860. 



THE PRAIRIE-GRASS DIVIDING 

The prairie-grass dividing, its special odor 
breathing, 

I demand of it the spiritual corresponding, 

Demand the most copious and close com- 
panionship of men, 

Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, 
beings, 

Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sun- 
lit, fresh, nutritious, 

Those that go their own gait, erect, step- 
ping with freedom and command, leading 
not following, 

Those with a never-quell'd audacity, those 
with sweet and lusty flesh clear of taint, 

Those that look carelessly in the faces of 
Presidents and governors, as to say Who 
are you f 

Those of earth-born passion, simple, never 
constrain'd, never obedient, 

Those of inland America. 1 

1860. 

1 If you care to have a word from me, I should speak 
it about these very prairies ; they impress me most, of 
all the objective shows I have seen on this, my first 
real visit to the West. ... As I have . . . launch'd 
my view across broad expanses of living green, in every 
direction — I have again been most impress'd, I say, 
and shall remain for the rest of my life most impress'd, 
with . . . that vast Something, stretching out on its 
own unbounded scale, unconfined, which there is in 
these prairies, combining the real and the ideal, and 
beautiful as dreams. 

I wonder indeed if the people of this continental in- 
land West know how much of first-class art they have 
in these prairies — how original and all your own — 
how much of the influences of a character for your fu- 
ture humanity, broad, patriotic, heroic, and new ? how 
entirely they tally on land the grandeur and superb 
monotony of the skies of heaven, and the ocean with 
its waters ? how freeing, soothing, nourishing they are 
to the soul ? 

Then is it not subtly they who have given us our lead- 
ing modern Americans, Lincoln and Grant ? — vast- 
spread, average men — their foregrounds of character 
altogether practical and real, yet (to those who have 
eyes to see) with finest backgrounds of the ideal, tow- 
ering high as any. And do we not see, in them, fore- 
shadowings of the future races that shall fill these 
prairies ? 

Not but what the Yankee and Atlantic States, and 
every other part — Texas, and the States flanking the 
south-east and the Gulf of Mexico — the Pacific shore 
empire — the Territories and Lakes, and the Canada 
line (the day is not yet, but it will come, including 
Canada entire) — are equally and integrally and indis- 



WHEN I PERUSE THE CON- 
QUER'D FAME 

When I peruse the conquer'd fame of he- 
roes and the victories of mighty generals, 
I do not envy the generals, 

Nor the President in his Presidency, nor 
the rich in his great house, 

But when I hear of the brotherhood of lov- 
ers, how it was with them, 

How together through life, through dan- 
gers, odium, unchanging, long and long, 

Through youth and- through middle and old 
age, how unfaltering, how affectionate 
and faithful they were, 

Then I am pensive — I hastily walk away 
fill'd with the bitterest envy. 

1860. 



I DREAM'D IN A DREAM 2 

I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invin- 
cible to the attacks of the whole of the 
rest of the earth, 

I dream'd that was the new city of Friends, 

solubly this Nation, the sine qua non of the human, po- 
litical and commercial New World. But this favor'd 
central area of (in round numbers) two thousand miles 
square seems fated to be the home both of what I would 
call America's distinctive ideas and distinctive realities. 
(Whitman, Specimen Days, ' The Prairies.' Complete 
Prose Works, Small, Maynard & Co., pp. 134, 135.) 

2 Intense and loving comradeship, the personal and 
passionate attachment of man to man — which, hard to 
define, underlies the lessons and ideals of the profound 
saviours of every land and age, and which seems to 
promise, when thoroughly develop'd, cultivated and 
recognized in manners and literature, the most sub- 
stantial hope and safety of the future of these States, 
will then [when the true poet comes] be fully express'd. 

A strong fibred joyousness and faith, and the sense 
of health alfresco, may well enter into the preparation 
of future noble American authorship. . . . 

It is to the development, identification, and general 
prevalence of that fervid comradeship (the adhesive 
love, at least rivaling the amative love hitherto possess- 
ing imaginative literature, if not going beyond it), that 
I look for the counterbalance and offset of our mate- 
rialistic and vulgar American democracy, and for the 
spiritualization thereof. Many will say it is a dream, 
and will not follow my inferences : but I confidently 
expect a time when there will be seen, running like a 
half -hid warp through all the myriad audible and visi- 
ble worldly interests of America, threads of manly 
friendship, fond and loving, pure and sweet, strong and 
life-long, carried to degrees hitherto unknown— not 
only giving tone to individual character, and making 
it unprecedently emotional, muscular, heroic, and re- 
fined, but having the deepest relations to general pol- 
itics. I say democracy infers such loving comradeship, 
as its most inevitable twin or counterpart, without 
which it will be incomplete, in vain, and incapable of 
perpetuating itself 

In my opinion, it is by a fervent, accepted develop- 



S&4 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Nothing was greater there than the quality 

of robust love, it led the rest, 
It was seen every hour in the actions of the 

men of that city, 
And hi all their looks and words. 

1860. 

FULL OF LIFE NOW 

Full of life now, compact, visible, 

I, forty years old the eighty-third year of 

the States, 
To one a century hence or any number of 

centuries hence, 
To you yet unborn these, seeking you. 

When you read these I that was visible am 

become invisible, 
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing 

my poems, seeking me, 
Fancying how happy you were if I could be 

with you and become your comrade; 
Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too 

certain but I am now with you.) 

1860. 

TO ONE SHORTLY TO DIE 

From all the rest I single out you, having 

a message for you, 
You are to die — let others tell you what 

they please, I cannot prevaricate, 
I am exact and merciless, but I love you — 

there is no escape for you. 

Softly I lay my right hand upon you, you 
just feel it, 

I do not argue, I bend my head close and 
half envelop it, 

I sit quietly by, I remain faithful, 

I am more than nurse, more than parent or 
neighbor, 

I absolve you from all except yourself 
spiritual bodily, that is eternal, you your- 
self will surely escape, 

The corpse you will leave will be but 
excrementitious. 

ment of comradeship, the beautiful and sane affection of 
man for man, latent in all the young fellows, north and 
south, east and west — it is by this, I say, and by what 
goes directly and indirectly along with it, that the 
United States of the future (I cannot too often repeat), 
are to be most effectually welded together, intercalated, 
anneal'd into a living union. (Whitman, in his Preface 
to the 1876 edition of Leaves of Grass. Complete 
Prose Works, Small, Maynard & Co., pp. 239, 240, and 
277, 278.) 



The sun bursts through in unlooked-for 

directions, 
Strong thoughts fill you and confidence, 

you smile, 
You forget you are sick, as I forget you 

are sick, 
You do not see the medicines, you do not 

mind the weeping friends, I am with 

you, 
I exclude others from you, there is nothing 

to be commiserated, 
I do not commiserate, I congratulate you. 

1860. 



NIGHT ON THE PRAIRIES 1 

Night on the prairies, 

The supper is over, the fire on the ground 

burns low, 
The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their 

blankets ; 
I walk by myself — I stand and look at the 

stars, which I think now I never realized 

before. 

Now I absorb immortality and peace, 
I admire death and test propositions. 

How plenteous ! how spiritual ! how re- 
sume" ! 

The same old man and soul — the same old 
aspirations, and the same content. 

I was thinking the day most splendid till I 
saw what the not-day exhibited, 

I was thinking this globe enough till there 
sprang out so noiseless around me myri- 
ads of other globes. 

Now while the great thoughts of space and 
eternity fill me I will measure myself by 
them, 



1 The germ of this poem is found in a loose note of 
Whitman's : ' Idea of poem. Day and night. Namely, 
celebrate the beauty of Day, with all its splendor, the 
sim — life — action — Love — strength . The Night with 
its beauty. . . ' 

Compare also the passages from Whitman's Prose 
Works quoted or referred to in the note on ' When I 
heard the learn'd astronomer ; ' especially the passage 
in Specimen Days under date of July 22, 1878. Com? 
plete Prose Works, pp. Ill, 112. 

Whitman was acquainted with Blanco White's fa- 
mous sonnet on this same idea. Among his clippings 
he preserved a copy of it, on the margin of which he 
had written : ' What life hides too ! ' {Notes and Frag- 
ments, p. 104.) 



WALT WHITMAN 



S6S 



And now touch'd with the lives of other 

globes arrived as far along as those of 

the earth, 
Or waiting to arrive, or pass'd on farther 

than those of the earth, 
I henceforth no more ignore them than I 

ignore my own life, 
Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as 

mine, or waiting to arrive. 

I see now that life cannot exhibit all to 
me, as the day cannot, 

1 see that I am to wait for what will be 

exhibited by death. 

1860. 



O MAGNET-SOUTH 1 

O magnet-Soxjth ! O glistening perfumed 

South ! my South ! 
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse and 

love ! good and evil ! O all dear to 

me ! 
O dear to me my birth-things — all moving 

things and the trees where I was born 

— the grains, plants, rivers, 
Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers 

where they flow, distant, over flats of 

silvery sands or through swamps, 
Dear to me the Roanoke, the Savannah, the 

Altamahaw, the Pedee, the Tombigbee, 

the Santee, the Coosa and the Sabine, 

pensive, far away wandering, I return with 
my soul to haunt their banks again, 

Again in Florida I float on transparent 
lakes, I float on the Okeechobee, I cross 
the hummock-land or through pleasant 
openings or dense forests, 

1 see the parrots in the woods, I see the 
papaw-tree and the blossoming titi; 

Again, sailing in my coaster on deck, I 
coast off Georgia, I coast up the Caro- 
linas, 

I see where the live-oak is growing, I see 
where the yellow-pine, the scented bay- 
tree, the lemon and orange, the cypress, 
the graceful palmetto, 

I pass rude sea-headlands and enter Pam- 
lico sound through an inlet, and dart my 
vision inland; 

O the cotton plant! the growing fields of 
rice, sugar, hemp ! 

1 In the 1860 edition, with the title 'Longings for 
Home.' 



The cactus guarded with thorns, the laurel- 
tree with large white flowers, 

The range afar, the richness and barrenness, 
the old woods charged with mistletoe and 
trailing moss, 

The phiey odor and the gloom, the awful 
natural stillness, (here in these dense 
swamps the freebooter carries his gun, 
and the fugitive has his conceal'd hut; ) 

O the strange fascination of these half- 
known half-impassable swamps, infested 
by reptiles, resounding with the bellow of 
the alligator, the sad noises of the night- 
owl and the wild-cat, and the whirr of 
the rattlesnake, 

The mocking-bird, the American mimic, 
singing all the forenoon, singing through 
the moon-lit night, 

The humming-bird, the wild turkey, the 
raccoon, the opossum; 

A Kentucky corn-field, the tall, graceful, 
long-leav'd corn, slender, flapping, bright 
green, with tassels, with beautiful ears 
each well-sheath'd in its husk; 

O my heart ! O tender and fierce pangs, I 
can stand them not, I will depart; 

O to be a Virginian where I grew up ! O to 
be a Carolinian ! 

O longings irrepressible ! O I will go back 
to old Tennessee and never wander more. 

1860. 



MANNAHATTA 2 

I WAS asking for something specific and 

perfect for my city, 
Whereupon lo ! upsprang the aboriginal 

name. 



2 Compare ' Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,' ' A Broadway 
Pageant,' ' Give me the Splendid Silent Sun,' and the 
following passages from Whitman's Specimen Dai/s : — 

June 25. — Returned to New York last night. Out to- 
day on the waters for a sail in the wide bay, southeast 
of Staten island, — a rough, tossing ride, and a free 
sight — the long stretch of Sandy Ho.ok, the highlands 
of Navesink, and the many vessels outward and inward 
bound. We came up through the midst of all, in the full 
sun. I especially enjoy'd the last hour or two. A mod- 
erate sea-breeze had set in ; yet over the city, and the 
waters adjacent, was a thin haze, concealing nothing 
only adding to the beauty. From my point of view, as 
I write amid the soft breeze, with a sea-temperature, 
surely nothing on earth of its kind can go beyond this 
show. To the left the North river with its far vista — 
nearer, three or four war-ships, anchor'd peacefully — 
the Jersey side, the banks of Weehawken, the Palisades, 
and the gradually receding blue, lost in the distance — 
to the right the East river — the mast-hemm'd shores 



S 66 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Now I see what there is in a name, a word, 
liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-suffi- 
cient, 

I see that the word of my city is that word 
from of old, 



— the grand obelisk-like towers of the bridge, one on 
either side, in haze, yet plainly defin'd, giant brothers 
twain, throwing free graceful interlinking loops high 
across the tumbled tumultuous current below (the tide 
is just changing to its ebb) — the broad water-spread 
everywhere crowded — no, not crowded, but thick as 
stars in the sky — with all sorts and sizes of sail and 
steam vessels, plying ferry-boats, arriving and departing 
coasters, great ocean Dons, iron-black, modern, mag- 
nificent in size and power, fill'd with their incalculable 
value of human life and precious merchandise — with 
here and there, above all, those daring, careening things 
of grace and wonder, those white and shaded swift-dart- 
ing fish-birds (I wonder if shore or sea elsewhere can 
outvie them), ever with their slanting spars, and fierce, 
pure, hawk-like beauty and motion — first-class New 
York sloop or schooner yachts, sailing, this flue day, the 
free sea in a good wind. And rising out of the midst, 
tall-topt, ship-hemm'd, modern, American, yet strangely 
oriental, V-shaped Manhattan, with its compact mass, 
its spires, its cloud-touching edifices group'd at the 
centre — the green of the trees, and all the white, brown 
and gray of the architecture well blended, as I see it, 
under a miracle of limpid sky, delicious light of heaven 
above, and June haze on the surface below. 

Human aud Heroic New York. — The general subjec- 
tive view of New York and Brooklyn (will not the 
time hasten when the two shall be municipally united 
in one, and named Manhattan ?) — what I may call the 
human interior and exterior of these great seething 
oceanic populations, as I get it in this visit, is to me 
best of all. After an absence of many years (I went 
away at the outbreak of the secession war, and have 
never been back to stay since), again I resume with 
curiosity the crowds, the streets, I knew so well, Broad- 
way, the ferries, the west side of the city, democratic 
Bowery — human appearances and manners as seen in 
all these, and along the wharves, and in the perpetual 
travel of the horse-cars, or the crowded excursion 
steamers, or in Wall and Nassau streets by day — in 
the places of amusement at night — bubbling and whirl- 
ing and moving like its own environment of waters — ■ 
endless humanity in all phases — Brooklyn also — taken 
in for the last three'weeks. No need to specify minutely 

— enough to say that (making all allowances for the 
shadows and side-streaks of a million-headed-city) the 
brief total of the impressions, the human qualities, 
of these vast cities, is to me comforting, even heroic, 
beyond statement. Alertness, generally fine physique, 
clear eyes that look straight at you, a singular combi- 
nation of reticence and self-possession, with good nature 
and friendliness — a prevailing range of according man- 
ners, taste and intellect, surely beyond any elsewhere 
upon earth — and a palpable out-cropping of that per- 
sonal comradeship I look forward to as the subtlest, 
strongest future h'old of this many-item'd Union — are 
not only constantly visible here in these mighty chan- 
nels of men, but they form the rule and average. To- 
day, I should say — defiant of cynics and pessimists, 
and with a full knowledge of all their exceptions — an 
appreciative and perceptive study of the current hu- 
manity of New York gives the directest proof yet of 
successful Democracy, and of the solution of that para- 
dox, the eligibility of the free and fully developed in- 
dividual with the paramount aggregate. In old age, 
lame and sick, pondering for years on many a doubt 
and danger for this republic of ours — fully aware of 
all that can be said on the other side — I find in this 



Because I see that word nested in nests of 

water-bays, superb, 
Rich, hemm'd thick all around with sailships 

and steamships, an island sixteen miles 

long, solid-founded, 
Numberless crowded streets, high growths 

of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly 

uprising toward clear skies, 
Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, 

toward sundown, 
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, 

larger adjoining islands, the heights, the 

villas, 
The countless masts, the white shore-steam- 
ers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black 

sea-steamers well-model'd, 
The down-town streets, the jobbers' houses 

of business, the houses of business of the 

ship-merchants and money-brokers, the 

river-streets, 
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thou- 
sand in a week, 
The carts hauling goods, the manly race 

of drivers of horses, the brown-faced 

sailors, 
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and 

the sailing clouds aloft, 
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the 

broken ice in the river, passing along up 

or down with the flood-tide or ebb-tide, 
The mechanics of the city, the masters, 

well-f orm'd, beautiful- faced, looking you 

straight in the eyes, 
Trottoirs throng'd, vehicles, Broadway, the 

women, the shops and shows, 
A million people — manners free and superb 

— open voices — hospitality — the most 

courageous and friendly young men, 
City of hurried and sparkling waters ! city 

of spires and masts ! 
City nested in bays ! my city ! 

1860. 

visit to New York, and the daily contact and rapport 
with its myriad people, on the scale of the oceans and 
tides, the best, most effective medicine my soul has yet 
partaken — the grandest physical habitat and surround- 
ings of land and water the globe affords — namely, 
Manhattan island and Brooklyn, which the future shall 
join in one city — city of superb democracy, amid su- 
perb surroundings. Complete Prose Works, Small, 
Maynard & Co., pp. 109-111.) 

See also Specimen Days, May 24, 1879, ' Two City 
Areas, Certain Hours,' Prose Works, pp. 126, 127 ; May 
16 to 22, ' Central Park Walks and Talks,' Prose Works, 
pp. 128, 129; July 29, 1881, 'My Passion for Ferries,' 
' Broadway Sights,' ' Omnibus Jaunts,' Prose Works, 
pp. 11-13 ; and also the Collect, Prose Works, pp. 205, 
206, quoted in part in the note on ' Give me the splen- 
did silent sun,' p. 578. 



WALT WHITMAN 



567 



MYSELF AND MINE 

Myself and mine gymnastic ever, 

To stand the cold or heat, to take good aim 

with a gun, to sail a boat, to manage 

horses, to beget superb children, 
To speak readily and clearly, to feel at 

home among common people, 
And to hold our own in terrible positions 

on land and sea. 

Not for an embroiderer, 

(There will always be plenty of embroider- 
ers, I welcome them also,) 

But for the fibre of things and for inherent 
men and women. 

Not to chisel ornaments, 

But to chisel with free stroke the heads 
and limbs of plenteous supreme Gods, 
that the States may realize them walking 
and talking. 

Let me have my own way, 10 

Let others promulge the laws, I will make 

no account of the laws, 
Let others praise eminent men and hold up 

peace, I hold up agitation and conflict, 
I praise no eminent man, I rebuke to his 

face the one that was thought most wor- 

thy. 

(Who are you ? and what are you secretly 

guilty of all your life ? 
Will you turn aside all your life ? will you 

grub and chatter all your life ? 
And who are you, blabbing by rote, years, 

pages, languages, reminiscences, 
Unwitting to-day that you do not know 

how to speak properly a single word ?) 

Let others finish specimens, I never finish 

specimens, 
I start them by exhaustless laws as Nature 

does, fresh and modern continually. 

I give nothing as duties, 20 

What others give as duties I give as living 

impulses, 
(Shall I give the heart's action as a duty ?) 

Let others dispose of questions, I dispose of 
nothing, I arouse unanswerable questions, 

Who are they I see and touch, and what 
about them ? 



What about these likes of myself that draw 
me so close by tender directions and in- 
directions ? 

I call to the world to distrust the accounts 

of my friends, but listen to my enemies, 

as I myself do, 
I charge you forever reject those who would 

expound me, for I cannot expound myself, 
I charge that there be no theory or school 

founded out of me, 
I charge you to leave all free, as I have left 

all free. 

After me, vista ! 30 

I see life is not short, but immeasurably 
long, 

1 henceforth tread the world chaste, tem- 
perate, an early riser, a steady grower, 

Every hour the semen of centuries, and 
still of centuries. 

I must follow up these continual lessons of 

the air, water, earth, 
I perceive I have no time to lose. 

1860. 

A BROADWAY PAGEANT 



Over the Western sea hither from Niphon * 
come, 

Courteous, the swart-cheek'd two-sword ed 
envoys, 

Leaning back in their open barouches, bare- 
headed, impassive, 

Ride to-day through Manhattan. 2 

Libertad ! I do not know whether others be- 
hold what I behold, 

In the procession along with the nobles of 
Niphon, the errand-bearers, 

Bringing up the rear, hovering above, 
around, or in the ranks marching, 

But I will sing you a song of what I behold 
Libertad. 



Nippon, the native name of Japan. 

In the edition of 1865 the poem begins : ■ 



A BROADWAY PAGEANT 
(Reception Japanese Embassy, June 16, 1 



0.) 



Over sea, hither from Niphon, 
Courteous, the Princes of Asia, svf art-cheek'd princes, 
First-comers, gueste, two-sworded princes, 
Lesson-giving princes, leaning back in their open barouches, 

bare-headed, impassive, 
This day they ride through Manhattan. 



5 68 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



When million-footed Manhattan unpent 

descends to her pavements, 
When the thunder-cracking guns arouse me 

with the proud roar I love, 10 

When the round-mouth'd guns out of the 

smoke and smell I love spit their salutes, 
When the fire-flashing guns have fully 

alerted me, and heaven-clouds canopy my 

city with a delicate thin haze, 
When gorgeous the countless straight stems, 

the forests at the wharves, thicken with 

colors, 
When every ship richly drest carries her 

flag at the peak, 
When pennants trail and street-festoons 

hang from the windows, 
When Broadway is entirely given up to 

foot-passengers and foot-standers, when 

the mass is densest, 
When the facades of the houses are alive 

with people, when eyes gaze riveted tens 

of thousands at a time, 
When the guests from the islands advance, 

when the pageant moves forward visible, 
When the summons is made, when the an- 
swer that waited thousands of years an- 
swers, 
I too arising, answering, descend to the 

pavements, merge with the crowd, and 

gaze with them. 20 



Superb-faced Manhattan ! 
Comrade Americanos ! to us, then at last 
the Orient comes. 

To us, my city, 

Where our tall-topt marble and iron beau- 
ties range on opposite sides, to walk in 
the space between, 

To-day our Antipodes comes. 

The Originatress comes, x 

The nest of languages, the bequeather of 
poems, the race of eld, 

Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with mus- 
ings, hot with passion, 

Sultry with perfume, with ample and flow- 
ing garments, 

With sunburnt visage, with intense soul and 
glittering eyes, 30 

The race of Brahma comes. 

1 Here follows, in the original edition : — 

The land of Paradise — land of the Caucasus — the nest of 
birth, . . , 



See my cantabile ! these and more are flash- 
ing to us from the procession, 

As it moves changing, a kaleidoscope divine 
it moves changing before us. 

For not the envoys nor the tann'd Japanee 
from his island only, 2 

Lithe and silent the Hindoo appears, the 
Asiatic continent itself appears, the past, 
the dead, 

The murky night-morning of wonder and 
fable inscrutable, 

The envelop'd mysteries, the old and un- 
known hive-bees, 

The north, the sweltering south, eastern 
Assyria, the Hebrews, the ancient of 
ancients, 

Vast desolated cities, the gliding present, 
all of these and more are in the pageant- 
procession. 

Geography, the world, is in it, 40 

The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Poly- 
nesia, the coast beyond, 

The coast you henceforth are facing — 
you Libertad ! from your Western golden 
shores, 

The countries there with their popula- 
tions, the millions en-masse are curiously 
here, 

The swarming market-places, the temples 
with idols ranged along the sides or at 
the end, bonze, brahmin, and llama, 

Mandarin, farmer, merchant, mechanic, and 
fisherman, 

The singing-girl and the dancing-girl, the 
ecstatic persons, the secluded emperors, 

Confucius himself, the great poets and 
heroes, the warriors, the castes, all, 3 

Trooping up, crowding from all directions, 
from the Altay mountains, 

From Thibet, from the four winding and 
far-flowing rivers of China, 

From the southern peninsulas and the demi- 
continental islands, from Malaysia, 50 

These and whatever belongs to them pal- 
pable show forth to me, and are seiz'd 
by me, 

2 In the original edition this line reads : — 

Not the errand-bearing princes only, nor the tann'd Japanee 
only. 

3 In the original edition these two lines read: — 

The singing-girl and the dancing-girl — the ecstatic person 

— the divine Buddha; 
The secluded Emperors — ConfuciuB himself — the great 

poets and heroes — the warriors, the castes, all. 



WALT WHITMAN 



569 



And I am seiz'd by them, and friendlily 

held by them, 
Till as here them all I chant, Libertad ! 

for themselves and for you. 

For I too raising my voice join the ranks 
of this pageant, 

I am the chanter, I chant aloud over the 
pageant, 

I chant the world on my Western sea, 

I chant copious the islands beyond, thick 
as stars in the sky, 

I chant the new empire grander than any 
before, as in a vision it comes to me, 

I chant America the mistress, I chant a 
greater supremacy, 

I chant projected a thousand blooming 
cities yet in time on those groups of sea- 
islands, 60 

My sail-ships and steam-ships threading 
the archipelagoes, 

My stars and stripes fluttering in the wind, 

Commerce opening, the sleep of ages hav- 
ing done its work, races reborn, re- 
fresh'd, 

Lives, works resumed — - the object I know 
not — but the old, the Asiatic renew'd as 
it must be, 

Commencing from this day surrounded by 
the world. 



And you Libertad of the world ! 

You shall sit in the middle well-pois'd 
thousands and thousands of years, 

As to-day from one side the nobles of Asia 
come to you, 

As to-morrow from the other side the 
queen of England sends her eldest son 
to you. 

The sign is reversing, the orb is enclosed, 70 

The ring is circled, the journey is done, 

The box-lid is but perceptibly open'd, never- 
theless the perfume pours copiously out 
of the whole box. 

Young Libertad ! with the venerable Asia, 

the all-mother, 
Be considerate with her nOw and ever hot 

Libertad, for you are all, 
Bend your proud neck to the long-off 

mother now sending messages over the 

archipelagoes to you, 
Bend your proud neck low for once, young 

Libertad. 



Were the children straying westward so 

long ? so wide the tramping ? 
Were the precedent dim ages debouching 

westward from Paradise so long ? 
Were the centuries steadily footing it that 

way, all the while unknown, for you, for 

reasons ? 

They are justified, they are accomplish'd, 
they shall now be turn'd the other way 
also, to travel toward you thence, 80 

They shall now also march obediently east- 
ward for your sake Libertad. 1 

I860. 1865. 



PIONEERS! O PIONEERST^Z 

Come my tan-faced children, 
Follow well in order, get your weapons 

ready, 
Have you your pistols ? have you your 
sharp-edged axes ? 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

For we cannot tarry here, 
We must march my darlings, we must bear 

the brunt of danger, 
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest 
on us depend, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

O you youths, Western youths, 
So impatient, full of action, full of manly 
pride and friendship, 10 

Plain I see you Western youths, see you 
tramping with the foremost, 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Have the elder races halted ? 
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied 
over there beyond the seas ? 

1 The East. — What a subject for a poem ! Indeed, 
where else a more pregnant, more splendid one ? 
Where one more idealistic-real, more subtle, more sen- 
suous-delicate ? The East, answering all lands, all 
ages, peoples ; touching all senses, here, immediate, 
now — and yet so indescribably far off — such retro- 
spect ! The East — long-stretching — so losing itself — 
the orient, the gardens of Asia, the womb of history 
and song — forth-issuing all those strange, dim caval- 
cades — 
Florid with blood, pensive, rapt with musings, hot with 

passion, 
Sultry with perfume, with ample and flowing garments, 
With sunburnt visage, intense soul and glittering eyes. 

Always the East — old, how incalculably old ! And 
yet here the same — ours yet, fresh as a rose, to every 
morning, every life, to-day — and always will be. 
(Whitman, Specimen Days. Complete Prose Works, 
pp. 112, 113.) 



57° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



We take up the task eternal, and the bur- 
den and the lesson, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers J 

All the past we leave behind, 
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, 

varied world, 
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world 
of labor and the march, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 20 

We detachments steady throwing, 
Down the edges, through the passes, up the 

mountains steep, 
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as 
we go the unknown ways, 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

We primeval forests fellings 
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and 

piercing deep the mines within, 
We the surface broad surveying, we the 
virgin soil upheaving, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Colorado men are we, 
From the peaks gigantic, from the great 
sierras and the high plateaus, 30 

From the mine and from the gully, from 
the hunting trail we come, 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

From Nebraska, from Arkansas, 
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, 

with the continental blood intervein'd, 
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the 
Southern, all the Northern, 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

O resistless restless race ! 
O beloved race in all ! O my breast aches 

with tender love for all ! 
O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with 
love for all, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 40 

Raise the mighty mother mistress, 
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all 
the starry mistress (bend your heads. all), 
Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, 
impassive, weapon'd mistress, 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

See my children, resolute children, 
By those swarms upon our rear we must 
never yield or falter, 



Ages back in ghostly millions frowning 
there behind us urging, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

On and on the compact ranks, 
With accessions ever waiting, with the 
places of the dead quickly fill'd, 50 

Through the battle, through defeat, moving 
yet and never stopping, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

to die advancing on ! 

Are there some of us to droop and die ? has 

the hour come ? 
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon 

and sure the gap is fill'd, 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

All the pulses of the world, 
Falling in they beat for us, with the West- 
ern movement beat, 
Holding single or together, steady moving 
to the front, all for us, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 60 

Life's involv'd and varied pageants, 
All the forms and shows, all the workmen 

at their work, 
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the 
masters with their slaves, 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

All the hapless silent lovers, 
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the 

righteous and the wicked, 
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the 
living, all the dying, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

1 too with my soul and body, 

We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on 
our way, 7 o 

Through these shores amid the shadows, 
with the apparitions pressing, 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Lo, the darting bowling orb ! 
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the cluster- 
ing suns and planets, 
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights 
with dreams, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

These are of us, they are with us, 
All for primal needed work, while the fol- 
lowers there in embryo wait behind, 



WALT WHITMAN 



57i 



We to-day's procession heading, we the 
route for travel clearing, 

Pioneers ! pioneers ! 80 

O you daughters of the West ! 
O you young and elder daughters ! O you 

mothers and you wives ! 
Never must you be divided, in our ranks 
you move united, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Minstrels latent on the prairies ! 
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may 

rest, you have done your work,) 
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you 
rise and tramp amid us, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Not for delectations sweet, 
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the 
peaceful and the studious, 90 

Not the riches safe and palling, not for us 
the tame enjoyment, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Do the f easters gluttonous feast ? 
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep ? have they 

lock'd and bolted doors ? 
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket 
on the ground, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Has the night descended ? 
Was the road of late so toilsome ? did we 

stop discouraged nodding on our way ? 
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your 
tracks to pause oblivious, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 100 

Till with sound of trumpet, 
Far, far off the daybreak call — hark ! 

how loud and clear I hear it wind, 
Swift ! to the head of the army ! — swift ! 
spring to your places, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

1865. 



FROM PAUMANOK STARTING I 
FLY LIKE A BIRD 

From Paumanok starting I fly like a 

bird, 
Around and around to soar to sing the idea 

of all, 



To the north betaking myself to sing there 

arctic songs, 
To Kanada till I absorb Kanada in myself, 

to Michigan then, 
To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing 

their songs (they are inimitable) ; 
Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs, to 

Missouri and Kansas and Arkansas to 

sing theirs, 
To Tennessee and Kentucky, to the Caro- 

linas and Georgia to sing theirs, 
To Texas and so along up toward California, 

to roam accepted everywhere ; 
To sing first (to the tap of the war-drum 

if need be), 
The idea of all, of the Western world one 

and inseparable, 
And then the song of each member of these 

States. 

1865. 

EIGHTEEN SIXTY-ONE 

Arm'd year — year of the struggle, 

No dainty rhymes or sentimental love 
verses for you terrible year, 

Not you as some pale poetling seated at a 
desk lisping cadenzas piano, 

But as a strong man erect, clothed in blue 
clothes, advancing, carrying a rifle on 
your shoulder, 

With well-gristled body and sunburnt face 
and hands, with a knife in the belt at 
your side, 

As I heard you shouting loud, your sonor- 
ous voice ringing across the continent, 

Your masculine voice O year, as rising 
amid the great cities, 

Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you as 
one of the workmen, the dwellers in 
Manhattan, 

Or with large steps crossing the prairies 
out of Illinois and Indiana, 

Rapidly crossing the West with springy 
gait and descending the Alleghanies, 

Or down from the great lakes or in Penn- 
sylvania, or on deck along the Ohio river, 

Or southward along the Tennessee or Cum- 
berland rivers, or at Chattanooga on the 
mountain top, 

Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy 
limbs clothed in blue, bearing weapons, 
robust year, 

Heard your determin'd voice launch'd forth 
again and again, 



572 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of 
the round-lipp'd cannon, 

I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, dis- 
tracted year. 

1865. 



BEAT ! BEAT ! DRUMS ! 

Beat ! beat ! drums ! — blow ! bugles ! 
blow ! 

Through the windows — through doors — 
burst like a ruthless force, 

Into the solemn church, and scatter the 
congregation, 

Into the school where the scholar is study- 
ing; 

Leave not the bridegroom quiet — no hap- 
piness must he have now with his bride, 

Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, plough- 
ing his field or gathering his gram, 

So fierce you whirr and pound you drums 
— so shrill you bugles blow. 

Beat ! beat ! drums ! — blow ! bugles ! 

blow ! 
Over the traffic of cities — over the rumble 

of wheels in the streets; 
Are beds prepared for sleepers at night in 

the houses ? no sleepers must sleep in 

those beds, 
No bargainers' bargains by day — no 

brokers or speculators — would they con- 
tinue ? 
Would the talkers be talking ? would the 

singer attempt to sing ? 
Would the lawyer rise in the court to state 

his case before the judge ? 
Then rattle quicker, heavier drums — you 

bugles wilder blow. 

Beat ! beat ! drums ! — blow ! bugles ! 

blow ! 
Make no parley — stop for no expostulation, 
Mind not the timid — mind not the weeper 

or prayer, 
Mind not the old man beseeching the young 

man, 
Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the 

mother's entreaties, 
Make even the trestles to shake the dead 

where they lie awaiting the hearses, 
So strong you thump O terrible drums — 

so loud you bugles blow. 

1865. 



CAVALRY CROSSING A FORD 

A line in long array where they wind be- 
twixt green islands, 
They take a serpentine course, their arms 

flash in the sun — hark to the musical 

clank, 
Behold the silvery river, in it the splashing 

horses loitering stop to drink, 
Behold the brown-faced men, each group, 

each person a picture, the negligent rest 

on the saddles, 
Some emerge on the opposite bank, others 

are just entering the ford — while, 
Scarlet and blue and snowy white, 
The guidon flags flutter gayly hi the wind. 

1865. 

BIVOUAC ON A MOUNTAIN 
SIDE 1 

I see before me now a traveling army 

halting, 
Below a fertile valley spread, with barns 

and the orchards of summer, 
Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, 

abrupt, in places rising high, 
Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, 

with tall shapes dingily seen, 
The numerous camp-fires scatter'd near and 

far, some away up on the mountain, 
The shadowy forms of men and horses, 

looming, large-sized, flickering, 
And over all the sky — the sky ! far, far 

out of reach, studded, breaking out, the 

eternal stars. 

1865. 

BY THE BIVOUAC'S FITFUL 
FLAME 

By the bivouac's fitful flame, 

A procession winding around me, solemn 

and sweet and slow — but first I note, 
The tents of the sleeping army, the fields' 

and woods' dim outline,' 
The darkness lit by spots of kindled fire, 

the silence, 
Like a phantom far or near an occasional 

figure moving, 
The shrubs and trees (as I lift my eyes 

they seem to be stealthily watching me), 

1 Compare Specimen Days, July 4, 6, 10, 1863. Com- 
plete Prose Works, p. 11. 



WALT WHITMAN 



573 



While wind in procession thoughts, ten- 
der and wondrous thoughts, 

Of life and death, of home and the past 
and loved, and of those that are far 
away; 

A solemn and slow procession there as I sit 
on the ground, 

By the bivouac's fitful flame. 

1865. 



I SAW OLD GENERAL AT BAY 

I saw old General at bay, 

(Old as he was, his gray eyes yet shone out 

in battle like stars,) 
His small force was now completely hemm'd 

in, in his works, 
He call'd for volunteers to run the enemy's 

lines, a desperate emergency, 
I saw a hundred and more step forth from 

the ranks, but two or three were selected, 
I saw them receive their orders aside, they 

listen'd with care, the adjutant was very 

grave, 
I saw them depart with cheerfulness, freely 

risking their lives. 

1865. 



VIGIL STRANGE I KEPT ON THE 
FIELD ONE NIGHT 

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night; 
When you my son and my comrade dropt at 

my side that day, 
One look I but gave which your dear eyes 

return'd with a look I shall never forget, 
One touch of your hand to mine O boy, 

reach'd up as you lay on the ground, 
Then onward I sped in the battle, the even- 
contested battle, 
Till late in the night reliev'd to the place at 

last again I made my way, 
Found you in death so cold dear comrade, 

found your body son of responding kisses 

(never again on earth responding), 
Bared your face in the starlight, curious the 

scene, cool blew the moderate night-wind, 
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly 

around me the battle-field spreading, 
Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the 

fragrant silent night, 
But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn 

sigh, long, long I gazed, 



Then on the earth partially reclining sat by 

your side leaning my chin hi my hands, 
Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic 

hours with you dearest comrade — not a 

tear, not a word, 
Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you 

my son and my soldier, 
As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new 

ones upward stole, 
Vigil final for you brave boy, (I could not 

save you, swift was your death, 
I faithfully loved you and cared for you 

living, I think we shall surely meet 

again,) 
Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed 

just as the dawn appear'd, 
My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, en- 
velop 'd well his form, 
Folded the blanket well, tucking it care- 
fully over head and carefully under 

feet, 
And there and then and bathed by the rising 

sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug 

grave I deposited, 
Ending my vigil strange with that, vigil of 

night and battle-field dim, 
Vigil for boy of responding kisses (never 

again on earth responding), 
Vigil for comrade swiftly slain, vigil I never 

forget, how as day brighten'd, 
I rose from the chill ground and folded my 

soldier well in his blanket, 
And buried him where he fell. 

1865. 



COME UP FROM THE FIELDS 
FATHER 

Come up from the fields father, here 's a 

letter from our Pete, 
And come to the front door mother, here 's 

a letter from thy dear son. 

Lo, 't is autumn, 

Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower 

and redder, 
Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages with 

leaves fluttering in the moderate wind, 
Where apples ripe hi the orchards hang 

and grapes on the trellis'd vines, 
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the 

vines ? 
Smell you the buckwheat where the bees 

were lately buzzing ?_) 



574 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so trans- 
parent after the rain, and with wondrous 
clouds, 

Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, 
and the farm prospers well. 10 

Down in the fields all prospers well, 

But now from the fields come father, come 

at the daughter's call, 
And come to the entry mother, to the front 

door come right away. 

Fast as she can she hurries, something 

ominous, her steps trembling, 
She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor 

adjust her cap. 

Open the envelope quickly, 

O this is not our son's writing, yet his 

name is sign'd, 
O a strange hand writes for our dear son, 

O stricken mother's soul ! 
All swims before her eyes, flashes with 

black, she catches the main words only, 
Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the 

breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital, 
At present low, but will soon be better. 21 

Ah now the single figure to me, 

Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with 

all its cities and farms, 
Sickly white in the face and dull in the 

head, very faint, 
By the jamb of a door leans. 

Grieve not so, dear mother (the just-grown 
daughter speaks through her sobs, 

The little sisters huddle around speechless 
and dismay'd), 

See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will 
soon be better. 

Alas poor boy, he will never be better 
(nor may-be needs to be better, that 
brave and simple soul), 

While they stand at home at the door he is 
dead already, 30 

The only son is dead. 

But the mother needs to be better, 

She with thin form presently drest in black, 

By day her meals untouch'd, then at night 

fitfully sleeping, often waking, 
In the midnight waking, weeping, longing 

with one deep longing, 



O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent 
from life escape and withdraw, 

To follow, to seek, to be with her dear 
dead son. 

1865. 



A SIGHT IN CAMP IN THE DAY- 
BREAK GRAY AND DIM 

A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and 

dim, 
As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless, 
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the 

path near by the hospital tent, 
Three forms I see on stretchers lying, 

brought out there untended lying, 
Over each the blanket spread, ample 

brownish woolen blanket, 
Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering 

all 

Curious I halt and silent stand, 

Then with light fingers I from the face of 

the nearest the first just lift the blanket; 
Who are you elderly man so gaunt and 

grim, with well-gray'd hair and flesh all 

sunken about the eyes ? 
Who are you my dear comrade ? 

Then to the second I step — and who are 

you my child and darling ? 
Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet 

blooming ? 

Then to the third — a face nor child nor 
old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow- 
white ivory; 

Young man I think I know you — I think 
this face is the face of the Christ himself, 

Dead and divine and brother of all, and 
here again he lies. 

1865. 



AS TOILSOME I WANDER'D VIR- 
GINIA'S WOODS 

As toilsome I wander'd Virginia's woods, 

To the music of rustling leaves kick'd by 
my feet (for 'twas autumn), 

I mark'd at the foot of a tree the grave of 
a soldier; 

Mortally woimded he and buried on the re- 
treat (easily all could I understand), 



WALT WHITMAN 



575 



The halt ^- -day hour, when up ! no 

time to lose — yet this sign left, 

On a tablet scrawl'd and nail'd on the tree 
by the grave, 

Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade. 

Long, long I muse, then on my way go 
wandering, 

Many a changeful season to follow, and 
many a scene of life, 

Yet at times through changeful season and 
scene, abrupt, alone, or in the crowded 
street, 

Comes before me the unknown soldier's 
grave, comes the inscription rude in Vir- 
ginia's woods, 

Bold, cautious, true, and my loving comrade. 

1865. 



THE WOUND-DRESSER 1 



An old man bending I come among new 

faces, 
Years looking backward resuming in 

answer to children, 

1 See the letter in Bucke's Whitman, pp. 38-40. 

With this, and all the poems relating to the Civil 
War, should be read the book entitled The Wound- 
Dresser, a collection of letters written from the field 
and from the hospitals in Washington and the parts of 
Specimen Days picturing Whitman's experiences in the 
war and in the hospitals, in his Complete Prose Works, 
pp. 15-75. A few passages may be quoted: — ' 

' The men, whatever their condition, lie there, and 
patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. 
Near by, the ambulances are now arriving in clusters, 
and one after another is call'd to back up and take its 
]<5ad. Extreme cases are sent off on stretchers. The 
men generally make little or no ado, whatever their 
sufferings. A few groans that cannot be suppress'd, 
and occasionally a scream of pain as they lift a man 
into the ambulance. To-day, as I write, hundreds more 
are expected, and to-morrow and the next day more, 
and so on for many days. Quite often they arrive at 
the rate of 1000 a day. . . . 

' It is Sunday afternoon, middle of summer, hot and 
oppressive, and very silent through the ward. I am 
taking care of a critical case, now lying in a half 
lethargy. Near where I sit is a suffering rebel, from the 
8th Louisiana; his name is Irving. He has been here a 
long time, badly wounded, and lately had his leg am- 
putated; it is not doing very well. Right opposite me 
is a sick soldier-boy, laid down with his clothes on, 
sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his 
arm. I see by the yellow trimming on his jacket that 
he is a cavalry boy. I step softly over and find by his 
card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st Maine 
cavalry, and his folks live in Skowhegan. 

' One hot day toward the middle of June, I gave the 
inmates of Carver hospital a general ice cream treat, 
purchasing a large quantity, and, under convoy of the 
doctor or head nurse, going around personally through 
the wards to see to its distribution. 

' . . . I do not see that I do much good to these 



Come tell us old man, as from young men 

and maidens that love me, 
( Arous'd and angry, I'd thought to beat the 

alarum, and urge relentless war, 

wounded and dying; but I cannot leave them. Once in 
a while some youngster holds on to me convulsively, 
and I do what I can for him; at any rate, stop with him 
and sit near him for hours, if he wishes it. . . . 

' . . . I soon get acquainted anywhere in camp, 
with officers or men, and am always well used. Some- 
times I go down on picket with the regiments I know 
best. . . . 

' ... In these wards, or on the field, as I thus con- 
tinue to go round, I have come to adapt myself to each 
emergency, after its kind or call, however trivial, how- 
ever solemn, every one justified and made real under 
its circumstances — not only visits and cheering talk 
and little gifts — not only washing and dressing 
wounds (I have some cases where the patient is unwill- 
ing any one should do this but me) — but passages 
from the Bible, expounding them, prayer at the bed- 
side, explanations of doctrine, &c. (I think I see my 
friends smiling at - this confession, but I was never 
more in earnest in my life.) In camp and every- 
where, I was in the habit of reading or giving reci- 
tations to the men. . . . 

' . . . I went through the rooms, downstairs and up. 
Some of the men were dying. I had nothing to give 
at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks home, 
mothers, &c. Also talk'd to three or four, who seem' d 
most susceptible to it, and needing it. . . . 

' In one bed a young man, Marcus Small, company K, 
7th Maine — sick with dysentery and typhoid fever — 
pretty critical case — I talk with him often — he thinks 
he will die — looks like it indeed. I write a letter for 
him home to East Livermore, Maine — I let him talk to 
me a little, but not much, advise him to keep very 
quiet — do most of the talking myself — stay quite a 
while with him, as he holds on to my hand — talk to 
him in a cheering, but slow, low, and measured man- 
ner — talk about his furlough, and going home as soon 
as he is able to travel.' 

[From a letter to a dead soldier's mother] ; . . . 
I will write you a few lines — as a casual friend that 
sat by his death-bed. Tour son, Corporal Frank H. Ir- 
win, was wounded near Fort Fisher, Virginia, March 
25th, 1865 — the wound was in the left knee, pretty 
bad ... I visited and sat by him frequently, as he 
was fond of having me. The last ten or twelve days of 
April I saw that his case was critical. He previously 
had some fever, with cold spells. The last week in 
April he was much of the time flighty — but always 
mild and gentle. He died first of May. The actual 
cause of death was pysemia (the absorption of the mat- 
ter in the system instead of its discharge). Frank, as 
far as I saw, had everything requisite in surgical treat- 
ment, nursing, &c. He had watches much of the time. 
He was so good and well-behaved and affectionate, I 
myself liked him very much. I was in the habit of 
coming in afternoons and sitting by him, and soothing 
him, and he liked to have me — liked to put his arm 
out and lay his hand on my knee — would keep it so a 
long while. Toward the last he was more restless and 
flighty at night. . . . All the time he was out of his 
head not one single bad word or idea escaped him. It 
was remark'd that many a man's conversation in his 
senses was not half as good as Frank's delirium. He 
seem'd quite willing to die — he had become very weak 
and had suffer'd a good deal, and was perfectly resign'd, 
poor boy. I do not know his past life, but I feel as if it 
must have been good. At any rate what I saw of him 
here, under the most trying circumstances, with a 
painful wound, and among strangers, I can say that he 
behaved so brave, so composed, and so sweet and af- 



576 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



But soon my fingers fail'd me, niy face 
droop'd and I resign'd myself, 

To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or 
silently watch the dead;) 

Years hence of these scenes, of these fu- 
rious passions, these chances, 

Of unsurpass'd heroes (was one side so 
brave ? the other was equally brave ;) 1 

Now be witness again, paint the mightiest 
armies of earth, 

Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what 
saw you to tell us ? 10 

What stays with you latest and deepest ? 
of curious panics, 

Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tre- 
mendous what deepest remains ? 

2 

O maidens and young men I love and that 
love me, 

What you ask of my days those the 
strangest and sudden your talking recalls, 

Soldier alert I arrive after a long march 
cover'd with sweat and dust, 

In the nick of time I come, plunge in the 
fight, loudly shout in the rush of success- 
ful charge, 

Enter the captur'd works — yet lo, like a 
swift-runmng river they fade, 

Pass and are gone they fade — I dwell not 
on soldiers' perils or soldiers' joys 

(Both I remember well — many the hard- 
ships, few the joys, yet I was content). 

But in silence, in dreams' projections, 20 
While the world of gain and appearance 
and mirth goes on, 

fectionate, it could not be surpass'd. And now like 
many other noble and good men, after serving his 
country as a soldier, he has yielded up his young life 
at the very outset in her service. Such things are 
gloomy — yet there is a text, ' God doeth all things 
well ' — the meaning, of which, after due time, ap- 
pears to the soul. 

I thought perhaps a few words, though from a 
stranger, about your son, from one who was with him 
at the last, might be worth while — for I loved the 
young man, though I but saw him immediately to lose 
him. ... W. W. 

1 The grand soldiers are not comprised in those of one 
side, any more than the other. Here is a sample of an 
unknown Southerner, a lad of seventeen. At the War 
Department, a few days ago, I witness'd a presentation 
of captured flags to the Secretary. Among others a 
soldier named Gant, of the 104th Ohio Volunteers, pre- 
sented a rebel battle-flag, which one of the officers 
stated to me was borne to the mouth of our cannon 
and planted there by a boy but seventeen years of age, 
who actually endeavor'd to stop the muzzle of the gun 
with fence-rails. He was kill'd in the effort, and the 
flag-staff was sever'd by a shot from one of our men. 
(Specimen Days, p. 27.) 



So soon what is over forgotten, and waves 
wash the imprints off the sand, 

With hinged knees returning I enter the 
doors (while for you up there, 

Whoever you are, follow without noise and 
be of strong heart). 

Bearing the bandages, water and sponge, 
Straight and swift to my wounded I go, 
Where they lie on the ground after the 

battle brought in,' 
Where their priceless blood reddens the 

grass the ground, 
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or 

under the roof 'd hospital, 
To the long rows of cots up and down each 

side I return, 30 

To each and all one after another I draw 

near, not one do I miss, 
An attendant follows holding a tray, he 

carries a refuse pail, 
Soon to be fill'd with clotted rags and blood, 

emptied, and fill'd again. 

I onward go, I stop, 

With hinged knees and steady hand to 

dress wounds, 
I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp 

yet unavoidable, 
One turns to me his appealing eyes — poor 

boy ! I never knew you, 
Yet I think 1 could not refuse this moment 

to die for you, if that would save you. 



On, on I go, (open doors of time ! open 
hospital doors !) 

The crush'd head I dress (poor crazed hand 
tear not the bandage away), 40 

The neck of the cavalry-man with the bul- 
let through and through I examine, 

Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed 
already the eye, yet life struggles hard 

(Come sweet death ! be persuaded 
beautiful death ! 

In mercy come quickly). 

From the stump of the arm, the amputated 

hand, 
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, 

wash off the matter and blood, 
Back on his pillow the soldier bends with 

curv'd neck and side-falling head, 
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he 

dares not look on the bloody stump, 
And has not yet look'd on it. 



WALT WHITMAN 



577 



I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep, 50 
But a day or two more, for see the frame 

all wasted and sinking, 
And the yellow-blue countenance see. 

I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot 

with the bullet- wound, 
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid 

gangrene, so sickening, so offensive, 
While the attendant stands behind aside 

me holding the tray and pail. 

I am faithful, I do not give out, 

The fractur'd thigh, the knee, the wound 

in the abdomen, 
These and more I dress with impassive 

hand (yet deep in my breast a fire, a 

burning flame). 

4 

Thus in silence in dreams' projections, 

Returning, resuming, I thread my way 
through the hospitals, 60 

The hurt and wounded I pacify with sooth- 
ing hand, 

I sit by the restless all the dark night, 
some are so yoimg, 

Some suffer so much, I recall the experi- 
ence sweet and sad, 

(Many a soldier's loving arms about this 
neck have cross'd and rested, 

Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these 
bearded lips). 

1865. 



GIVE ME THE SPLENDID SILENT 

SUN 

1 
Give me the splendid silent sun with all his 

beams full-dazzling, 
Give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red 

from the orchard, 
Give me a field where the unmow'd grass 

grows, 
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd 

grape, 
Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me se- 
rene-moving animals teaching content, 
Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high 

plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I 

looking up at the stars, 
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of 

beautiful flowers where I can walk un- 

disturb'd, 



Give me for marriage a sweet-breath'd 
woman of whom I should never tire, 

Give me a perfect child, give me away aside 
from the noise of the world a rural do- 
mestic life, 

Give me to warble spontaneous songs recluse 
by myself, for my own ears only, 10 

Give me solitude, give me Nature, give me 
again O Nature your primal sanities ! 

These demanding to have them (tired with 
ceaseless excitement, and rack'd by the 
war-strife), 

These to procure incessantly asking, rising 
in cries from my heart, 

While yet incessantly asking still I adhere 
to my city, 

Day upon day and year upon year O city, 
walking your streets, 

Where you hold me enchain'd a certain 
time refusing to give me up, 

Yet giving to make me glutted, enrich'd of 
soul, you give me forever faces; 

(Oh I see what I sought to escape, con- 
fronting, reversing my cries, 

I see my own soul trampling down what it 
ask'd for.) 



Keep yotir splendid silent sun, 20 

Keep your woods O Nature, and the quiet 
places by the woods, 

Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and 
your corn-fields and orchards, 

Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields 
where the Ninth-month bees hum; 

Give me faces and streets — give me these 
phantoms incessant and endless along the 
trottoirs ! 

Give me interminable eyes — give me 
women — give me comrades and lovers 
by the thousand ! 

Let me see new ones every day — let me 
hold new ones by the hand every day ! 

Give me such shows — give me the streets 
of Manhattan ! 

Give me Broadway, with the soldiers march- 
ing — give me the sound of the trumpets 
and drums ! 

(The soldiers in companies or regiments — 
some starting away, flush'd and reck- 
less, 

Some, their time up, returning with thinn'd 
ranks, young, yet very old, worn, inarch- 
ing, noticing nothing;) 30 



578 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Give me the shores and wharves heavy- 
fringed with black ships ! 

such for me ! an intense life, full to 
repletion and varied ! 

The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge ho- 
tel, for me ! 

The saloon of the steamer ! the crowded ex- 
cursion for me ! the torchlight procession ! 

The dense brigade bound for the war, with 
high piled military wagons following; 

People, endless, streaming, with strong 
voices, passions, pageants, 

Manhattan streets with their powerful 
throbs, with beating drums as now, 

The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle 
and clank of muskets (even the sight of 
the wounded), 

Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent 
musical chorus ! 39 

Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me. l 

1865. 

LONG, TOO LONG AMERICA 2 

Long, too long America, 

Traveling roads all even and peaceful you 

learn'd from joys and prosperity only, 
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of 

anguish, advancing, grappling with direst 

fate and recoiling not, 
And now to conceive and show to the world 

what your children en-masse really are, 
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd 

what your children en-masse really are ?) 

1865. 

OVER THE CARNAGE ROSE 
PROPHETIC A VOICE 

Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice, 
Be not dishearten'd, affection shall solve the 
problems of freedom yet, 

1 Compare Whitman's Collect (Complete Prose 
Works, Small, Maynard & Co., p. 205) : — 
' Always and more and more, as I cross the Bast and 
North rivers, the ferries, or with the pilots in their pi- 
lot-houses, or pass an hour in Wall Street, or the gold 
exchange, I realize (if we must admit suchpartialisms), 
that not Nature alone is great in her fields of freedom 
and the open air, in her storms, the shows of night and 
day, the mountains, forests, seas — but in the artificial, 
the work of man too is equally great — in this profusion 
of teeming humanity — in these ingenuities, streets, 
goods, houses, ships — these hurrying, feverish, electric 
crowds of men, their complicated business genius, (not 
least among the geniuses), and all this mighty, many- 
threaded wealth and industry concentrated here.' 
a In the original edition the title and first line read: 
Long, too long, O land, 



Those who love each other shall become in- 
vincible, 
They shall yet make Columbia victorious. 

Sons of the Mother of All, you shall yet be 

victorious, 
You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of 

all the remainder of the earth. 

No danger shall balk Columbia's lovers, 
If need be a thousand shall sternly immo- 
late themselves for one. 

One from Massachusetts shall be a Missou- 

rian's comrade, 
From Maine and from hot Carolina, and 

another an Oregonese* shall be friends 

triune, 
More precious to each other than all the 

riches of the earth. 

To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall ten- 
derly come, 

Not the perfumes of flowers, but sweeter, 
and wafted beyond death. 

It shall be customary, in the houses and 
streets to see manly affection, 

The most dauntless and rude shall touch 
face to face lightly, 

The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers, 

The continuance of Equality shall be com- 
rades. 3 

These shall tie you and band you stronger 

than hoops of iron, 
I, ecstatic, O partners ! O lands ! with the 

love of lovers tie you. 

(Were you looking to be held together by 

lawyers ? 
Or by an agreement on a paper ? or by 

arms ? 
Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, 

will so cohere.) 

1865. 

OUT OF THE ROLLING OCEAN 
THE CROWD 4 

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came 

a drop gently to me, 
Whispering / love you, before long I die, 

3 Taken in part from the poem ' States,' of the 1860 
edition, quoted in the note on p. 561. 

4 Originally in Drurrv-Taps, but now included in the 
1 Children of Adam ' section of Leaves of Grass. 



WALT WHITMAN 



579 



/ have travel'd a long way merely to look on 

you to touch you, 
For I could not die till I once look'd on you, 
For Ifear'd I might afterward lose you. 

Now we have met, we have look'd, we are 

safe, 
Return in peace to the ocean niy love, 
I too am part of that ocean my love, we are 

not so much separated, 
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of 

all, how perfect ! 
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea 

is to separate us, 
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet can- 
not carry us diverse forever; 
Be not impatient — a little space — know 

you I salute the air, the ocean and the 

land, 
Every day at sundown for your dear sake 

my love. 

1865. 



WHEN I HEARD THE LEARN'D 
ASTRONOMER 1 

When I heard the learn'd astronomer, 
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged 
in columns before me, 

1 To-night, after leaving the hospital at 10 o'clock (I 
had been on self-imposed duty some five hours, pretty 
closely confined), I wander'd a long time around Wash- 
ington. The night was sweet, very clear, sufficiently 
cool, a voluptuous half -moon, slightly golden, the space 
near it of a transparent blue-gray tinge. I walk'd up 
Pennsylvania avenue, and then to Seventh street, and 
a long while around the Patent-office. Somehow it 
look'd rebukefully strong, majestic, there in the deli- 
cate moonlight. The sky, the planets, the constella- 
tions all so bright, so calm, so expressively silent, so 
soothing, after those hospital scenes. I wander'd to 
and fro till the moist moon set, long after midnight. 
(Specimen Bays, October 20, 1863. Complete Prose 
Works, p. 41.) 

See also Specimen Days, July 22, 1878, Prose Works, 
pp. Ill, 112 ; April 5, 1879, Prose Works, pp. 11S-121 ; 
February 10, 1881, Prose Works, pp. 162, 1G3. 

Compare one of Whitman's ' Notes on the Meaning 
and Intention of Leaves of Grass,' in Notes and Frag- 
ments, p. 58 : — 

Book learning is good, let none dispense with it, but 
a man may [be] of great excellence and effect with very 
little of it. Washington had but little. Andrew Jack- 
son also. Fulton also. Frequently it stands in the way 
of real manliness and power. Powerful persons and the 
first inventors and poets of the earth never come from 
the depths of the schools — never. There is a man who 
is no chemist, nor linguist, nor antiquary, nor mathemati- 
cian — yet he takes very easily the perfection of these 
sciences, or of the belles lettres, and eats of the fruit 
of all. Erudition is low among the glories of humanity. 
I think if those who best embody it were collected to- 
gether this day in the public assembly it would be 
grand. But powerful unlearned persons are also grand. 



When I was shown the charts and diagrams, 

to add, divide, and measure them, 
When I sitting heard the astronomer where 

he lectured with much applause in the 

lecture-room, 
How soon unaccountable I became tired and 

sick, 
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off 

by myself, 
In the mystical moist night-air, and from 

time to time, 
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. 

1865. 



SHUT NOT YOUR DOORS 

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries, 
For that which was lacking on all your well- 

fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring, 
Forth from the war emerging, a book I have 

made, 
The words of my book nothing, the drift of 

it every thing, 
A book separate, not link'd with the rest 

nor felt by the intellect, 
But you ye untold latencies will thrill to 

every page. 2 

1865. 



TO A CERTAIN CIVILIAN 3 

Did you ask dulcet rhymes from me ? 
Did you seek the civilian's peaceful and 
languishing rhymes ? 

But all book knowledge is important as helping one's 
personal qualities, and the use and power of a man. Let 
a man learn to run, leap, swim, wrestle, fight, to take 
good aim, to manage horses, to speak readily and clearly 
and without mannerism, to feel at home among common 
people and able to hold his own in terrible positions. 
With these . . . 

Behind — Eluding — Mocking all the text-books and 
professor's expositions and proofs and diagrams and 
practical show, stand or lie millions of all the most beau- 
tiful and common facts. We are so proud of our learn- 
ing ! As if it were anything to analyze fluids and call 
certain parts oxygen or hydrogen, or to map out stars 
and call . . . 

2 In the original version this poem reads : — 

Shut not your doors to me, proud libraries. 

For that -which was lacking among you all, yet needed most, 

I bring; 
A book I have made for your dear sake, O soldiers, 
And for you, O soul of man, and ybu, love of comrades; 
The words of my book nothing, the life of it everything: 
A book separate, not link'd with the rest, nor felt by the 

intellect; 
But you will feel every word, O Libertad ! arm'd I^ibertad ! 
It shall pass by the intellect to swim the sea, the air, 
With joy with you, O soul of man. 

3 Compare the opening stanzas of Emerson's ' Mer- 
lin.' 



5 8o 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Did you find what I sang erewhile so hard 
to follow ? 

Why I was not singing erewhile for you to 
follow, to understand — nor am I now 

(I have been born of the same as the war 
was born, 

The drum-corps' rattle is ever to me sweet 
music, I love well the martial dirge, 

With slow wail and convulsive throb lead- 
ing the officer's funeral) ; 

What to such as you anyhow such a poet as 
1 ? therefore leave my works, 

And go lull yom'self with what you can 
understand, and with piano-times, 

For I lull nobody, and you will never un- 
derstand me. * 

1865. 



1 This is a poem which some of Whitman's admirers 
are fond of quoting to those who fail to appreciate him. 
It is hardly fair to him, however, to take it apart 
from his own more modest expression of the same ideas, 
in ' A Backward Glance o'er Travel' d Roads : — ' 

' And whether my friends claim it for me or not, I 
know well enough, too, that in respect to pictorial 
talent, dramatic situations, and especially in verbal 
melody and all the conventional technique of poetry, not 
only the divine works that to-day stand ahead in the 
world's reading, but dozens more, transcend (some of 
them immeasurably transcend) all I have done, or 
could do. . . . 

1 Plenty of songs had been sung — beautiful, match- 
less songs — adjusted to other lands than these — an- 
other spirit and stage of evolution ; but I would sing, 
and leave out or put in, quite solely with reference to 
America and to-day. Modern science and democracy 
seem'd to be throwing out their challenge to poetry to 
put them in its statements in contradistinction to the 
songs and myths of the past. As I see it now (perhaps 
too late), I have unwittingly taken up that challenge 
and made an attempt at such statements — which I 
certainly would not assume to do now, knowing more 
clearly what it means. . . . 

' Behind all else that can be said, I consider " Leaves 
of Grass ' ' and its theory experimental — as, in the 
deepest sense, I consider our American republic itself 
to be, with its theory. (I think I have at least enough 
philosophy not to be too absolutely certain of any thing, 
or any results.) . . . 

' I have allow'd the stress of my poems from beginning 
to end to bear upon American individuality. . . . Defi- 
ant of ostensible literary and other conventions, I 
avowedly chant "the great pride of man in himself," 
and permit it to be more or less a motif of nearly all 
my verse. I think this pride indispensable to an Amer- 
ican. I think it not inconsistent with obedience, humil- 
ity, deference, and self -questioning. . . . 

' Let me not dare, here or anywhere, for my own pur- 
poses, or any purposes, to attempt the definition of 
Poetry, nor answer the question what it is. Like Reli- 
gion, Love, Nature, while those terms are indispensable, 
and we all give a sufficiently accurate meaning to them, 
in my opinion no definition that has ever been made 
sufficiently encloses the name Poetry; nor can any 
rule or convention ever so absolutely obtain but some 
great exception may arise and disregard and overturn it. 

' But it is not on "Leaves of Grass " distinctively as 
literature, or a specimen thereof, that I feel to dwell, 
or advance claims. No one will get at my verses who 
insists upon viewing them as a literary performance, 



QUICKSAND YEARS 

Quicksand years that whirl me I know 

not whither, 
Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, 

substances mock and elude me, 
Only the theme I sing, the great and 

strong-possess'd soul, eludes not, 
One's-self must never give way — that is 

the final substance — that out of all is 

sure, 
Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what 

at last finally remains ? 
When shows break up what but One's-Self 

is sure ? 

1865. 



OTHERS 



MAY PRAISE WHAT 
THEY LIKE 



Others may praise what they like; 

But I, from the banks of the running Mis- 
souri, praise nothing in art or aught 
else, 

Till it has well inhaled the atmosphere 
of this river, also the western prairie- 
scent, 

And exudes it all again. 

1865. 



THICK-SPRINKLED BUNTING 2 

Thick-sprinkled bunting ! flag of stars ! 
Long yet your road, fateful flag — long yet 

yoxu' road, and lined with bloody death, 
For the prize I see at issue at last is the 

world, 
All its ships and shores I see interwoven 

with your threads greedy banner; 
Dream'd again the flags of kings, highest 

borne, to flaunt unrival'd ? 
O hasten flag of man — O with sure and 

steady step, passing highest flags of 

kings, 
Walk supreme to the heavens mighty 

symbol — rim up above them all, 
Flag of stars ! thick-sprinkled bunting ! 

1865. 

or attempt at such performance, or as aiming mainly 
toward art or festheticism.' 

2 In the original edition both the title and the first 
line read : — 

Flag of stars, thick-sprinkled hunting. 



WALT WHITMAN 



58i 



BATHED IN WAR'S PERFUME 1 

Bathed in war's perfume — delicate flag ! 

O to hear you call the sailors and the sol- 
diers ! flag like a beautiful woman ! 

O to hear the tramp, tramp, of a million 
answering men ! O the ships they arm 
with joy ! 

O to see you leap and beckon from the tall 
masts of ships ! 

to see you peering down on the sailors 
on the decks ! 

Flag like the eyes of women. 

1865. 



O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! 

O Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip 

is done, 
The ship has weather'd every rack, the 

prize we sought is won, 
The port is near, the belis I hear, the peo- 
ple all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the ves- 
sel grim and daring; 

But O heart ! heart ! heart ! 
the bleeding drops of red, 2 
Where on the deck my Captain 
lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 

Captain ! my Captain ! rise up and hear 

the bells; 
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for 

you the bugle trills, 
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths — 

for you the shores a-crowding, 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their 
eager faces turning; 

Here Captain ! dear father ! 
This arm beneath your head ! 3 
It is some dream that on the 
deck, 
You 've fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are 

pale and still, 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no 

pulse nor will, 
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, 4 its 

voyage closed and done, 

1 Omitted from the 1871 and later editions. 

2 Leave you not the little spot. (1865.) 

3 O Captain ! dear father 

This arm I push beneath you. (1865.) 

4 But the ship, the ship is anchored safe. (1865.) 



From fearful trip the victor ship corner in 
with object won; 

Exult O shores, and ring O bells ! 
But I with mournful tread, 

Walk the deck my Captain lies, 5 
Fallen cold and dead. 

1865. 



WHEN LILACS LAST IN THE 
DOORYARD BLOOM'D u 



When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd, 
And the great star early droop'd in the 

western sky in the night, 
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever- 
returning spring. 

5 But I with silent tread 
Walk the spot my Captain lies. (1865.) 

8 The most sonorous anthem ever chanted in the 
church of the world. (Swinburne.) See Swinburne's 
comparison of this poem with Lowell's 'Commemora- 
tion Ode,' in Under the Microscope. 

— I see the President almost every day, as I happen 
to live where he passes to or from his lodgings out of 
town. ... I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark 
brown face, with the deep-cut lines, the eyes, always to 
me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. We 
have got so that we exchange bows, and very cordial 
ones. . . . None of the artists or pictures has caught 
the deep, though subtle and indirect expression of this 
man's face. There is something else there. One of the 
great portrait painters of two or three centuries ago 
is needed. (Whitman, Specimen Days, August 12, 1863. 
Complete Prose Works, p. 37.) 

I saw him on his return, at three o'clock, after the 
performance was over. He was in his plain two-horse 
barouche, and look'd very much worn and tired; the 
lines, indeed, of vast responsibilities, intricate ques- 
tions, and demands of life and death, cut deeper than 
ever upon his dark brown face ; yet all the old good- 
ness, tenderness, sadness, and canny shrewdness, un- 
derneath the furrows. (I never see that man without 
feeling that he is one to become personally attach'd to, 
for his combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and 
native western form of manliness.) By his side sat his 
little boy, of ten years. There were no soldiers. {Speci- 
men Days, March 4, 1865. Prose Works, p. 57.) 

He leaves for America's history and biography, so 
far, not only its most dramatic reminiscence — he 
leaves, in my opinion, the greatest, best, most charac- 
teristic, artistic, moral personality. Not but that he 
had faults, and show'd them in the Presidency ; but 
honesty, goodness, shrewdness, conscience, and (a new 
virtue, unknown to other lands, and hardly yet really 
known here, but the foundation and tie of all, as the 
future will grandly develop), Unionism, in its truest 
and amplest sense, form'd the hard-pan of his charac- 
ter. These he seal'd with his life. (Specimen Days, 
April 16, 1865. Prose Works, pp. 61, 62.) 

See also in Whitman's Colled ' The Death of Abraham 
Lincoln.' Complete Prose Works, pp. 308,309; and 'A 
Lincoln Reminiscence,' p. 331 ; also, in November 
Boughs, ' Abraham Lincoln,' Prose Works, pp. 436-438. 

It iB not out of place to add here Lincoln's comment 
on Whitman. Seeing him walk by the White House, 
' Mr. Lincoln ' (says a witness of the scene, whose let- 
ter is quoted in Bucke'sii/e of Whitman, p. 42) ' asked 



5 82 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me 

you bring, 
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star 

in the west, 
And thought of him I love. 



O powerful western fallen star ! 

O shades of night — O moody, tearful 

night ! 
O great star disappear'd — O the black 

murk that hides the star ! 
O cruel hands that hold me powerless — O 

helpless soul of me ! 10 

O harsh surrounding cloud that will not 

free my soul. 

3 

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house 
near the white-wash'd palings, 

Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with 
heart-shaped leaves of rich green, 

With many a pointed blossom rising deli- 
cate, with the perfume strong I love, 

With every leaf a miracle — and from this 
bush in the dooryard, 

With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart- 
shaped leaves of rich green, 

A sprig with its flower I break. 



In the swamp in secluded recesses, 

A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song. 

Solitary the thrush, 20 

The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding 

the settlements, 
Sings by himself a song. 

Song of the bleeding throat, 

Death's outlet song of life (for well dear 

brother I know, 
If thou wast not granted to sing thou 

would'st surely die.) 

5 
Over the breast of the spring, the land, 
amid cities, 

who that was, or something of the kind. I spoke up, 
mentioning the name Walt Whitman, and said he was 
the author of Leaves of Grass. Mr. Lincoln did not 
say anything, but took a good look, till Whitman was 
quite gone by. Then he said (I cannot give you his 
way of saying it, but it was quite emphatic and odd), 
" Well, he looks like a Man." He said it pretty loud, 
but in a sort of absent way, and with the emphasis on 
the words I have underscored.' This was probably in 
the winter of 1864-1865. 



Amid lanes and through old woods, where 

lately the violets peep'd from the ground, 

spotting the gray de"bris, 
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the 

lanes, passing the endless grass, 
Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every 

grain from its shroud in the dark-brown 

fields uprisen, 
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and 

pink in the orchards, 30 

Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in 

the grave, 
Night and day journeys a coffin. 



Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, 

Through day and night with the great cloud 
darkening the land, 

With the pomp of the inloop'd flags with 
the cities draped in black, 

With the show of the States themselves as 
of crape-veil'd women standing, 

With processions long and winding and the 
flambeaus of the night, 

With the countless torches lit, with the si- 
lent sea of faces and the unbared heads, 

With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, 
and the sombre faces, 

With dirges through the night, with the 
thousand voices rising strong and sol- 
emn, 40 

With all the mournful voices of the dirges 
pour'd around the coffin, 

The dim-lit churches and the shuddering 
organs — where amid these you journey, 

With the tolling tolling bells' perpetual 
clang, 

Here, coffin that slowly passes, 

I give you my sprig of lilac. 



(Nor for you, for one alone, 

Blossoms and branches green to coffins all 

I bring, 
For fresh as the morning, thus would I 

chant a song for you O sane and sacred 

death. 

All over bouquets of roses, 

O death, I cover you over with roses and 

early lilies, 50 

But mostly and now the lilac that blooms 

the first, 
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from 

the bushes, 



WALT WHITMAN 



583 



With loaded arms I come, pouring for 

you, 
For you and the coffins all of you O 

death.) 



O western orb sailing the heaven, 

Now I know what you must have meant as 

a month since I walk'd, 
As I walk'd in silence the transparent 

shadowy night, 
As I saw you had something to tell as you 

bent to me night after night, 
As you droop'd from the sky low down as 

if to my side (while the other stars all 

look'd on), 
As we wander'd together the solemn night 

(for something I know not what kept me 

from sleep), 60 

As the night advanced, and I saw on the 

rim of the west how full you were of 

woe, 
As I stood on the rising ground in the 

breeze in the cool transparent night, 
As I watch'd where you pass'd and was lost 

in the netherward black of the night, 
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, 

as where you sad orb, 
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone. 



Sing on there in the swamp, 

singer bashful and tender, I hear your 
notes, I hear your call, 

1 hear, I come presently, I understand you, 
But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star 

has detain' d me, 
The star my departing comrade holds and 
detains me. 70 



how shall I warble myself for the dead 
one there I loved ? 

And how shall I deck my song for the large 

sweet soul that has gone ? 
And what shall my perfume be for the grave 

of him I love ? 

Sea-winds blown from east and west, 
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from 

the Western sea, till there on the prairies 

meeting, 
These and with these and the breath of my 

chant, 

1 '11 perfume the grave of him I love. 



O what shall I hang on the chamber walls ? 
And what shall the pictures be that I hang 

on the walls, 
To adorn the burial-house of him I love ? So 

Pictures of growing spring and farms and 
homes, 

With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, 
and the gray smoke lucid and bright, 

With floods of the yellow gold of the gor- 
geous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, ex- 
panding the air, 

With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, 
and the pale green leaves of the trees 
prolific, 

In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast 
of the river, with a wind-dapple here and 
there, 

With ranging hills on the banks, with many 
a line against the sky, and shadows, 

And the city at hand with dwellings so 
dense, and stacks of chimneys, 

And all the scenes of lif e and the workshops, 
and the workmen homeward returning. 



Lo, body and soul — this land, 

My own Manhattan with spires, and the 

sparkling and hurrying tides, and the 

ships, go 

The varied and ample land, the South and 

the North in the fight, Ohio's shores and 

flashing Missouri, 
And ever the far-spreading prairies cover'd 

with grass and corn. 

Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and 

haughty, 
The violet and purple morn with just-felt 

breezes, 
The gentle soft-born measureless light, 
The miracle spreading bathing all, the ful- 

fill'd noon, 
The coming eve delicious, the welcome 

night and the stars, 
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man 

and land. 

13 
Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird, 
Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour 

your chant from the bushes, 100 

Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars 

and pines. 



5§4 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy 

song, 
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost 

woe. 

O liquid and free and tender ! 

wild and loose to my soul — O wondrous 
singer ! 

You only I hear — yet the star holds me 

(but will soon depart), 
Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me. 

14 
Now while I sat in the day and look'd 

forth, 
In the close of the day with its light and 

the fields of spring, and the farmers pre- 
paring their crops, 
In the large unconscious scenery of my land 

with its lakes and forests, no 

In the heavenly aerial beauty (after the 

perturb'd winds and the storms), 
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon 

swift passing, and the voices of children 

and women, 
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the 

ships how they sail'd, 
And the summer approaching with richness, 

and the fields all busy with labor, 
And the infinite separate houses, how they 

all went on, each with its meals and 

minutia of daily usages, 
And the streets how their throbbings 

throbb'd, and the cities pent — lo, then 

and there, 
Falling upon them all and among them all, 

enveloping me with the rest, 
Appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long 

black trail, 
And I knew death, its thought, and the 

sacred knowledge of death. 

Then with the knowledge of death as walk- 
ing one side of me, 120 

And the thought of death close-walking 
the other side of me, 

And I in the middle as with companions, 
and as holding the hands of compan- 
ions, 

1 fled forth to the hiding receiving night 
that talks not, 

Down to the shores of the water, the path 

by the swamp in the dimness, 
To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly 

pines so still. 



And the singer so shy to the rest receiv'd 

me, 
The gray-brown bird I know receiv'd us 

comrades three, 
And he sang the carol of death, and a verse 

for him I love. 

From deep secluded recesses, 
From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly 
pines so still, 130 

Came the carol of the bird. 

And the charm of the carol rapt me, 

As I held as if by their hands my comrades 

in the night, 
And the voice of my spirit tallied the song 

of the bird. 

Come lovely and soothing death, 

Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, 

arriving, 
In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 
Sooner or later delicate death. 

Prais'd be the fathomless universe, 

For life and joy, and for objects and know- 
ledge curious, 140 

And for love, sweet love — but praise ! praise 1 
praise I 

For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfold- 
ing death. 

Dark mother always gliding near with soft 
feet, 

Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest 
welcome f 

Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above 
all, 

I bring thee a song that when thou must in- 
deed come, come unfalteringly. 

Approach strong deliveress, 

When it is so, when thou hast taken them I 

joyously sing the dead, 
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee, 
Laved in the flood of thy bliss death. 150 

From me to thee glad serenades, 

Dances for thee 1 propose saluting thee, adorn- 
ments and f eastings for thee, 

And the sights of the open landscape and the 
high-spread sky are fitting, 

And life and the fields, and the huge and 
thoughtful night. 



WALT WHITMAN 



585 



The night in silence under many a star, 
The ocean shore and the husky whispering 

wave whose voice I know, 
And the soul turning to thee vast and well- 

veil'd death, 
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. 

Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, 

Over the rising and sinking waves, over the 
myriad fields and the prairies wide, 160 

Over the dense-packed cities all and the teem- 
ing wharves and ways, 

I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O 
death. 

J 5 
To the tally of my soul, 
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown 

bird, 
With pure deliberate notes spreading filling 

the night. 

Loud in the pines and cedars dim, 
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp- 
perfume, 
And I with my comrades there in the night. 

While my sight that was bound in my eyes 

unclosed, 
As to long panoramas of visions. 170 

And I saw askant the armies, 

I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of 

battle-flags, 
Borne through the smoke of the battles 

and pierc'd with missiles I saw them, 
And carried hither and yon through the 

smoke, and torn and bloody, 
And at last but a few shreds left on the 

staffs (and all in silence), 
And the staffs all splinter'd and broken. 

I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, 
And the white skeletons of young men, I 

saw them, 
I saw the ddbris and de'bris of all the slain 

soldiers of the war, 
But I saw they were not as was thought, 180 
They themselves were fully at rest, they 

suffer'd not, 
The living remained and suffer'd, the mother 

suffer'd, 
And the wife and the child and the musing 

comrade suffer'd, 
And the armies that remain'd suffer'd. 



16 

Passing the visions, passing the night, 

Passing, unloosing the hold of my com- 
rades' hands, 

Passing the song of the hermit bird and the 
tallying song of my soul, 

Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet 
varying ever-altering song, 

As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, 
rising and falling, flooding the night, 

Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and 
warning, and yet again bursting with 
joy, _ 190 

Covering the earth and filling the spread of 
the heaven, 

As that powerful psalm in the night I heard 
from recesses, 

Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart- 
shaped leaves, 

I leave thee there in the door-yard, bloom- 
ing, returning with spring. 

I cease from my song for thee, 

From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting 

the west, communing with thee, 
O comrade lustrous with silver face in the 

night. 

Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out 

of the night, 
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray- 
brown bird, 
And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd 

in my soul, 200 

With the lustrous and drooping star with 

the countenance full of woe, 
With the holders holding my hand nearing 

the call of the bird, 
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and 

their memory ever to keep, for the dead 

I loved so well, 
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days 

and lands — and this for his dear sake, 
Lilac and star and bird twined with the 

chant of my soul, 
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars 

dusk and dim. 

1865. 

HUSH'D BE THE CAMPS TO-DAY 

MAY 4, 1865 

Hush'd be the camps to-day, 
And soldiers let us drape our war-worn 
weapons, 



586 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And each with musing soul retire to cele- 
brate, 
Our dear commander's death. 

No more for him life's stormy conflicts, 
Nor victory, nor defeat — no more time's 

dark events, 
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the 

sky. 

But sing poet in our name, 
Sing of the love we bore him — because 
you, dweller in camps, know it truly. 

As they invault the coffin there, 

Sing — as they close the doors of earth 

upon him — one verse, 1 
For the heavy hearts of soldiers. 

1865. 



OLD WAR-DREAMS 2 

In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish, 
Of the look at first of the mortally wounded 

(of that indescribable look), 
Of the dead on their backs with arms ex- 
tended wide, 

I dream, I dream, I dream. 

Of scenes of Nature, fields and mountains, 
Of skies so beauteous after a storm, and at 

night the moon so unearthly bright, 
Shining sweetly, shining down, where we 

dig the trenches and gather the heaps, 
I dream, I dream, I dream. 

Long have they pass'd, faces and trenches 

and fields, 
Where through the carnage I moved with 
a callous composure, or away from the 
fallen, 
Onward I sped at the time — but now of 
their forms at night, 

I dream, I dream, I dream. 

1865. 

1 In the original version, 1865, these two lines read : — 

Sing, to the lower' d coffin there; 

Sing, with the shovel'd clods that fill the grave — a verse, . . . 

The change was made in the edition of 1881. 

2 In the original version, 1865, the first line of the 
poem read : — 

In clouds descending, in midnight sleep, of many a face of 
anguish, 

and the first half of this line was used as title for the 
poem. 



RECONCILIATION 

Word over all, beautiful as the sky, 

Beautiful that war and all its deeds of car- 
nage must in time be utterly lost, 

That the hands of the sisters Death and 
Night incessantly softly wash again, and 
ever again, this soil'd world; 

For my enemy is dead, a man divine as my- 
self is dead, 

I look where he lies white-faced and still in 
the coffin — I draw near, 

Bend down and touch lightly with my lips 
the white face in the coffin. 

1865. 



AS I LAY WITH MY HEAD 
YOUR LAP 1 CAMERADO 



IN 



As I lay with my head in your lap camerado, 

The confession I made I resume, what I 
said to you and the open air I resume, 

I know I am restless and make others so, 

I know my words are weapons full of dan- 
ger, full of death, 3 

For I confront peace, security, and all the 
settled laws, to unsettle them, 

I am more resolute because all have denied 
me than I could ever have been had all 
accepted me, 

I heed not and have never heeded either 
experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridi- 
cule, 

And the threat of what is call'd hell is little 
or nothing to me, 

And the lure of what is call'd heaven is 
little or nothing to me ; 

Dear camerado ! I confess I have urged 
you onward with me, and still urge you, 
without the least idea what is our desti- 
nation, 

Or whether we shall be victorious, or ut- 
terly quell'd and defeated. 

1865. 



ABOARD AT A SHIP'S HELM 

Aboard at a ship's helm, 

A young steersman steering with care. 

3 In the original edition there followed here two 
lines since omitted : — 

(Indeed I am myself the real soldier ; 

It is not he, there, with his bayonet, and not the red-striped 
artilleryman) s 



WALT WHITMAN 



587 



Through fog 011 a sea-coast dolefully ring- 
ing. 

An ocean-bell — a warning bell, rock'd 
by the waves. 

you give good notice indeed, you bell by 

the sea-reefs ringing, 
Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its 

wreck-place. 

For as on the alert O steersman, you mind 

the loud admonition, 
The bows turn, the freighted ship tacking 

speeds away under her gray sails, 
The beautiful and noble ship with all her 

precious wealth speeds away gayly and 

safe. 

But O the ship, the immortal ship ! O ship 

aboard the ship ! 
Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, 

voyaging, voyaging. 

1867. 



NOT THE PILOT 1 

Not the pilot has charged himself to bring 
his ship into port, though beaten back 
and many times baffled; 

Not the pathfinder penetrating inland weary 
and long, 

By deserts parch'd, snows chill'd, rivers 
wet, perseveres till he reaches his desti- 
nation, 

More than I have charged myself, heeded 
or unheeded, to compose a march for 
these States, 

For a battle-call, rousing to arms if need 
be, years, centuries hence. 

1867. 



1 Compare Whitman's Democratic Vistas, in the 
Complete Prose Works, pp. 197-250; especially pp. 199, 
200, 202, 203 : — 

Our fundamental want to-day in the United States, 
with closest, amplest reference to present conditions, 
and to the future, is of a class, and the clear idea of a 
class, of native authors, . . . fit to cope with our occa- 
sions, lands, permeating the whole mass of American 
mentality, taste, belief, breathing into it a new breath 
of life, giving it decision. . . . For, I say, the true na- 
tionality of the States, the genuine union, when we 
come to a moral crisis, is, and is to be, after all, neither 
the written law nor, (as is generally supposed), either 
self-interest, or common pecuniary or material objects 
— but the fervid and tremendous Idea, melting every- 
thing else with resistless heat, and solving all lesser 
and definite distinctions in vast, indefinite, spiritual, 
emotional power. 



ONE'S-SELF I SING2 

One's-self I sing, a simple separate per- 
son, 

Yet utter the word Democratic, the word 
En-Masse. 

Of physiology from top to toe I sing, 
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is 

worthy for the Muse — I say the Form 

complete is worthier far, 
The Female equally with the Male I sing. 

Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and 

power, 
Cheerful, for freest action form'd under 

the laws divine, 
The Modern Man I sing. 

1867, 1871. 



TEARS 

Tears ! tears ! tears ! 

In the night, in solitude, tears, 

On the white shore dripping, dripping, 

suck'd in by the sand, 
Tears, not a star shining, all dark and 

desolate, 
Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled 

head; 
O who is that ghost ? that form in the 

dark, with tears ? 
What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd 

there on the sand ? 
Streaming tears, sobbing tears, throes, 

choked with wild cries; 
O storm, embodied, rising, careering with 

swift steps along the beach ! 

2 This poem is now placed first in the standard edi- 
tions of Whitman's Poems. In its original form, as the 
Inscription of the 1867 edition, it read : — 

Small is the theme of the following Chant, yet the greatest 
— namely, ONE'S-SELF — that wondrous thing, a simple, 
separate person. That, for the use of the New World, I 
sing. 

Man's physiology complete, from top to toe, I sing. Not 
physiognomy alone, nor brain alone, is worthy for the 
muse; — I say the Form complete is worthier far. The 
female equally with the male, I sing. 

Nor cease at the theme of One's-Self . I speak the word of the 
modern, the word EN-MASSE. 

My Days I sing, and the Lands — with interstice I knew of 
hapless War. 

O friend, whoe'er you are, at last arriving hither to com- 
mence, I feel through every leaf the pressure of your hand, 
which I return. And thus upon our journey link'd to- 
gether let us go. 

This version, in a slightly revised form, beginning 
' Small the theme of my chant,' is now printed as a 
separate poem in the final edition of Leaves of Grass, 
p. 397. 



5 88 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



O wild and dismal night storm, with wind 

— O belching and desperate ! 

shade so sedate and decorous by day, with 
calm countenance and regulated pace, 

But away at night as you fly, none looking 

— O then the unloosen'd ocean, 
Of tears ! tears ! tears ! 

1867. 

WHISPERS OF HEAVENLY 
DEATH 

Whispers of heavenly death murmur'd I 
hear, 

Labial gossip of night, sibilant chorals, 

Footsteps gently ascending, mystical 
breezes wafted soft and low, 

Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current 
flowing, forever flowing, 

(Or is it the plashing of tears ? the mea- 
sureless waters of human tears ? ) 

1 see, just see skyward, great cloud-masses, 
Mournfully slowly they roll, silently swell- 
ing and mixing, 

With at times a half-dimm'd sadden'd far- 
off star, 
Appearing and disappearing. 

(Some parturition rather, some solemn im- 
mortal birth; 
On the frontiers to eyes impenetrable, 
Some soul is passing over.) 

1868. (1871.) 

THE SINGER IN THE PRISON 



O sight of pity, shame and dole ! x 
O fearful thought — a convict soul. 

Rang the refrain along the hall, the prison, 
Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above, 
Pouring in floods of melody in tones so pen- 
sive sweet and strong the like whereof was 
never heard, 
Reaching the far-off sentry and the armed 

guards, who ceas'd their pacing, 
Making the hearer's pulses stop for ecstasy 
and awe. 

22 

The sun was low in the west one winter day, 
When down a narrow aisle amid the thieves 
and outlaws of the land, 

1 O sight of shame, and pain, and dole ! (1869, 1S71.) 

2 In the early editions this section begins : — 

O sight of pity, gloom, and dole ! 
O pardon me, a hapless Soul! 



(There by the hundreds seated, sear-faced 
murderers, wily counterfeiters, i 

Gather'd to Sunday church in prison walls, 
the keepers round, 

Plenteous, well-armed, watching with vigi- 
lant eyes,) 

Calmly a lady walk'd holding a little inno- 
cent child by either hand, 

Whom seating on their stools beside her on 
the platform, 

She, first preluding with the instrument a 
low and musical prelude, 

In voice surpassing all, sang forth a quaint 
old hymn. 

A soul confined by bars and bands, 3 
Cries, help ! O help ! and wrings her hands, 
Blinded her eyes, bleeding her breast, 
Nor pardon finds, nor balm of rest. 20 

Ceaseless she paces to and fro, 
O heart-sick days ! O nights of woe ! 
Nor hand of friend, nor loving face, 
Nor favor comes, nor word of grace. 

It was not I that sinn'd the sin, 
The ruthless body dragg'd me in ; 
Though long I strove courageously, 
The body was too much for me. 

Dear prison'd soul bear up a space, 
For soon or late the certain grace; 30 

To set thee free and bear thee home, 
The heavenly pardoner death shall come. 

Convict no more, nor shame, nor dole ! 
Depart — a God-enfranchis'd soul ! 



The singer ceas'd, 

One glance swept from her clear calm eyes 
o'er all those upturn'd faces, 

Strange sea of prison faces, a thousand va- 
ried, crafty, brutal, seam'd and beauteous 
faces, 

Then rising, passing back along the narrow 
aisle between them, 

While her gown touch'd them rustling in 
the silence, 

She vanish'd with her children in the dusk. 

3 In the early editions these stanzas have a sub-title 
1 The Hymn,' and each stanza is followed by a refrain, 
in italics : after the first stanza, the same as at the be- 
ginning of Section 1 ; after the second stanza, the same 
as at the beginning of Section 2 ; after the third stanza : 

O life ! no life, but bitter dole ! 
O burning, beaten, baffled Soul .' 



WALT WHITMAN 



589 



While upon all, convicts and armed keepers 

ere they stirr'd 41 

(Convict forgetting prison, keeper his 

loaded pistol), 
A hush and pause fell down a wondrous 

minute, 
With deep half-stifled sobs and sound of 

bad men bow'd and moved to weeping, 
And youth's convulsive breathings, memo- 
ries of home, 
The mother's voice in lullaby, the sister's 

care, the happy childhood, 
The long-pent spirit rous'd to reminiscence ; 
A wondrous minute then — but after in the 

solitary night, to many, many there, 
Years after, even in the hour of death, the 

sad refrain, the tune, the voice, the words, 
Resumed, the large cahn lady walks the 

narrow aisle, 50 

The wailing melody again, the singer in the 

prison sings, 

sight of pity, shame and dole ! 1 
fearful thought — a convict soul. 

1869. (1871.) 



ETHIOPIA SALUTING THE 
COLORS 

Who are you dusky woman, so ancient 

hardly human, 
With your woolly-white and turban'd head, 

and bare bony feet ? 
Why rising by the roadside here, do you 

the colors greet ? 

('T is while our army lines Carolina's sands 
and pines, 

Forth from thy hovel door thou Ethiopia 
com'st to me, 

As under doughty Sherman I march to- 
ward the sea.) 

Me master years a hundred since from my 

parents sundered, 
A little child, they caught me as the savage 

beast is caught, 
Then hither me across the sea the cruel slaver 

brought. 

No further does she say, but lingering all 
the day, 

1 The early editions have the same variant reading 
here as in the first line. 



Her high-borne turban'd head she wags, 
and rolls her darkling eye, 

And courtesies to the regiments, the guid- 
ons moving by. 

What is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly 

human ? 
Why wag your head with turban bound, 

yellow, red and green ? 
Are the things so strange and marvelous 

you see or have seen ? 

1871. 



DELICATE CLUSTER 

Delicate cluster ! flag of teeming life ! 
Covering all my lands — all my seashores 

lining ! 
Flag of death ! (how I watch'd you through 

the smoke of battle pressing ! 
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth 

defiant !) 
Flag cerulean — sunny flag, with the orbs 

of night dappled ! 
Ah my silvery beauty — ah my woolly 

white and crimson ! 
Ah to sing the song of you, my matron 

mighty ! 
My sacred one, my mother. 

1871. 

THE BASE OF ALL META- 
PHYSICS 

And now gentlemen, 

A word I give to remain in your memories 

and minds, 
As base and finale too for all metaphysics. 

(So to the students the old professor, 
At the close of his crowded course.) 

Having studied the new and antique, the 

Greek and Germanic systems, 
Kant having studied and stated, Fichte and 

Schelling and Hegel, 
Stated the lore of Plato, and Socrates 

greater than Plato, 
And greater than Socrates sought and 

stated, Christ divine having studied long, 
I see reminiscent to-day those Greek and 

Germanic systems, 
See the philosophies all, Christian churches 

and tenets see, 



59° 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Yet underneath Socrates clearly see, and 
underneath Christ the divine I see, 

The dear love of man for his comrade, the 
attraction of friend to friend, 

Of the well-married husband and wife, of 
children and parents, 

Of city for city and land for land. 

1871. 



ON THE BEACH AT NIGHT 

On the beach at night, 
Stands a child with her father, 
Watching the east, the autumn sky. 

Up through the darkness, 

While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in 
black masses spreading, 

Lower sullen and fast athwart and down 
the sky, 

Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet 
left in the east, 

Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupi- 
ter, 

And nigh at hand, only a very little above, 

Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades. 10 

From the beach the child holding the hand 

of her father, 
Those burial-clouds tbat lower victorious 

soon to devour all, 
Watching, silently weeps. 

Weep not, child, 

Weep not, my darling, 

With these kisses let me remove your tears, 

The ravening clouds shall not long be vic- 
torious, 

They shall not long possess the sky, they 
devour the stars only in apparition, 

Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch 
again another night, the Pleiades shall 
emerge, 

They are immortal, all those stars both 
silvery and golden shall shine out again, 

The great stars and the little ones shall 
shine out again, they endure, 21 

The vast immortal suns and the long- 
enduring pensive moons shall again shine. 

Then dearest child mournest thou only for 

Jupiter ? 
Considerest thou alone the burial of the 

stars? 



Something there is, 

(With my lips soothing thee, adding I 
whisper, 

I give thee the first suggestion, the prob- 
lem and indirection,) 

Something there is more immortal even 
than the stars, 

(Many the burials, many the days and 
nights, passing away,) 

Something that shall endure longer even 
than lustrous Jupiter, 3 o 

Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, 

Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades. 

1871. 



A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER 

A noiseless patient spider, 

I mark'd where on a little promontory it 
stood isolated, 

Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast sur- 
rounding, 

It launch'd forth filament, filament, fila- 
ment, out of itself, 

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speed- 
ing them. 

And you O my soul where you stand, 
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans 

of space, 
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, 

seeking the spheres to connect them, 
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till 

the ductile anchor hold, 
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch 

somewhere, O my soul. 

1871. 



PASSAGE TO INDIA* 



Singing my days, 

Singing the great achievements of the pre- 
sent, 

1 Compare the passage from Whitman's Prose Work 
quoted in a note at the end of '~A Broadway Pageant,' 
and also, especially (among many other passagss), Speci- 
men Days, July 22 and 23, 1878, Complete Prose Works, 
pp. Ill, 112; and the following paragraphs from the- 
note on ' Passage to India ' in the Preface of the 1876 
edition (Complete Prose Works, pp. 272-274) : — 

I am not sure but the last inclosing sublimation of 
race or poem is, what it thinks of death. After the rest 
has been comprehended and said, even the grandest — 
after those contributions to mightiest nationality, or to 



WALT WHITMAN 



591 



Singing the strong light works of engi- 
neers, 

Our modern wonders (the antique ponder- 
ous Seven outvied), 

In the Old World the east the Suez canal, 

The New by its mighty railroad spann'd, 

The seas inlaid with eloquent gentle wires; 

Yet first to sound, and ever sound, the cry 
with thee O soul, 

The Past ! the Past ! the Past ! 

The Past — the dark unfathom'd retrospect ! 
The teeming gulf — the sleepers and the 

shadows ! n 

The past — the infinite greatness of the 

past ! 
For what is the present after all but a 

growth out of the past ? 
(As a projectile form'd, impell'd, passing a 

certain line, still keeps on, 
So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by 

the past.) 



Passage O soul to India ! 
Eclaircise the myths Asiatic, the primitive 
fables. 



sweetest song, or to the best personalism, male or female, 
have been glean'd from the rich and varied themes of 
tangible life, and have been fully accepted and sung, 
and the pervading fact of visible existence, with the 
duty it devolves, is rounded and apparently completed, 
it still remains to be really completed by suffusing 
through the whole and several, that other pervading 
invisible fact, so large a part (is it not the largest 
part?) of life here, combining the rest, and furnishing, 
for person or State, the only permanent and unitary 
meaning to all, even the meanest life, consistently with 
the dignity of the universe, in Time. As from the eligi- 
bility to this thought, and the cheerful conquest of this 
fact, flash forth the first distinctive proofs of the soul, 
so to me (extending it only a little further), the ulti- 
mate Democratic purports, the ethereal and spiritual 
ones, are to concentrate here, and as fixed stars, radiate 
hence. For, in my opinion, it is no less than thip idea 
of immortality, above all other ideas, that is to enter 
into, and vivify, and give crowning religious stamp, to 
democracy in the New World. 

[Here follows the paragraph already quoted at the 
end of note 1 on p. 546 ; then, after speaking of his 
own paralysis and his mother's death, Whitman con- 
cludes : — ] 

Under these influences, therefore, I still feel to keep 
' Passage to India ' for last words. . . . Not as, in anti- 
quity, at highest fastival of Egypt, the noisome skeleton 
of death was sent on exhibition to the revelers, for zest 
and shadow to the occasion's joy and light — but as the 
marble statue of the normal Greeks at Elis, suggesting 
death in the form of a beautiful and perfect young 
man, with closed eyes, leaning on an inverted torch — 
emblem of rest and aspiration after action — of crown 
and point which all lives and poems should steadily 
have reference to, namely, the justified and noble ter- 
mination of our identity, this grade of it, and outlet- 
preparation to another grade. 



Not you alone proud truths of the world, 
Not you alone ye facts of modern science, 
But myths and fables of eld, Asia's, Africa's 

fables, 20 

The far-darting beams of the spirit, the 

unloos'd dreams, 
The deep diving bibles and legends, 
The daring plots of the poets, the elder 

religions ; 
O you temples fairer than lilies pour'd over 

by the rising sun ! 
O you fables spurning the known, eluding 

the hold of the known, mounting to 

heaven ! 
You lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, 

red as roses, burnish'd with gold ! 
Towers of fables immortal fashion'd from 

mortal dreams ! 
You too I welcome and fully the same as 

the rest ! 
You too with joy I sing. 

Passage to India ! 30 

Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from 
the first ? 

The earth to be spann'd, connected by net- 
work, 2 

The races, neighbors, to marry and be given 
in marriage, 

The oceans to be cross'd, the distant brought 
near, 

The lands to be welded together. 

A worship new I sing, 

You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours, 

You engineers, you architects, machinists, 

yours, 
You, not for trade or transportation only, 
But in God's name, and for thy sake O soul. 



Passage to India ! 4 i 

Lo soid for thee of tableaus twain, 
I see in one the Suez canal initiated, open'd, 
I see the procession of steamships, the Em- 
press Eugenie's leading the van, 
I mark from on deck the strange landscape, 
the pure sky, the level sand in the dis- 
tance, 
I pass swiftly the picturesque groups, the 

workmen gather'd, 
The gigantic dredging machines. 

1 Here follows, in the original edition, the line : — 
The people to become brothers and sisters. 



59 2 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



In one again, different (yet thine, all thine, 

soul, the same), 

I see over rny own continent the Pacific 
railroad surnioimting every barrier, 

I see continual trains of cars winding along 
the Platte carrying freight and pas- 
sengers, 50 

I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring, 
and the shrill steam-whistle, 

I hear the echoes reverberate through the 
grandest scenery in the world, 

I cross the Laramie plains, I note the rocks 
in grotesque shapes, the buttes, 

I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions, 
the barren, colorless, sage-deserts, 

I see in glimpses afar or towering imme- 
diately above me the great mountains, 

1 see the Wind river and the Wahsatch 
moimtains, 

I see the Monument mountain and the 

Eagle's Nest, I pass the Promontory, I 

ascend the Nevadas, 
I scan the noble Elk mountain and wind 

around its base, 
I see the Huniboldt range, I thread the 

valley and cross the river, 
I see the clear waters of lake Tahoe, I see 

forests of majestic pines, 
Or crossing the great desert, the alkaline 

plains, I behold enchanting mirages of 

waters and meadows, 60 

Marking through these and after all, in 

duplicate slender lines, 
Bridging the three or foiu* thousand miles 

of land travel, 
Tying the Eastern to the Western sea, 
The road between Europe and Asia. 

(Ah Genoese thy dream \ thy dream ! 
Centuries after thou art laid in thy grave, 
The shore thou foundest verifies thy 
dream.) 



Passage to India ! 

Struggles of many a captain, tales of many 

a sailor dead, 
Over my mood stealing and spreading they 

come, 70 

Like clouds and cloudlets in the unreach'd 

sky. 

Along all history, down the slopes, 
As a rivulet running, sinking now, and now 
again to the surface rising, 



A ceaseless thought, a varied train — lo, 
soid, to thee, thy sight, they rise, 

The plans, the voyages again, the expedi- 
tions; 

Again Yaseo de Gama sails forth, 

Again the knowledge gain'd, the mariner's 
compass, 

Lands found and nations born, thou born 
America, 

For pm'pose vast, man's long probation 
fill'd, 

Thou rondure of the world at last accom- 
plish 'd. So 



O vast Rondure, swimming in space, 

Coverd all over with visible power and 
beauty, 

Alternate light and day and the teeming 
spiritual darkness, 

Unspeakable high processions of sim and 
moon and countless stars above, 

Below, the manifold grass and waters, ani- 
mals, mountains, trees, 

With inscrutable purpose, some hidden 
prophetic intention, 

Now first it seems my thought begins to 
span thee. 

Down from the gardens of Asia descending 
radiating, 

Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad 
progeny after them, 

Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless 
explorations, 90 

With questionings, baffled, formless, fever- 
ish, with never-happy hearts, 

With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore 
unsatisfied soul? and Whither mocking 
life? 

Ah who shall soothe these feverish chil- 
dren ? 

Who justify these restless explorations ? 

Who speak the secret of impassive earth ? 

Who bind it to us ? what is this separate 
Nature so unnatural ? 

What is this earth to our affections ? (un- 
loving earth, without a throb to answer 
ours, 

Cold earth, the place of graves.) 

Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, 

and shall be carried out, 
Perhaps even now the time has arrived. 100 



WALT WHITMAN 



593 



After the seas are all cross'd (as they seem 
already cross'd), 

After the great captains and engineers 
have accomplish'd their work, 

After the noble inventors, after the scien- 
tists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnolo- 
gist, 

Finally shall come the poet worthy that 
name, 

The true son of God shall come singing his 
songs. 

Then not your deeds only O voyagers, O 
scientists and inventors, shall be justified, 

All these hearts as of fretted children shall 
be sooth 'd, 

All affection shall be fully responded to, 
the secret shall be told, 

All these separations and gaps shall be taken 
up and hook'd and link'd together, 

The whole earth, this cold, impassive, voice- 
less earth, shall be completely justi- 
fied, no 

Trinitas divine shall be gloriously accom- 
plish'd and compacted by the true son of 
God, the poet, 

(He shall indeedr pass the straits and con- 
quer the mountains, 

He shall double the cape of Good Hope to 
some purpose,) 

Nature and Man shall be disjoin'd and dif- 
fused no more, 

The true son of God shall absolutely fuse 
them. 



Year at whose wide-flung door I sing ! 

Year of the purpose accomplish'd! 

Year of the marriage of continents, climates 

and oceans ! 
(No mere doge of Venice now wedding the 

Adriatic,) 
I see O year in you the vast terraqueous 

globe given and giving all, 120 

Europe to Asia, Africa join'd, and they to 

the New World, 
The lands, geographies, dancing before you, 

holding a festival garland, 
As brides and bridegrooms hand in hand. 

Passage to India ! 

Cooling airs from Caucasus far, soothing 

cradle of man, 
The river Euphrates flowing, the past lit up 

again. 



Lo soul, the retrospect brought forward, 
The old, most populous, wealthiest of 

earth's lands, 
The streams of the Indus and the Ganges 

and their many affluents, 
(I my shores of America walking to-day 

behold, resuming all,) 130 

The tale of Alexander on his warlike 

marches suddenly dying, 
On one side China and on the other side 

Persia and Arabia, 
To the south the great seas and the bay of 

Bengal, 
The flowing literatures, tremendous epics, 

religions, castes, 
Old occult Brahma interminably far back, 

the tender and junior Buddha, 
Central and southern empires and all their 

belongings, possessors, 
The wars of Tamerlane, the reign of Au- 

rungzebe, 
The traders, rulers, explorers, Moslems, 

Venetians, Byzantium, the Arabs, Portu- 
guese, 
The first travelers famous yet, Marco Polo, 

Batouta the Moor, 
Doubts to be solv'd, the map incognita, 

blanks to be fill'd, 140 

The foot of man unstay'd, the hands never 

at rest, 
Thyself soul that will not brook a chal- 
lenge. 

The mediaeval navigators rise before me, 

The world of 1492, with its awaken'd enter- 
prise, 

Something swelling in humanity now like 
the sap of the earth in spring, 

The sunset splendor of chivalry declin- 
ing. 

And who art thou sad shade ? 
Gigantic, visionary, thyself a visionary, 
With majestic limbs and pious beaming 

eyes, 
Spreading around with every look of thine 

a golden world, 150 

Enhuing it with gorgeous hues. 

As the chief histrion 

Down to the footlights walks in some great 
scena, 

Dominating the rest I see the Admiral him- 
self, 

(History's type of courage, action, faith,) 



594 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Behold hmi sail from Palos leading his 

little fleet, 
His voyage behold, his return, his great 

fame, 
His misfortunes, calumniators, behold him 

a prisoner, chain'd, 
Behold his dejection, poverty, death. 

(Curious in time I stand, noting the efforts 
of heroes, 160 

Is the deferment long ? bitter the slander, 
poverty, death ? 

Lies the seed unreck'd for centuries in the 
ground ? lo, to God's due occasion, 

Uprising in the night, it sprouts, blooms, 

And fills the earth with use and beauty.) 



Passage indeed O soul to primal thought, 
Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear 

freshness, 
The young maturity of brood and bloom, 
To realms of budding bibles. 

O soul, repressless, I with thee and thou 

with me, 
Thy circumnavigation of the world begin, 170 
Of man, the voyage of his mind's return, 
To reason's early paradise, 
Back, back to wisdom's birth, to innocent 

intuitions, 
Again with fair creation. 



O we can wait no longer, 

We too take ship O soul, 

Joyous we too launch out on trackless 
seas, 

Fearless for unknown shores on waves of 
ecstasy to sail, 

Amid the wafting winds (thou pressing me 
to thee, I thee to me, O soul), 

Caroling free, singing our song of God, 180 

Chanting our chant of pleasant explora- 
tion. 

With laugh and many a kiss 

(Let others deprecate, let others weep for 

sin, remorse, humiliation), 
soul thou pleasest me, I thee. 

Ah more than any priest O soul we too 

believe in God, 
But with the mystery of God we dare not 

dally. 



soul thou pleasest me, I thee, 

Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking 
in the night, 

Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and 
Space and Death, like waters flowing, 

Bear me indeed as through the regions in- 
finite, igo 

Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, 
lave me all over, 

Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee, 

1 and my soul to range in range of thee. 

Thou transcendent, 
Nameless, the fibre and the breath, 
Light of the light, shedding forth universes, 

thou centre of them, 

Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, 
the loving, 

Thou moral, spiritual fountain — affection's 
source — thou reservoir, 

(O pensive soul of me — O thirst unsatis- 
fied — waitest not there ? 

Waitest not haply for us somewhere there 
the Comrade perfect ?) 200 

Thou pulse — thou motive of the stars, 
suns, systems, 

That, circling, move in order, safe, harmo- 
nious, 

Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space, 

How should 1 think, how breathe a single 
breath, how speak, if, out of myself, 

1 could not launch, to those, superior uni- 
verses ? 

Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, 
At Nature and its wonders, Time and 

Space and Death, 
But that I, turning, call to thee O soul, 

thou actual Me, 
And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs, 
Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, 
And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of 

Space. 211 

Greater than stars or suns, 

Bounding O soul thou jotirneyest forth; 

What love than thine and ours could wider 

amplify ? 
What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and 

ours O soul ? 
What dreams of the ideal ? what plans of 

purity, perfection, strength ? 
What cheerful willingness for others' sake 

to give up all ? 
For others' sake to suffer all ? 



WALT WHITMAN 



595 



Reckoning ahead soul, when thou, the 

tinie aehiev'd, 
The seas all cross'd, weather'd the capes, 

the voyage done, 220 

Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, 

the Aim attain'd, 
As fill'd with friendship, love complete, the 

Elder Brother found, 
The Younger melts in fondness in his 

arms. 



Passage to more than India ! 

Are thy wings plumed indeed for such far 

flights ? 
O soul, voyagest thou indeed on voyages 

like those ? 
Disportest thou on waters such as those ? 
Soundest below the Sanscrit and the Vedas ? 
Then have thy bent unleash'd. 

Passage to you, your shores, ye aged fierce 
enigmas ! 230 

Passage to you, to mastership of you, ye 
strangling problems ! 

You, strew'd with the wrecks of skeletons, 
that, living, never reach'd you. 

Passage to more than India ! 

O secret of the earth and sky ! 

Of you O waters of the sea ! O winding 

creeks and rivers ! 
Of you O woods and fields ! of you strong 

mountains of my land ! 
Of you O prairies ! of you gray rocks ! 
O morning red ! O clouds ! O rain and 

snows ! 
O day and night, passage to you ! 

O sun and moon and all you stars ! Sirius 
and Jupiter ! 240 

Passage to you ! 

Passage, immediate passage ! the blood 
burns in my veins ! 

Away O soul ! hoist instantly the an- 
chor ! 

Cut the hawsers — haul out — shake out 
every sail ! 

Have we not stood here like trees in the 
ground long enough ? 

Have we not grovel'd here long enough, 
eating and drinking like mere brutes ? 

Have we not darken'd and dazed ourselves 
with books long enough ? 



Sail forth — steer for the deep waters only, 
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, 

and thou with me, 
For we are bound where mariner has not 

yet dared to go, 250 

And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. 

O my brave soul ! 

O farther farther sail ! 

O daring joy, but safe ! are they not all the 

seas of God ? 
O farther, farther, farther sail ! 

1871. 



DAREST THOU NOW O SOUL 

Darest thou now O soul, 

Walk out with me toward the unknown 

region, 
Where neither ground is for the feet nor 

any path to follow ? 

No map there, nor guide, 

Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human 

hand, 
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor 

eyes, are in that land. 

I know it not O soul, 
Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us, 
All waits undream'd of in that region, that 
inaccessible land. 

Till when the ties loosen, 
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space, 
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any 
bounds bounding us. 

Then we burst forth, we float, 

In Time and Space O soul, prepared for 

them, 
Equal, equipt at last (O joy ! fruit of 

all !) them to fulfil soul. 

1871. 



THE LAST INVOCATION 

At the last, tenderly, 

From the walls of the powerful fortress 'd 

house, 
From the clasp of the knitted locks, from 

the keep of the well-closed doors, 
Let me be wafted. 



596 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Let ine glide noiselessly forth; 

With the key of softness unlock the locks 

— with a whisper, 
Set ope the doors O soul. 

Tenderly — be not impatient, 
(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, 
Strong is your hold O love.) 

1871. 



JOY, SHIPMATE, JOY! 

Joy, shipmate, joy ! 
(Pleas'd to my soul at death I cry,) 
Our life is closed, our life begins, 
The long, long anchorage we leave, 
The ship is clear at last, she leaps ! 
She swiftly courses from the shore, 
Joy, shipmate, joy. 

\ 1871. 



O STAR OF FRANCE 1 

1870-71 

O star of France, 

The brightness of thy hope and strength 

and fame, 
Like some proud ship that led the fleet so 

long, 
Beseems to-day a wreck driven by the 

gale, a mastless hulk, 
And 'mid its teeming madden'd half- 

drown'd crowds, 
Nor helm nor helmsman. 

Dim smitten star, 

Orb notof France alone, pale symbol of my 
soul, its dearest hopes, 

The struggle and the daring, rage divine 
for liberty, 

Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthu- 
siast's dreams of brotherhood, 10 

Of terror to the tyrant and the priest. 

Star crucified — by traitors sold, 

Star panting o'er a land of death, heroic 

land, 
Strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land. 

Miserable ! yet for thy errors, vanities, 
sins, I will not now rebuke thee, 

1 Compare Whitman's Specimen Days, April 18, 1881. 
Complete Prose Works, p. 174. 



Thy unexampled woes and pangs have 

quell'd them all, 
And left thee sacred. 

In that amid thy many faults thou ever 

aimedst highly, 
In that thou wouldst not really sell thyself 

however great the price, 
In that thou surely wakedst weeping 

from thy drugg'd sleep, 20 

In that alone among thy sisters thou, 

giantess, didst rend the ones that shamed 

thee, 
In that thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear 

the usual chains, 
This cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands 

and feet, 
The spear thrust in thy side. 

O star ! O ship of France, beat back and 

baffled long ! 
Bear up O smitten orb ! O ship continue 

on ! 

Sure as the ship of all, the Earth itself, 
Product of deathly fltre and turbulent 

chaos, 
Forth from its spasms of fury and its 

poisons, 
Issuing at last hi perfect power and beauty, 
Onward beneath the sun following its 

course, 31 

So thee ship of France ! 

Finish'd the days, the clouds dispel'd, 

The travail o'er, the long-sought extrica- 
tion, 

When lo ! reborn, high o'er the European 
world, 

(In gladness answering thence, as face afar 
to face, reflecting ours Columbia,) 

Again thy star O France, fair lustrous star, 

In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright 
than ever, 

Shall beam immortal. 

1871. (1872.) 



THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER 



Hark, some wild trumpeter, some strange 

musician, 
Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious 

tunes to-night. 



WALT WHITMAN 



597 



I hear thee trumpeter, listening alert I 

catch thy notes, 
Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round 

me, 
Now low, subdued, now in the distance lost. 



Come nearer bodiless one, haply in thee 
resounds 

Some dead composer, haply thy pensive life 

Was fill'd with aspirations high, unform'd 
ideals, 

Waves, oceans musical, chaotically surging, 

That now ecstatic ghost, close to me bend- 
ing, thy cornet echoing, pealing, 10 

Gives out to no one's ears but mine, but 
freely gives to mine, 

That I may thee translate. 



Blow trumpeter free and clear, I follow 

thee, 
While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene, 
The fretting world, the streets, the noisy 

hours of day withdraw, 
A holy calm descends like dew upon me, 
I walk in cool refreshing night the walks of 

Paradise, 
I scent the grass, the moist air and the roses ; 
Thy song expands my numb'd imbonded 

spirit, thou freest, launchest me, 
Floating and basking upon heaven's lake. 20 



Blow again trumpeter ! and for my sensu- 
ous eyes, 

Bring the old pageants, show the feudal 
world. 

What charm thy music works ! thou makest 

pass before me, 
Ladies and cavaliers long dead, barons are 

in their castle halls, the troubadours are 

singing, 
Arm'd knights go forth to redress wrongs, 

some in quest of the holy Graal; 
I see the tournament, I see the contestants 

incased in heavy armor seated on stately 

champing horses, 
I hear the shouts, the sounds of blows and 

smiting steel; 
I see the Crusaders' tumultuous armies — 

hark, how the cymbals clang, 
Lo, where the monks walk in advance, 

bearing the cross on high. 



Blow again trumpeter ! and for thy theme, 

Take now the enclosing theme of all, the 

solvent and the setting, 31 

Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance 

and the pang, 
The heart of man and woman all for love, 
No other theme but love — knitting, enclos- 
ing, all-diffusing love. 

how the immortal phantoms crowd 
around me ! 

1 see the vast alembic ever working, I 
see and know the flames that heat the 
world, 

The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of 

lovers, 
So blissful happy some, and some so silent, 

dark, and nigh to death; 
Love, that is all the earth to lovers — love, 

that mocks time and space, 
Love, that is day and night — love, that is 

sun and moon and stars, 40 

Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with 

perfume, 
No other words but words of love, no other 

thought but love. 



Blow again trumpeter — conjure war's 
alarums. 

Swift to thy spell a shuddering hum like 

distant thunder rolls, 
Lo, where the arm'd men hasten — lo, 'mid 

the clouds of dust the glint of bayonets, 
I see the grime-faced cannoneers, I mark the 

rosy flash amid the smoke, I hear the 

cracking of the guns; 
Nor war alone — thy fearful music-song, 

wild player, brings every sight of fear, 
The deeds of ruthless brigands, rapine, 

murder — I hear the cries for help ! 
I see ships foundering at sea, I behold on 

deck and below deck the terrible tableaus. 



O trumpeter, methinks I am myself the 

instrument thou playest, 50 

Thou melt'st my heart, my brain — thou 

movest, drawest, changest them at will; 
And now thy sullen notes send darkness 

through me, 
Thou takest away all cheering light, all 

hope, 



598 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



I see the enslaved, the overthrown, the hurt, 
the opprest of the whole earth, 

I feel the measureless shame and humilia- 
tion of my race, it becomes all mine, 

Mine too the revenges of humanity, the 
wrongs of ages, baffled feuds and hatreds, 

Utter defeat upon me weighs — all lost — 
the foe victorious, 

(Yet 'mid the ruins Pride colossal stands 
unshaken to the last, 

Endurance, resolution to the last.) 



Now trumpeter for thy close, 60 

Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet, 
Sing to my soid, renew its languishing faith 

and hope, 
Rouse up my slow belief, give me some 

vision of the future, 
Give me for once its prophecy and joy. 

glad, exulting, culminating song ! 

A vigor more than earth's is in thy notes, 

Marches of victory — man disenthrall — 

the conqueror at last, 
Hymns to the universal God from universal 

man — all joy ! 
A reborn race appears — a perfect world, 

all joy ! 
Women and men in wisdom innocence and 

health — all joy ! 70 

Riotous laughing bacchanals fill'd with joy ! 
War, sorrow, suffering gone — the rank 

earth purged — nothing but joy left ! 
The ocean fill'd with joy — the atmosphere 

all joy! 
Joy ! joy ! in freedom, worship, love ! joy 

in the ecstasy of life ! 
Enough to merely be ! enough to breathe ! 

J°y ! j°y • ail ° yer j°y • 

1872. 



VIRGINIA — THE WEST 

The noble sire fallen on evil days, 

I saw with hand uplifted, menacing, bran- 
dishing 

(Memories of old in abeyance, love and 
faith in abeyance), 

The insane knife toward the Mother of All. 

The noble son on sinewy feet advancing, 
I saw, out of the land of prairies, land of 
Ohio's waters and of Indiana, 



To the rescue the stalwart giant hurry his 

plenteous offspring, 
Drest in blue, bearing their trusty rifles on 

their shoulders. 

Then the Mother of All with calm voice 
speaking, 

As to you Rebellious (I seemed to hear her 
say), why strive against me, and why seek 
my lif e ? 

When you yourself forever provide to de- 
fend me ? 

For you provided me Washington — and 
now these also. 

1872. 



THOU MOTHER WITH THY 
EQUAL BROOD 1 






Thou Mother with thy equal brood, 
Thou varied chain of different States, yet 
one identity only, 



1 Read by Whitman at the Commencement of Dart- 
mouth College, in 1S72. 

The poem originally began with what is now Section 
2, aud the title as well as the first line was ' As a strong 
bird on pinions free.' What is now Section 1 was added 
in the 1881 edition. 

See the original Preface of this poem, in the Com- 
plete Prose Works, pp. 268-272. One of its chief ideas 
is condensed in two paragraphs near the end : — 

' The Four Years' War is over — and in the peaceful, 
strong, exciting, fresh occasions of to-day, and of the 
future, that strange, sad war is hurrying even now to 
be forgotten. The camp, the drill, the lines of sentries, 
the prisons, the hospitals — (ah! the hospitals!) — all 
have passed away — all seem now like a dream. A new 
race, a young and lusty generation, already sweeps in 
with oceanic currents, obliterating the war, and all its 
scars, its mounded graves, and all its reminiscences of 
hatred, conflict, death. So let it be obliterated. I say 
the life of the present and the future makes undeniable 
demands upon us each and all, south, north, east, west. 
To help put the United States (even if only in imagina- 
tion) hand in hand, in one unbroken circle in a chant 
— to rouse them to the unprecedented grandeur of the 
part they are to play, and are even now playing — to 
the thought of their great future, and the attitude con- 
form'd to it — especially their great esthetic, moral, 
scientific future (of which their vulgar material and 
political present is but as the preparatory tuning of in- 
struments by an orchestra), these, as hitherto, are still, 
for me, among my hopes, ambitions. 

' "Leaves of Grass," already published, is, in its in- 
tentions, the song of a great composite democratic indi- 
vidual, male or female. And following on and ampli- 
fying the same purpose, I suppose I have in my mind 
to run through the chants of this volume (if ever com- 
pleted), the thread-voice, more or less audible, of an 
aggregated, inseparable, unprecedented, vast, compos- 
ite, electric democratic nationality.' 

Compare also Whitman's Democratic Vistas, Com- 
plete Prose Works, pp. 197-250; "A Backward Glance 



WALT WHITMAN 



599 



A special song before I go I 'd sing o'er all 

the rest, 
For thee, the future. 

I 'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nation- 
ality, 

I 'd fashion thy ensemble including body 
and soul, 

I 'd show away ahead thy real Union, and 
how it may be accomplish'd. 

The paths to the house I seek to make, 
But leave to those to come the house it- 
self. 

Belief I sing, and preparation; 10 

As Life and Nature are not great with ref- 
erence to the present only, 

But greater still from what is yet to 
come, 

Out of that formula for thee I sing. 



As a strong bird on pinions free, 

Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward 

cleaving, 
Such be the thought I 'd think of thee 

America, 
Such be the recitative I 'd bring for thee. 

The conceits of the poets of other lands I 'd 

bring thee not, 
Nor the compliments that have served their 

turn so long, 
Nor rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume 

of foreign court or indoor library; 20 
But an odor I.'d bring as from forests of 

pine in Maine, or breath of an Illinois 

prairie, 
With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or 

Tennessee, or from Texas uplands, or 

Florida's glades, 
Or the Saguenay's black stream, or the 

wide blue spread of Huron, 
With presentment of Yellowstone's scenes, 

or Yosemite, 
And murmuring imder, pervading all, I 'd 

bring the rustling sea-sound, 
That endlessly sounds from the two Great 

Seas of the world. 

o'er Travel'd Roads; " and, especially, one of Whitman's 
early notes, in Notes and Fragments, p. 59 : — 

' In Poems — bring in the idea of Mother — the idea 
of the mother with numerous children — all, great and 
small, old and young, equal in her eyes — as the iden- 
tity of America.' 



And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains 

dread Mother, 
Preludes of intellect tallying these and 

thee, mind-formulas fitted for thee, real 

and sane and large as these and thee, 
Thou ! mounting higher, diving deeper than 

we knew, thou transcendental Union ! 
By thee fact to be justified, blended with 

thought, 30 

Thought of man justified, blended with 

God, 
Through thy idea, lo, the immortal reality ! 
Through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea ! 



Brain of the New World, what a task is 
thine, 

To formulate the Modern — out of the peer- 
less grandeur of the modern, 

Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast 
poems, churches, art, 

(Recast, may-be discard them, end them — 
may-be their work is done, who knows ?) 

By vision, hand, conception, on the back- 
ground of the mighty past, the dead, 

To limn with absolute faith the mighty liv- 
ing present. 

And yet thou living present brain, heir of 

the dead, the Old World brain, 40 

Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe 

within its folds so long, 
Thou carefully prepared by it so long — 

haply thou but unf oldest it, only maturest 

it, 
It to eventuate in thee — the essence of the 

by-gone time contain'd in thee, 
Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to 

themselves, destined with reference to 

thee; 
Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-grow- 

ing, 
The fruit of all the Old ripening to-day in 

thee. 



Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy, 

Of value is thy freight, 't is not the Present 

only, 
The Past is also stored in thee, 
Thou holdest not the venture of thyself 

alone, not of the Western continent 

alone, 50 

Earth's resume entire floats on thy keel O 

ship, is steadied by thy spars, 



6oo 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



With thee Time voyages in trust, the 
antecedent nations sink or swim with 
thee, 

With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, 
heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the other 
continents, 

Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the desti- 
nation-port triumphant ; 

Steer then with good strong hand and wary 
eye O helmsman, thou carriest great 
companions, 

Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with 
thee, 

And royal feudal Europe sails with thee. 

5 
Beautiful world of new superber birth that 

rises to my eyes, 
Like a limitless golden cloud filling the 

western sky, 
Emblem of general maternity lifted above 

all, 60 

Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters 

and sons, 
Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes 

in ceaseless procession issuing, 
Acceding from such gestation, taking and 

giving continual strength and life, 
World of the real — world of the twain in 

one, 
World of the soid, born by the world of the 

real alone, led to identity, body, by it 

alone, 
Yet in beginning only, incalculable masses 

of composite precious materials, 
By history's cycles forwarded, by every 

nation, language, hither sent, 
Ready, collected here, a freer, vast, elec- 
tric world, to be constructed here 
(The true New World, the world of orbic 

science, morals, literatures to come), 
Thou wonder world yet undefined, un- 

form'd, neither do I define thee, 70 

How can I pierce the impenetrable blank 

of the future ? 
I feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as 

good, 
I watch thee advancing, absorbing the 

present, transcending the past, 
I see thy light lighting, and thy shadow 

shadowing, as if the entire globe, 
But I do not undertake to define thee, 

hardly to comprehend thee, 
I but thee name, thee prophesy, as now, 
I merely thee ejaculate ! 



Thee in thy future, 

Thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy 
own unloosen'd mind, thy soaring spirit, 

Thee as another equally needed sun, radi- 
ant, ablaze, swift-moving, fructifying all, 

Thee risen in potent cheerfulness and joy, 
in endless great hilarity, Si 

Scattering for good the cloud that hung so 
long, that weigh'd so long upon the niind 
of man, 

The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, 
certain decadence of man; 

Thee in thy larger, saner brood of female, 
male — thee in thy athletes, moral, 
spiritual, South, North, West, East, 

(To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, 
thy every daughter, son, endear'd alike, 
forever equal,) 

Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, 
unborn yet, but certain, 

Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization, 
(until which thy proudest material civili- 
zation must remain in vain,) 

Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing 
worship — thee in no single bible, saviour, 
merely, 

Thy saviours countless, latent within thy- 
self, thy bibles incessant within thyself, 
equal to any, divine as any. 

(Thy soaring course thee formulating, not 
in thy two great wars, nor in thy cen- 
tury's visible growth, go 

But far more in these leaves and chants, 
thy chants, great Mother !) * 

Thee in an education grown of thee, in 
teachers, studies, students, born of thee, 

Thee in thy democratic fetes en-masse, thy 
high original festivals, operas, lecturers, 
preachers, 

Thee in thy ultimata (the preparations 
only now completed, the edifice on sure 
foundations tied), 

Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, 
thy topmost rational joys, thy love and 
godlike aspiration, 

In thy resplendent coming literati, thy full- 
lung'd orators, thy sacerdotal bards, kos- 
mic savans, 

These ! these in thee (certain to come), to- 
day I prophesy. 



Land tolerating all, accepting all, not for 
the good alone, all good for thee, 
1 The two lines in parenthesis were added in 1881. 



WALT WHITMAN 



601 



Land in the realms of God to be a realm 

unto thyself, 
Under the rule of God to be a rule unto 

thyself. ioo 

(Lo, where arise three peerless stars, 
To be thy natal stars my country, Ensem- 
ble, Evolution, Freedom, 
Set in the sky of Law.) 

Land of unprecedented faith, God's faith, 
Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav'd, 
The general inner earth so long so sedu- 
lously draped over, now hence for what 
it is boldly laid bare, 
Open'd by thee to heaven's light for benefit 
or bale. 

Not for success alone, 

Not to fair-sail unintermitted always, 

The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of 
war and worse than war shall cover thee 
all over, no 

(Wert capable of war, its tug and trials ? 
be capable of peace, its trials, 

For the tug and mortal strain of nations 
come at last in prosperous peace, not war ;) 

In many a smiling mask death shall ap- 
proach beguiling thee, thou in disease 
shalt swelter, 

The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, 
clinging upon thy breasts, seeking to 
strike thee deep within, 

Consumption of the worst, moral consump- 
tion, shall rouge thy face with hectic, 1 

But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy dis- 
eases, and surmount them all, 

Whatever they are to-day and whatever 
through time they may be, 

They each and all shall lift and pass away 
and cease from thee, 

While thou, Time's spirals rounding, out 
of thyself, thyself still extricating, fusing, 

Equable, natural, mystical Union thou 
(the mortal with immortal blent), 120 

Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the fu- 
ture, the spirit of the body and the mind, 

The soul, its destinies. 

The soul, its destinies, the real real, 
(Purport of all these apparitions of the 

real ;) 
In thee America, the soul, its destinies, 

1 Compare Democratic Vislas, pp. 203-208; and Two 
Rivulets, 1876, the prose section. 



Thou globe of globes ! thou wonder nebu- 
lous ! 

By many a throe of heat and cold convuls'd 
(by these thyself solidifying), 

Thou mental, moral orb — thou New, in- 
deed new, Spiritual World ! 

The Present holds thee not — for such 
vast growth as thine, 

For such unparallel'd flight as thine, such 
brood as thine, 130 

The Future only holds thee and can hold 
thee. 

1872. 

PRAYER OF COLUMBUS 2 

,' A batter'd, wreck'd old man, j 
Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from 

home, 
Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, 

twelve dreary months, 
Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken'd and nigh 

to death, 
I take my way along the island's edge, 
Venting a heavy heart. 

I am too full of woe ! 

Haply I may not live another day; 

I cannot rest O God, I cannot eat or drink 

or sleep, 
Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once 

more to Thee, 10 

Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee, 

commune with Thee, 
Report myself once more to Thee. 

/Thou knowest my years entire, my life, \ 
j My long and crowded life of active work, 
not adoration merely; / 

2 It was near the close of his indomitable and pious 
life — on his last voyage when nearly 70 years of age — 
that Columbus, to save his two remaining ships from 
foundering in the Caribbean Sea in a terrible storm, 
had to run them ashore on the Island of Jamaica — 
where, laid up for a long and miserable year — 1503 — 
he was taken very sick, had several relapses, his men 
revolted, and death seem'd daily imminent ; though he 
was eventually rescued, and sent home to Spain to die, 
unrecognized, neglected and in want. ... It is only 
ask'd, as preparation and atmosphere for the following 
lines, that the bare authentic facts be recall'd and real- 
ized, and nothing contributed by the fancy. See, the 
Antillean Island, with its florid skies and rich foliage 
and scenery, the waves beating the solitary sands, and 
the hulls of the ships in the distance. See, the figure 
of the great Admiral, walking the beach, as a stage, in 
this sublimest tragedy — for what tragedy, what poem, 
so piteous and majestic as the real scene ? — and hear 
him uttering — as his mystical and religious soul surely 
utter'd, the ideas following — perhaps, in their equiv- 
alents, the very words. (Whitman.) 






602 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



. 



Thou knowest the prayers and vigils of my ' 

youth, 
Thou knowest my manhood's solemn and 

visionary meditations, 
Thou knowest how before I commenced I 

devoted all to come to Thee, 
Thou knowest I have in age ratified all 

those vows and strictly kept them, 
Thou knowest I have not once lost nor faith 

nor ecstasy in Thee, 
In shackles, prison'd, in disgrace, repining 

not, 20 

Accepting all from Thee, as duly come 

from Thee. 

All my emprises have been fill'd with Thee, 

My speculations, plans, begun and carried 
on in thoughts of Thee, 

Sailing the deep or journeying the land for 
Thee; 

Intentions, purports, aspirations mine, leav- 
ing results to Thee. 

O I am sure they really came from Thee, 
The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable 

will, 
The potent, felt, interior command, stronger 

than words, 
A message from the Heavens whispering 

to me even in sleep, 
These sped me on. 30 

By me and these the work so far accom- 

plish'd, 
By me earth's elder cloy'd and stifled lands 

uncloy'd, unloos'd, 
By me the hemispheres rounded and tied, 

the unknown to the known. 

The end I know not, it is all hi Thee, 

Or small or great I know not — haply 
what broad fields, what lands, 

Haply the brutish measureless human un- 
dergrowth I know, 

Transplanted there may rise to stature, 
knowledge worthy Thee, 

Haply the swords I know may there indeed 
be turn'd to reaping-tools, 

Haply the lifeless cross I know, Europe's 
dead cross, may bud and blossom there. 

One effort more, my altar this bleak sand ; 
That Thou O God my life hast lighted, 41 
With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouch- 
safed of Thee, 



Light rare untellable, lighting the very 

light, 
Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages; 
For that O God, be it my latest word, here 

on my knees, 
Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee. 

My terminus near, 

The clouds already closing in upon me, 

The voyage balk'd, the course disputed, 

lost, 
I yield my ships to Thee. 50 

My hands, my limbs grow nerveless, 
My brain feels rack'd, bewilder'd, 
Let the old timbers part, I will not part, 
I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though 

the waves buffet me, 
Thee, Thee at least I know. 

Is it the prophet's thought I speak, or am I 
raving ? 

What do I know of life ? what of myself ? 

I know not even my own work past or pre- 
sent, 

Dim ever-shifting guesses of it spread be- 
fore me, 

Of newer better worlds, their mighty 
parturition, 60 

Mocking, perplexing me. 

And these things I see suddenly, what 
mean they ? 

As if some miracle, some hand divine un- 
seal'd my eyes, 

Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air 
and sky, 

And on the distant waves sail countless 
ships, 

And anthems in new tongues I hear salut- 
ing me. 

1874. (1876.) 



1/ COME, SAID MY SOUL 1 

COME, SAID MY SOUL, 

SUCH VERSES FOR MY BODY LET US 

WRITE, (FOR WE ARE ONE), 
THAT SHOULD I AFTER DEATH INVISIBLY 

RETURN, 
OR, LONG, LONG HENCE, IN OTHER SPHERES, 

1 The Inscription, signed with Whitman's autograph, 
to the 1S76 edition of Leaves of Grass, and to all the 
following editions authorized by him. 



WALT WHITMAN 



603 



THERE TO SOME GROUP OF MATES THE 

CHANTS RESUMING, 
(tallying earth's SOIL, TREES, WINDS, 

TUMULTUOUS WAVES,) 
EVER WITH PLEAS'D SMILE I MAY KEEP 

ON, 

ever and ever yet the verses own- 
ing — as, first, i here and now, 
signing for soul and body, set to 
them my name, 

Walt Whitman. 

1876. 



WHEN THE FULL-GROWN POET 
CAME 

When the full-grown poet came, 

Out spake pleased Nature (the round im- 
passive globe, with all its shows of day 
and night), saying, He is mine; 

But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, 
jealous and unreconciled, Nay, he is mine 
alone ; 

— Then the full-grown poet stood between 
the two, and took each by the hand; 

And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, 
uniter, tightly holding hands, 

Which he will never release until he re- 
conciles the two, 

And wholly and joyously blends them. 

1876. 



TO THE MAN-OF-WAR-BIRD 

Thou who hast slept all night upon the 
storm, 

Waking renew'd on thy prodigious pinions 

(Burst the wild storm ? above it thou as- 
cended'st, 

And rested on the sky, thy slave that 
cradled thee), 

Now a blue point, far, far in heaven float- 
ing, 

As to the light emerging here on deck I 
watch thee 

(Myself a speck, a point on the world's 
floating vast). 

Far, far at sea, 

After the night's fierce drifts have strewn 

the shore with wrecks, 
With reappearing day as now so happy 

and serene, 



The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun, 
The limpid spread of air cerulean, 
Thou also reappearest. 

Thou born to match the gale (thou art all 

wings), 
To cope with heaven and earth and sea and 

hurricane, 
Thou ship of air that never furl'st thy 

sails, 
Days, even weeks untired and onward, 

through spaces, realms gyrating, 
At dusk that look'st on Senegal, at morn 

America, 
That sport'st amid the lightning-flash and 

thunder-cloud, 
In them, in thy experiences, had'st thou 

my soul, 
What joys ! what joys were thine ! 

1876. 

THE OX-TAMER 

In a far-away northern county in the placid 

pastoral region, 
Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my 

recitative, a famous tamer of oxen, 
There they bring him the three-year-olds 

and the four-year-olds to break them, 
He will take the wildest steer in the world 

and break him and tame him, 
He will go fearless without any whip where 

the young bullock chafes up and down 

the yard, 
The bullock's head tosses restless high in 

the air with raging eyes, 
Yet see you ! how soon his rage subsides — 

how soon this tamer tames him; 
See you ! on the farms hereabout a hun- 
dred oxen young and old, and he is the 

man who has tamed them, 
They all know him, all are affectionate to 

him; 
See you ! some are such beautiful animals, 

so lofty looking; 
Some are buff-color'd, some mottled, one 

has a white line running along his back, 

some are brindled, 
Some have wide flaring horns (a good sign) 

— see you ! the bright hides, 

See, the two with stars on their foreheads 

— see, the round bodies and broad 
backs, 

How straight and square they stand on 
their legs — what fine sagacious eyes ! 



604 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



How they watch their tamer — they wish 

him near them — how they turu to look 

after him ! 
What yearning - expression ! how uneasy they 

are when he moves away from them; 
Now I marvel what it can be he appears to 

them (books, politics, poems, depart — 

all else departs), 
I confess I envy only his fascination — my 

silent, illiterate friend, 
Whom a hundred oxen love there in his life 

on farms, 
In tbe northern county far, in the placid 

pastoral region. 

1876. 



TO A LOCOMOTIVE IN WINTER 1 

Thee for my recitative, 

Thee in the driving storm even as now, the 

snow, the winter-day declining, 
Thee in thy panoply, thy measur'd dual 

throbbing and thy beat convulsive, 
Thy black cylindric body, golden" brass and 

silvery steel, 
Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and con- 
necting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy 

sides, 
Tby metrical, now swelling pant and roar, 

now tapering in the distance, 
Thy great protruding head-light fix'd in 

front, 
Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, 

tinged with delicate purple, 
The dense and murky clouds out-belching 

from thy smoke-stack, 
Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, 

the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels, 
Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily 

following, 
Through gale or calm, now swift, now 

slack, yet steadily careering; 
Type of the modern — emblem of motion 

and power — pulse of the continent, 

1 Contrast Wordsworth's attitude toward the rail- 
road and its invasion of natural scenes ! And compare 
Whitman's Specimen Days, April '29, 1S79 : — 

' It was a happy thought to build the Hudson River 
railroad right along the shore. ... I see, hear, the 
locomotives and cars, rumbling, roaring, flaming, smok- 
ing, constantly, away off there, night and day — less 
than a mile distant, and in full view by day. I like 
both sight and sound. Express trains thunder and 
lighten along ; of freight trains, most of them very 
long, there cannot be less than a hundred a day. At 
night far down you see the headlight approaching, 
coming steadily on like a meteor. The river at night 
has its special character-beauties.' 1876, vol. i, p. 369. 



For once come serve the Muse and merge 
in verse, even as here I see thee, 

With storm and buffeting gusts of wind 
and falling snow, 

By day thy warning ringing bell to sound 
its notes, 

By night thy silent signal lamps to swing. 

Fierce-throated beauty ! 
Roll through my chant with all thy law- 
less music, thy swinging lamps at night, 
Thy madly -whistled laughter, echoing, 

rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all, 
Law of thyself complete, thine own track 

firmly holding, 
(No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or 

glib piano thine,) 
Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills 

return'd, 
Launch'd o'er the prairies wide, across the 

lakes, 
To the free skies unpent and glad and 

strong. 

1876. 

AFTER AN INTERVAL 

(NOVEMBER 22, 1875, MIDNIGHT — SATURN 
AND MARS IN CONJUNCTION) 

After an interval, reading, here in the 

midnight, 
With the great stars looking on — all the 

stars of Orion looking, 
And the silent Pleiades — and' the duo 

looking of Saturn and ruddy Mars; 
Pondering, reading my own songs, after a 

long interval (sorrow and death familiar 

now), 
Ere closing the book, what pride ! what 

joy ! to find them, 
Standing so well the test of death and 

night ! 
And the duo of Saturn and Mars ! 

1876. 1 



TO FORI 



LANDS 



I heard that you ask'd for something to 

prove this puzzle the New World, 
And to define America, her athletic Democ- 
racy, 
Therefore I send you my poems that you 
behold in them what you wanted. 

1881. 
1 1876 only. Omitted from later editions. 



WALT WHITMAN 



605 



WHAT BEST I SEE IN THEE 1 

TO U. S. G. RETURN'D FROM HIS WORLD'S 
TOUR 

What best I see in thee, 

Is not that where thou mov'st down history's 
great highways, 

Ever undimm'd by time shoots warlike 
victory's dazzle, 

Or that thou sat'st where Washington sat, 
ruling the land in peace, 

Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, 
venerable Asia swarm'd upon, 

Who walk'd with kings with even pace the 
round world's promenade; 

But that in foreign lands, in all thy walks 
with kings, 

Those prairie sovereigns of the West, Kan- 
sas, Missouri, Illinois, 

Ohio's, Indiana's millions, comrades, farm- 
ers, soldiers, all to the front, 

Invisibly with thee walking with kings with 
even pace the round world's promenade, 

Were all so justified. 

1881. 

1 So General Grant, after circumambiating the world, 
has arrived home again, landed in San Francisco yester- 
day, from the ship City of Tokio from Japan. What a 
man he is ! what a history ! what an illustration — his 
life — of the capacities of that American individuality 
common to us all. Cynical critics are wondering ' what 
the people can see in Grant ' to make such a hubbub 
about. They aver (and it is no doubt true) that he has 
hardly the average of our day's literary and scholastic 
culture, and absolutely no pronounc'd genius or conven- 
tional eminence of any sort. Correct : but he proves how 
an average western farmer, mechanic, boatman, carried 
by tides of circumstances, perhaps caprices, into a posi- 
tion of incredible military or civic responsibilities (his- 
tory has presented irone more trying, no born monarch' s, 
no mark more shining for attack or envy), may steer his 
way fitly and steadily through them all, carrying the 
country and himself with credit year after year — com- 
mand over a million armed men — fight more than fifty 
pitch'd battles — rule for eight years a land larger than 
all the kingdoms of Europe combined — and then, retir- 
ing, quietly (with a cigar in his mouth), make the prome- 
nade of the whole world, through its courts and cote- 
ries, and kings and czars and mikados, and splendideBt 
glitters and etiquettes, as phlegmatically as he ever 
walk'd the portico of a Missouri hotel after dinner. I 
say all this is what people like — and I am sure I like it. 
Seems to me it transcends Plutarch. How those old 
Greeks, indeed, would have seized on him ! A mere 
plain man — no art, no poetry — only practical sense, 
ability to do, or try his best to do, what devolv'd upon 
him. A common trader, money-maker, tanner, farmer 
of Illinois — general for the republic, in its terrific 
struggle with itself, in the war of attempted secession — 
President following (a task of peace, more difficult than 
the war itself) — nothing heroic, as the authorities put 
it — and yet the greatest hero. The gods, the destinies, 
seem to have concentrated upon him. {Specimen Days, 
September 27, 1879. Complete Prose Works, pp. 146, 
147.) See also Whitman's poem: 'On the Death of 
General Grant. ' 



SPIRIT THAT FORM'D THIS 
SCENE 2 

WRITTEN IN PLATTE CANON, COLORADO 

Spirit that form'd this scene, 
These tumbled rock-piles grim and red, 
These reckless heaven-ambitious peaks, 
These gorges, turbulent-clear streams, this 

naked freshness, 
These formless wild arrays, for reasons of 

their own, 
I know thee, savage spirit — we have com- 
muned together, 
Mine too such wild arrays, for reasons of 

their own; 
Was't charged against my chants they had 

forgotten art ? 
To fuse within themselves its rules precise 

and delicatesse ? 
The lyrist's measur'd beat, the wrought-out 

temple's grace — column and polish'd 

arch forgot ? 
But thou that revelest here — spirit that 

form'd this scene, 
They have remember'd thee. 1881. 

2 Compare Whitman's entry in his journal during 
his trip through Colorado : — 

' I have found the law of my own poems,' was the 
unspoken but more-and-more decided feeling that came 
to me as I pass'd, hour after hour, amid all this grim 
yet joyous elemental abandon — this plenitude of ma- 
terial, entire absence of art, untrammel'd play of prim- 
itive Nature — the chasm, the gorge, the crystal moun- 
tain stream, repeated scores, hundreds of miles — the 
broad handling and absolute uncrampedness — the fan- 
tastic forms, bathed in transparent browns, faint reds 
and grays, towering sometimes a thousand, sometimes 
two or three thousand feet high — at their tops now 
and then huge masses pois'd, and mixing with the 
clouds, with only their outlines, hazed in misty lilac, 
visible. ('In Nature's grandest shows,' says an old 
Dutch writer, an ecclesiastic, ' amid the ocean's depth, 
if so might be, or countless worlds rolling above at night, 
a man thinks of them, weighs all, not for themselves or 
the abstract, but with reference to his own personality, 
and how they may affect him or color his destinies.') 

We follow the stream of amber and bronze brawling 
along its bed, with its frequent cascades and snow-white 
foam. Through the cafion we fly — mountains not only 
each side, but seemingly, till we get near, right in front 
of us — every rood a new view flashing and each flash 
defying description — on the almost perpendicular sides, 
clinging pines, cedars, spruces, crimson sumach bushes, 
spots of wild grass — but dominating all, those tower- 
ing rocks, rocks, rocks, bathed in delicate vari-colors, 
with the clear sky of autumn overhead. New senses, 
new joys, seem develop'd. Talk as you like, a typical 
Rocky Mountain cafion, or a limitless sea-like stretch 
of the great Kansas or Colorado plains, under favoring 
circumstances, tallies, perhaps expresses, certainly 
awakes, those grandest and subtlest element-emotions 
in the human soul, that all the marble temples and 
sculptures from Phidias to Thorwaldsen — all paintings, 
poems, reminiscences, or even music, probably never 
can. (Specimen Days. Complete Prose Works, Small, 
Maynard & Co., p. 136.) 



6o6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



YOUTH, DAY, OLD AGE AND 
NIGHT 

Youth, large, lusty, loving — youth full of 
grace, force, fascination, 

Do you know that Old Age may come after 
you with equal grace, force, fascina- 
tion ? 

Day full-blown and splendid — day of the 
immense sun, action, ambition, laughter, 

The Night follows close with millions of 
suns, and sleep and restoring darkness. 1 

1881. 



A CLEAR MIDNIGHT 

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight 

into the wordless, 
Away from books, away from art, the day 

erased, the lesson done, 
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, 

pondering the themes thou lovest best, 
Night, sleep, death and the stars. 

1881. 



WITH HUSKY-HAUGHTY LIPS, 
O SEA! 2 

With husky-haughty lips, O sea ! 

Where day and night I wend thy surf-beat 
shore, 

Imaging to my sense thy varied strange 
suggestions 

(I see and plainly list thy talk and confer- 
ence here), 

Thy troops of white-maned racers racing to 
the goal, 

Thy ample, smiling face, dash'd with the 
sparkling dimples of the sun, 

Thy brooding scowl and murk — thy un- 
loos'd hurricanes, 



1 Compare the passages in Whitman's Prose Works 
referred to in the notes on pp. 564 and 579. 

2 July 25, '<M. Far Rockaway, L.I. — A good day 
here, on a jaunt, amid the sand and salt, a steady 
breeze setting in from the sea, the sun shining, the 
sedge-odor, the noise of the surf, a mixture of hissing 
and booming, the milk-white crests curling over. I 
had a leisurely bath and naked ramble as of old, on the 
warm-gray shore-sands, my companions off in a boat in 
deeper water — (I shouting to them Jupiter's menaces 
against the gods, from Pope's Homer.) (Specimen Days. 
Complete Prose Works, Small, Maynard & Co., pp. 176, 
177.) 



Thy unsubduedness, caprices, wilfulness; 
Great as thou art above the rest, thy many 

tears — a lack from all eternity in thy 

content, 
(Naught but the greatest struggles, wrongs, 

defeats, could make thee greatest — no 

less could make thee,) 
Thy lonely state — something thou ever 

seek'st and seek'st, yet never gain'st, 
Surely some right withheld — some voice, 

in huge monotonous rage, of freedom- 
lover pent, 
Some vast heart, like a planet's, chain'd and 

chafing in those breakers, 
By lengthen'd swell, and spasm, and pant- 
ing breath, 
And rhythmic rasping of thy sands and 

waves, 
And serpent hiss, and savage peals of 

laughter, 
And undertones of distant lion roar, 
(Sounding, appealing to the sky's deaf ear 

— but now, rapport for once, 
A phantom in the night thy confidant for 

once,) 
The first and last confession of the globe, 
Outsurging, muttering from thy soul's 

abysms, 
The tale of cosmic elemental passion, 
Thou tellest to a kindred soul. 

1884. (1888.) 



OF THAT BLITHE THROAT OF 
THINE 

[More than eighty-three degrees north — about a 
good day's steaming distance to the Pole by one of our 
fast oceaners in clear water — Greely the explorer heard 
the song of a single snow-bird merrily sounding over 
the desolation.] 

Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic 

bleak and blank, 
I '11 mind the lesson, solitary bird — let me 

too welcome chilling drifts, 
E'en the prof oundest chill, as now — a 

torpid pulse, a brain unnerv'd, 
Old age land-lock'd within its winter bay 

(cold, cold, O cold !) — 
These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my 

frozen feet, 
For them thy faith, thy rule I take, and 

grave it to the last; 
Not summer's zones alone — not chants of 

youth, or south's warm tides alone, 



WALT WHITMAN 



607 



But held by sluggish floes, paek'd in the 

northern ice, the cumulus of years, 
These with gay heart I also sing. 

1885. (1888.) 



AS THE GREEK'S SIGNAL 
FLAME 

[for whittier's eightieth birthday, 
december 1 7, 1887.] 

As the Greek's signal flame, by antique re- 
cords told, 

Rose from the hill-top, like applause and 
glory, 

Welcoming in fame some special veteran, 
hero, 

With rosy tinge reddening the land he 'd 
served, 

So I aloft from Mannahatta's ship-fringed 
shore, 

Lift high a kindled brand for thee, Old 
Poet. 

1887. (1888.) 



TO THOSE WHO 'VE FAIL'D 

To those who've fail'd, in aspiration vast, 
To unnam'd soldiers fallen in front on the 

lead, 
To calm, devoted engineers — to over-ardent 

travelers — to pilots on their ships, 
To many a lofty song and picture without 

recognition — I 'd rear a laurel-cover'd 

monument, 
High, high above the rest — To all cut off 

before their time, 
Possess'd by some strange spirit of fire, 
Quench'd by an early death. 

1888. 



A CAROL CLOSING SIXTY- 
NINE 

A carol closing sixty-nine — a resume — 

a repetition, 
My lines in joy and hope continuing on the 

same, 
Of ye, O God, Life, Nature, Freedom, 

Poetry; 
Of you, my Land — your rivers, prairies, 

States — you, mottled Flag I love, 



Your aggregate retain'd entire — O north, 
south, east and west, your items all; 

Of me myself — the jocund heart yet beat- 
ing in my breast, 

The body wreck'd, old, poor and paralyzed 
— the strange inertia falling pall-bike 
round me, 

The burning fires down in my sluggish 
blood not yet extinct, 

The undiminish'd faith — ■ the groups of lov- 
ing friends. 1 

1888. 



THE FIRST DANDELION 

Simple and fresh and fair from winter's 
close emerging, 

As if no artifice of fashion, business, poli- 
tics, had ever been, 

Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd 
grass — innocent, golden, calm as the 
dawn, 

The spring's first dandelion shows its trust- 
ful face. 

1888. 



THE VOICE OF THE RAIN 

And who art thou ? said I to the soft-fall- 
ing shower, 

Which, strange to tell, gave me an answer, 
as here translated: 

I am the Poem of Earth, said the voice of 
the rain, 

Eternal I rise impalpable out of the land 
and the bottomless sea, 

Upward to heaven, whence, vaguely form'd, 
altogether changed, and yet the same, 

1 Compare, in Complete Prose Works, p. 190, the 
letter of May 31, 1882 : ' From to-day I enter upon my 
64th year. The paralysis that first affected me nearly 
ten years ago, has since remain'd, with varying course 
— seems to have settled quietly down, and will pro- 
bably continue. I easily tire, am very clumsy, cannot 
walk far; but my spirits are first-rate. I go around in 
public almost every day — now and then take long trips, 
by railroad or boat, hundreds of miles — live largely in 
the open air — am sunburnt and stout (weigh 190), — 
keep up my activity and interest in life, people, pro- 
gress, and the questions of the day. About two thirds of 
the time I am quite comfortable. What mentality I 
ever had remains entirely unaffected ; though physically 
I am a half -paralytic, and likely to be so, long as I live. 
But the principal object of my life seems to have been 
accomplish'd — I have the most devoted and ardent of 
f riends, and affectionate relatives — and of enemies I 
really make no account.' 



.-> 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



I descend to lave the drouths, atomies, dust- 
layers of the globe. 

And all that in them without me were seeds 
onlv. latent, unborn: 

And forever, by day and night. I give back 
life to my own origin, and make pure and 
beautify it: 

^For song, issuing from its birthplace, after 
fulfilment, wandering, 

Reck'd or unreek'd. duly with love returns.) 



A PRAIRIE SUNSET 

Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling 

silver, emerald, fawn. 
The earth's whole amplitude and Nature's 

multiform power consigu'd for once to 

colors ; 
The light, the general air possess'd by 

them — colors till now tmknown, 
No limit, confine — not the "Western sky 

alone — the high meridian — North, 

South, all. 
Pure luminous color fighting the silent 

shadows to the last. 

1888. 



THANKS IN OLD AGE 

Thanks in old age — thanks ere I go, 

For health, the midday sun, the impalpable 
air — for rife, mere life, 

For precious ever-lingering memories, (of 
you my mother dear — you, father — 
you, brothers, sisters, friends,") 

For all my days — not those of peace alone 
— the days of war the same, 

For gentle words, caresses, gifts from for- 
eign lands, 

For shelter, wine and meat — for sweet ap- 
preciation, 

(You distant, dim unknown — or young or 
old — countless, unspecified, readers be- 
lov'd, 

We never met, and ne'er shall meet — and 
yet our souls embrace, long, close and 
long;) 

For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, 
books — for colors, forms, 

For all the brave strong men — devoted, 
hardy men — who Ve forward sprung in 
freedom's help, all years, all lands, 



For braver, stronger, more devoted men — 

^a special laurel ere 1 go, to life's war's 

chosen ones. 
The cannoneers of song and thought — the 

great artillerists — the foremost leaders, 

captains of the soul:") 
As soldier from an ended war return 'd — 

As traveler out of myriads, to the long 

procession retrospective, 
Thanks — joyful thanks ! — a soldier's. 

traveler's thanks. 

1888. 

MY 7IST YEAR 

After surmounting three-score and ten, 
\^ ith all their chances, changes, losses, sor- 
rows. 
My parents' deaths, the vagaries of my 

life, the many tearing passions of me, 

the war of '63 and '4. 
As some old broken soldier, after a long, 

hot. wearying march, or haply after 

battle, 
To-day at twilight, hobbling, answering 

company roll-call. Here, with vital voice. 
Reporting vet, saluting vet the Officer over 

all. 

1891. 

OLD AGE'S SHIP & CRAFTY 
DEATH'S 

From east and west across the horizon's 
edge, 

Two mighty masterful vessels sailers steal 
upon us: 

But we '11 make race a-time upon the seas 
— a battle-contest yet ! bear lively 
there ! 

(Our joys of strife and derring-do to the 
last !) 

Put on the old ship all her power to-day ! 

Crowd top-sail, top-gallant and royal stud- 
ding-sails. 

Out challenge and defiance — flags and 
flaunting pennants added. 

As we take to the open — take to the deep- 
est, freest waters. 

1891. 

THE COMMONPLACE 

The commonplace I sing; 

How cheap is health ! how cheap nobility ! 






WALT WHITMAN 



609 



Abstinence, no falsehood, no gluttony, lust; 
The open air I sing, freedom, toleration 
(Take here the rnainest lesson — less from 

books — less from the schools,) 
The common day and night — the common 

earth and waters, 
Your farm — your work, trade, occupation, 
The democratic wisdom underneath, like 

solid ground for all. 

1891. 

L. OF G.'S PURPORT 

Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out 
evils from their formidable masses (even 
to expose them), 

But add, fuse, complete, extend — and 
celebrate the immortal and the good. 

Haughty this song, its words and scope, 
To span vast realms of space and time, 
Evolution — the cumulative — growths and 
generations. 

Begun in ripen'd youth and steadily pur- 
sued, 

Wandering, peering, dallying with all — 
war, peace, day and night absorbing, 

Never even for one brief hour abandoning 
my task, 

I end it here in sickness, poverty, and old 
age. 

I sing of life, yet mind me well of death: 
To-day shadowy Death dogs my steps, my 

seated shape, and has for years — 
Draws sometimes close to me, as face to 

face. 

1891. 

THE UNEXPRESS'D 

How dare one say it ? 

After the cycles, poems, singers, plays, 

Vaunted Ionia's, India's — Homer, Shak- 

spere — the long, long times' thick dotted 

roads, areas, 
The shining clusters and the Milky Ways 

of stars — Nature's pulses reap'd, 
All retrospective passions, heroes, war, 

love, adoration, 
All ages' plummets dropt to their utmost 

depths, 
All human lives, throats, wishes, brains — 

all experiences' utterance; 



After the countless songs, or long or short, 

all tongues, all lands, 
Still something not yet told in poesy's voice 

or print — something lacking, 
(Who knows ? the best yet unexpress'd and 

lacking.) 

1891. 



GOOD-BYE MY FANCY! 

Good-bye my Fancy ! 

Farewell dear mate, dear love 1 

I 'm going away, I know not where, 

Or to what fortune, or whether I may ever 

see you again, 
So Good-bye my Fancy. 

Now for my last — let me look back a 

moment; 
The slower fainter ticking of the clock is 

in me, 
Exit, nightfall, and soon the heart-thud 

stopping. 

Long have we lived, joy'd, caress'd to- 
gether; 

Delightful ! — now separation — Good-bye 
my Fancy. 

Yet let me not be too hasty, 

Long indeed have we lived, slept, filter'd, 

become really blended into one; 
Then if we die we die together (yes, we '11 

remain one), 
If we go anywhere we '11 go together to 

meet what happens, 
May-be we 11 be better off and blither, and 

learn something, 
May-be it is yourself now really ushering 

me to the true songs, (who knows ?) 
May-be it is you the mortal knob really 

undoing, turning — so now finally, 
Good-bye — and hail ! my Fancy. 

1891. 



DEATH'S VALLEY 

To accompany a picture; by request. ' The Valley of 
the Shadow of Death,' from the painting by George 
Illness. 

Nay, do not dream, designer dark, 
Thou hast portray 'd or hit thy theme en- 
tire; 



6io 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



I, hoverer of late by this dark valley, by 
its confines, having glimpses of it, 

Here enter lists with thee, claiming my 
right to make a symbol too. 

For I have seen many wounded soldiers 
die, 

After dread suffering — have seen their 
lives pass off with smiles; 

And I have watch 'd the death-hours of the 
old; and seen the infant die; 

The rich, with all his nurses and his doc- 
tors; 

And then "the poor, in meagreness and 
poverty; 

And I myself for long, O Death, have 
breath'd my every breath 

Amid the nearness and the silent thought 
of thee. 



And out of these and thee, 

I make a scene, a song (not fear of thee, 

Nor gloom's ravines, nor bleak, nor dark 

— for I do not fear thee, 
Nor celebrate the struggle, or contortion, 

or hard-tied knot), 
Of the broad blessed light and perfect air, 

with meadows, rippling tides, and trees 

and flowers and grass, 
And the low hum of living breeze — and 

in the midst God's beautiful eternal right 

hand, 
Thee, holiest minister of Heaven — thee, 

envoy, usherer, guide at last of all, 
Rich, florid, loosener of the stricture-knot 

call'd life, 
Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death. 

1896. (1897.) 



SIDNEY LANIER 



[The poems from Lanier are printed by the kind permission of Mrs. Sidney Lanier, and of Messrs. Charles 
Scribner's Sons, the authorized publishers of Lanier's Works.] 



THE DYING WORDS OF STONE- 
WALL JACKSON 

' Order A. P. Hill to prepare for battle.' 

'Tell Major Hawks to advance the Commissary train.' 

' Let us cross the river and rest in the shade.' 

The stars of Night contain the glittering 

And rain his glory down with sweeter grace 
Upon the dark World's grand, enchanted 
face — 

All loth to turn away. 

And so the Day, about to yield his breath, 
Utters the stars unto the listening Night, 
To stand for burning fare-thee-weUs of 
light 

Said on the verge of death. 

O hero-life that lit us like the sun ! 
O hero-words that glittered like the stars 
And stood and shone above the gloomy 
wars 

When the hero-life was done ! 

The phantoms of a battle came to dwell' 
I' the fitful vision of his dying eyes — 
Yet even in battle-dreams, he sends sup- 
plies 

To those he loved so well. 

His army stands in battle-line arrayed: 
His couriers fly: all's done: now God de- 
cide ! 
— And not till then saw he the Other Side 
Or would accept the shade. 

Thou Land whose sun is gone, thy stars 

remain ! 
Still shine the words that miniature his 

deeds. 
O thrice-beloved, where'er thy great heart 

bleeds, 

Solace hast thou for pain ! 
1865. 1884. 



NIGHT AND DAY 

The innocent, sweet Day is dead. 
Dark Night hath slain her in her bed. 
O, Moors are as fierce to kill as to wed ! 

— Put out the light, said he. 

A sweeter light than ever rayed 
From star of heaven or eye of maid 
Has vanished in the unknown Shade. 

— She 's dead, she 's dead, said he. 

Now, in a wild, sad after-mood 
The tawny Night sits still to brood 
Upon the dawn-time when he wooed. 

— I would she lived, said he. 

Star-memories of happier times, 
Of loving deeds and lovers' rhymes, 
Throng forth in silvery pantomimes. 

— Come back, O Day ! said he. 

1866. 1884. 



SONG FOR 'THE JACQUERIE' 1 

The hound was cuffed, the hound was 

kicked, 
O' the ears was cropped, o' the tail was 

nicked, 
(All.) Oo-hoo-o, howled the hound. 
The hound into his kennel crept; 
He rarely wept, he never slept. 

1 One of Lanier's early plans was for a long poem in 
heroic couplets, with lyric interludes, on the insurrec- 
tion of the French peasantry in the fourteenth century. 
'Although,' says Mrs. Lanier, '"The Jacquerie" re- 
mained a fragment for thirteen years, Mr. Lanier's 
interest in the subject never abated. Far on in this 
interval he is found planning for leisure to work out in 
romance the story of that savage insurrection of the 
French peasantry, which the Chronicles of Froissart 
had impressed upon his boyish imagination.' 'It was 
the first time,' says Lanier himself, in a letter of No- 
vember 15, 1874, ' that the big hungers of the People ' 
appear in our modern civilization ; and it is full of 
significance.' Five chapters of the story, and three 
lyrics, were completed. See the Poems, pp. 191-214. 



6l2 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



His mouth he always open kept 
Licking his bitter wound, 
The hound, 
(All.) U-lu-lo, howled the hound. 

A star upon his kennel shone 
That showed the hound a meat-bare bone. 
(All.) O hungry was the hound ! 
The hound had but a churlish wit. 
He seized the bone, he crunched, he bit. 
' An thou wert Master, I had slit 
Thy throat with a huge wound,' 
Quo' hound. 
(All.) O, angry was the hound. 

The star in castle-window shone, 
The Master lay abed, alone. 
(All.) Oh ho, why not ? quo' hound. 
He leapt, he seized the throat, he tore 
The Master, head from neck, to floor, 
And rolled the head i' the kennel door, 
And fled and salved his wound, 
Good hound ! 
(All.) U-lu-lo, howled the hound. 
186S. 1884. 

MY SPRINGS 

In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know 
Two springs that with unbroken flow 
Forever pour their lucent streams 
Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams. 

Not larger than two eyes, they lie 
Beneath the many-changing sky 
And mirror all of life and time, 

— Serene and dainty pantomime. 

Shot through with lights of stars and dawns, 
Aid shadowed sweet by ferns and fawns, 10 

— Thus heaven and earth together vie 
Their shining depths to sanctify. 

Always when the large Form of Love 
Is hid by storms that rage above, 
I gaze hi my two springs and see 
Love in his very verity. 

Always when Faith with stifling stress 

Of grief hath died hi bitterness, 

I gaze in my two springs and see 

A Faith that smiles immortally. 20 

Always when Charity and Hope, 
In darkness bounden, feebly grope, 



I gaze in my two springs and see 
A Light that sets my captives free. 

Always, when Art on perverse wing 
Flies where I caimot hear him sing, 
I gaze in my two springs and see 
A charm that brings him back to me. 

When Labor faints, and Glory fails, 
And coy Reward hi sighs exhales, 30 

I gaze in my two springs and see 
Attainment full and heavenly. 

O Love, O Wife, thine eyes are they, 

— My springs from out whose shining gray 
Issue the sweet celestial streams 

That feed my life's bright Lake of Dreams. 

Oval and large and passion-pure 

And gray and wise and honor-sure ; 

Soft as a dying violet-breath 

Yet calmly unafraid of death; 40 

Thronged, like two dove-cotes of gray 

doves, 
With wife's and mother's and poor-folk's 

loves, 
And home-loves and high glory-loves 
And science-loves and story-loves, 

And loves for all that God and man 
In art and nature make or plan, 
And lady-loves for spidery lace 
And broideries and supple grace 

And diamonds and the whole sweet round 
Of littles that large life compoimd, 50 

And loves for God and God's bare truth, 
And loves for Magdalen and Ruth, 

Dear eyes, dear eyes and rare complete — 
Being heavenly-sweet and earthly-sweet, 

— I marvel that God made you mine, 
For when He frowns, 't is then ye shine ! 

1 4^H^, ' 1S8 ' 2 ' 

^ATHE SYMPHONY 1 

' O Trade ! O Trade ! woidd thou wert 

dead ! 
The Time needs heart — 't is tired of 

head: 

1 I have so many fair dreams and hopes about music 
in these days. It is a gospel whereof the people are in 
great need. As Christ gathered up the ten command- 



SIDNEY LANIER 



613 



We 're all for love,' the violins said. 1 

' Of what avail the rigorous tale 

Of bill for coin and box for bale ? 

Grant thee, O Trade ! thine uttermost hope: 

Level red gold with blue sky-slope, 

And base it deep as devils grope: 

When all 's done, what hast thou won 

Of the only sweet that 's imder the sun ? 10 

Ay, canst thou buy a single sigh 

Of true love's least, least ecstasy ? ' 

Then, with a bridegroom's heart-beats 

trembling, 
All the mightier strings assembling 
Ranged them on the violins' side 
As when the bridegroom leads the bride, 
And, heart in voice, together cried: 
' Yea, what avail the endless tale 
Of gain by cunning and plus by sale ? 
Look up the land, look down the land, 20 
The poor, the poor, the poor, they stand 
Wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand 
Against an inward-opening door 
That pressure tightens evermore: 
They sigh a monstrous foul-air sigh 
For the outside leagues of liberty, 
Where Art, sweet lark, translates the sky 
Into a heavenly melody. 
" Each day, all day " (these poor folks say), 
" Li the same old year-long, drear-long 

way, 30 

We weave in the mills and heave in the 

kilns, 
We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, 
And thieve much gold from the Devil's 

bank tills, 
To relieve, O God, what manner of ills ? — 
The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die; 
And so do we, and the world 's a sty; 
Hush, fellow-swine : why nuzzle and cry ? 
Swinehood hath no remedy 
Say many men, and hasten by, 
Clamping the nose and blinking the eye. 40 
But who said once, in the lordly tone, 
Man shall not live by bread alone 
But all that cometh from the Throne? 
Hath God said so ? 
But Trade saith No : 

ments and re-distilled them into the clear liquid of that 
wondrous eleventh — Love God utterly, and thy neigh- 
bor as thyself — so I think the time will come when 
music, rightly developed to its now-little-foreseen gran- 
deur, will be found to be a later revelation of all gospels 
in one. (Lanier, in a letter of March 12, 1875. The 
Letters of Sidney Lanier, p. 113.) 

1 Music ... is utterly unconscious of aught but 
Love. (Lanter, in a letter of October, 1866. The Letters 
of Sidney Lanier, p. 66.) 



And the kilns and the curt-tongued mills 

say Go! 
There *s plenty that can, if you can't : we 

know. 
Move out, if you think you 're underpaid. 
The poor are prolific j we're not afraid • 
Trade is trade." ' 50 

Thereat this passionate protesting 
Meekly changed, and softened till 
It sank to sad requesting 
And suggesting sadder still: 
' And oh, if men might sometime see 
How piteous-false the poor decree 
That trade no more than trade must be ! 
Does business mean, Die, you — live, I ? 
Then " Trade is trade " but sings a lie: 
'T is only war grown miserly. 60 

If business is battle, name it so: 
War-crimtes less will shame it so, 
And widows less will blame it so. 
Alas, for the poor to have some part 
In yon sweet living lands of Art, 
Makes problem not for head, but heart. 
Vainly might Plato's brain revolve it: 
Plainly the heart of a child could solve it.' 

And then, as when from words that seem 

but rude 
We pass to silent pain that sits abrood 70 
Back in our heart's great dark and solitude, 
So sank the strings to gentle throbbing 
Of long chords change-marked with sob- 
bing — 
Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard 
Than half wing-openings of the sleeping 

bird, 
Some dream of danger to her young hath 

stirred. 
Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo ! 
Every least ripple of the strings' song-flow 
Died to a level with each level bow 
And made a great chord tranquil- surfaced 

SO, So 

As a brook beneath his curving bank doth 

go 
To linger in the sacred dark and green 
Where many boughs the still pool overlean 
And many leaves make shadow with their 

sheen. 
But presently 
A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly 
Upon the bosom of that harmony, 
And sailed and sailed incessantly, 
As if a petal from a wild-rose blown 
Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone 



614 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And boat wise dropped o' the convex side 91 

And floated down the glassy tide 

And clarified and glorified 

The solemn spaces where the shadows bide. 

From the warm concave of that fluted 

note 
Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did 

float, 
As if a rose might somehow be a throat: 
' When Nature from her far-off glen 
Flutes her soft messages to men, 

The flute can say them o'er again; 100 

Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone, 
Breathes through life's strident polyphone 
The flu te-voi ce in the world of tone. 

Sweet friends, 

Man's love ascends 
To finer and diviner ends 
Than man's mere thought e'er compre- 
hends 
For I, e'en I, 
As here I lie, 

A petal on a harmony, no 

Demand of Science whence and why 
Man's tender pain, man's inward cry, 
When he doth gaze on earth and sky ? 
I am not overbold: 

I hold 
Full powers from Nature manifold. 
I speak for each no-tongued tree 
That, spring by spring, doth nobler be, 
And dumbly and most wistfully 
His mighty prayerful arms outspreads 120 
Above men's oft-unheeding heads, 
And his big blessing downward sheds. 
I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves, 
Lichens on stones and moss on eaves, 
Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves ; 
Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes, 
And briery mazes bounding lanes, 
And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains, 
And milky stems and sugary veins; 
For every long-armed woman-vine 130 

That round a piteous tree doth twine ; 
For passionate odors, and divine 
Pistils, and petals crystalline; 
All purities of shady springs, 
All shynesses of film-winged things 
That fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings; 
All modesties of mountain- fawns 
That leap to covert from wild lawns, 
And tremble if the day but dawns; 
All sparklings of small beady eyes 140 

Of birds, and sidelong glances wise 
Wherewith the jay hints tragedies; 



All piquancies of prickly burs, 

And smoothnesses of downs and furs, 

Of eiders and of minevers; 

All limpid honeys that do lie 

At stamen-bases, nor deny 

The humming-birds' fine roguery, 

Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly; 

All gracious curves of slender wings, 150 

Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, 

Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; 

Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell 

Wherewith in every lonesome dell 

Time to himself his hours doth tell; 

All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, 

Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, 

And night's unearthly under-tones; 

All placid lakes and waveless deeps, 

All cool reposing mountain-steeps, 160 

Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps ; — 

Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, 

And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, 

Of Nature's utmost depths and heights, 

— These doth my timid tongue present, 

Their mouthpiece and leal instrument 

And servant, all love-eloquent. 

I heard, when "All for love" the violins 

cried: 
So, Nature calls through all her system 

wide, 
Give me thy love, man, so long denied. 170 
Much time is run, and man hath changed 

his ways, 
Since Nature, in the antique fable-days, 
Was hid from man's true love by proxy 

fays, 
False f aims and rascal gods that stole her 

praise. 
The nymphs, cold creatures of man's colder 

brain; 
Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm 

heart was fain 
Never to lave its love in them again. 
Later, a sweet Voice Love thy neighbor said; 
Then first the bounds of neighborhood out- 
spread 
Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. 180 
Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant 

head: 
"All men are neighbors," so the sweet Voice 

said. 
So, when man's arms, had circled all man's 

race, 
The liberal compass of his warm embrace 
Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of 

space ; 



SIDNEY LANIER 



6i5 



With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature's 
grace, 

Drew her to breast and kissed her sweet- 
heart face: 

Yea, man found neighbors in great hills and 
trees 

And streams and clouds and suns and birds 
and bees, 

And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving 
these. 190 

But oh, the poor ! the poor ! the poor ! 

That stand by the inward-opening door 

Trade's hand doth tighten ever more, 

And sigh their monstrous foul-air sigh 

For the outside hills of liberty, 

Where Nature spreads her wild blue sky 

For Art to make into melody ! 

Thou Trade ! thou king of the modern days ! 
Change thy ways, 
Change thy ways; 200 

Let the sweaty laborers file 
A little while, 
A little while, 

Where Art and Nature sing and smile. 

Trade ! is thy heart all dead, all dead ? 

And hast thou nothing but a head ? 

I 'm all for heart,' the flute-voice said, 

And into siidden silence fled, 

Like as a blush that while 't is red 

Dies to a still, still white instead. 210 

Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds, 
Till presently the silence breeds 
A. little breeze among the reeds 
That seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds: 
Then from the gentle stir and fret 
Sings out the melting clarionet, 
Like as a lady sings while yet 
Her eyes with salty tears are wet. 
< O Trade ! O Trade ! ' the Lady said, 
' I too will wish thee utterly dead 220 

If all thy heart is in thy head. 
For O my God ! and O my God ! 
What shameful ways have women trod 
At beckoning of Trade's golden rod ! 
Alas when sighs are traders' lies, 
And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyes 

Are merchandise ! 
O purchased lips that kiss with pain ! 
O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain! 
O trafficked hearts that break in twain! 230 
— And yet what wonder at my sisters' 

crime ? 
So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy 

prime, 



Men love not women as in olden time. 
Ah, not in these cold merchantable days 
Deem men their life an opal gray, where 

plays 
The one red Sweet of gracious ladies'-praise. 
Now, comes a suitor with sharp prying 

eye — 
Says, Here, you Lady, if you '11 sell, I HI buy : 
Come, heart for heart — a trade? What! 

weeping ? why f 
Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery ! 
I would my lover kneeling at my feet 241 
In humble manliness should cry, sweet ! 
1 know not if thy heart my heart will greet : 
1 ask not if thy love my love can meet : 
Whatever thy worshipful soft tongue shall say, 
1 '11 kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay : 
I do but know I love thee, and I pray 
To be thy knight until my dying day. 
Woe him that cunning trades in hearts con- 
trives ! 
Base love good women to base loving 
drives. 250 

If men loved larger, larger were our lives; 
And wooed they nobler, won they nobler 
wives.' 

There thrust the bold straightforward horn 
To battle for that lady lorn, 
With heartsome voice of mellow scorn, 
Like any knight in knighthood's morn. 

1 Now comfort thee,' said he, 
' Fair Lady. 
For God shall right thy grievous wrong, 
And man shall sing thee a true-love song, 
Yoiced in act his whole life long, 261 

Yea, all thy sweet life long, 
Fair Lady. 
Where 's he that craftily hath said, 
The day of chivalry is dead ? 
I '11 prove that lie upon his head, 

Or I will die instead, 
Fair Lady. 
Is Honor gone into his grave ? 
Hath Faith become a caitiff knave, 270 

And Selfhood turned into a slave 

To work in Mammon's cave, 
Fair Lady ? 
Will Truth's long blade ne'er gleam again ? 
Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slain 
All great contempts of mean-got gain 

And hates of inward stain, 
Fair Lady ? 
For aye shall name and fame be sold, 
And place be hugged for the sake of gold, 






6i6 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And smirch-robed Justice feebly scold aSi 
At Crime all money-bold, 
Fair Lady ? 
Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forget 
Kiss-pardons for the daily fret 
"Wherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet — 
Blind to lips kiss-wise set — 
Fair Lady ? 
Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart. 
Till wooing grows a trading mart 290 

Where much for little, and all for part, 
Make love a cheapening art, 
Fair Lady ? 
Shall woman scorch for a single sin 
That her betrayer may revel in, 
And she be burnt, and he but grin 
When that the flames begin, 
Fair Lady ? 
Shall ne'er prevail the woman's plea, 
We maids would far, far whiter be 300 

If that our eyes might sometimes see 
Men maids in purity, 
Fair- Lady ? 
Shall Trade aye salve his conscience-aches 
With jibes at Chivalry's old mistakes — 
The wars that o'erhot knighthood makes 
For Christ's and ladies' sakes, 
Fair Lady ? 
Now by each knight that e'er hath prayed 
To fight like a man and love like a maid, $10 
Since Pembroke's life, as Pembroke's blade, 
I' the scabbard, death, was laid, 
Fair Lady, 
I dare avouch my faith is bright 
That God doth right and God hath might. 
Nor time hath changed His hair to white, 
Nor His dear love to spite, 
Fair Lady. 
I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my 

clay. 
And fight my fight in the patient modern 
way 320 

For true love and for thee — ah me ! and 
pray 
To be thy knight until my dying day, 
Fair Lady.' 
Made end that knightly horn, and spurred 

away 
Into the thick of the melodious fray. 

And then the hautboy played and smiled, 
And sang like any large-eyed child, 
Cool-hearted and all undefiled. 

' Huge Trade ! ' he said, 
1 Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head 



And run where'er my finger led ! 331 

Once said a Man — and wise was He — 

NevW shah thou the heavens see. 

Save as a little child thou he.' 

Then o'er sea-lashings of commingling 

tunes 
The ancient wise bassoons. 

Like weird 

Gray-board 
Old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes, 

Chanted rimes: 34 o 

' Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss, 
The sea of all doth lash and toss. 
One wave forward and one across: 
But now 't was trough, now 't is crest. 
And worst doth foam and Hash to best, 

And curst to blest. 

' Life ! Life ! thou sea-fugue, writ from 
east to west, 
Love, Love alone can pore 
On thy dissolving score 
Of harsh half-phrasings, 350 

Blotted ere writ, 
And double era sings 
Of chords most fit. 
Yea, Love, sole music-master blest, 
May read thy weltering palimpsest. 
To follow Time's dying melodies through, 
And never to lose the old in the new, 
And ever to solve the discords true — 

Love alone can do. 
And ever Love hears the poor-folks' cry- 
ing, 360 
And ever Love hears the women's sighing, 
And ever sweet knighthood's death-defy- 
ing. 
And ever wise childhood's deep implying, 
But never a trader's glozing and lying. 

' And yet shall Love himself be heard, 
Though long deferred, though long de- 
ferred: 
O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred: 
Music is Love in search of a word.' 
" 1S75. 1875. 

EVENING SONG 

Look off, dear Love, across the sallow 
sands, 
And mark yon meeting of the sun and 
sea, 
How long they kiss in sight of all the lands. 
Ah ! longer, longer, we. 



SIDNEY LANIER 



617 



Now in the sea's red vintage melts the 
sun, 
As Egypt's pearl dissolved in rosy wine, 
And Cleopatra night drinks all. 'T is done, 
Lore, lay thine hand in mine. 

Come forth, sweet stars, and comfort 
heaven's heart; 
Glimmer, ye waves, round else unlighted 
sands. 
O night ! divorce our sun and sky apart 

Never our lips, our hands. 
1876. 1877. 



THE WAVING OF THE CORN 1 

Ploughman, whose gnarly hand yet 
kindly wheeled 
Thy plough to ring this solitary tree 

With clover, whose round plat, reserved 
a-field, 
In cool green radius twice my length may 
be — 
Scanting the corn thy furrows else might 
yield, 
To pleasure August, bees, fair thoughts, 
and in e, 
That here come oft together — daily I, 
Stretched prone in summer's mortal 
ecstasy, 
Do stir with thanks to thee, as stirs this 
morn 

With waving of the corn. 10 

Unseen, the farmer's boy from round the 
hill 
Whistles a snatch that seeks his soul un- 
sought, 
And fills some time with tune, howbeit 
shrill; 
The cricket tells straight on his simple 
thought — 
Nay, 't is the cricket's way of being still ; 
The peddler bee drones in, and gossips 
naught; 
Far down the wood, a one-desiring 

dove 
Times me the beating of the heart of 
love : 
And these be all the sounds that mix, each 
morn, 

With waving of the corn. 20 

1 Compare the Letters 0/ Sidney Lanier, p. 172, letter 
from Bayard Taylor. 



From here to where the louder pa 
dwell, 
Green leagues of hilly se paration roll: 
Trade ends where yon far clover ridges 
swell. 
Ye terrible Towns, ne'er claim the trem- 
bling soul 
That, craftless all to buy or hoard or sell, 
From out your deadly complex quarrel 
stole 
To company with large amiable trees, 
Suck honey summer with unjealous 
bees, 
And take Time's strokes as softly as this 
morn 

Takes waving of the corn. 30 

1870. 1877. 



SONNETS ON COLUMBUS 

FROM THE PSALM OF THE WEST 

COLUMBUS stands in the night alone, and, 
passing grave, 
Yearns o'er the sea as tones o'er under- 
silence yearn. 
Heartens his heart as friend befriends his 
friend less brave, 
Makes burn the faiths that cool, and 
cools the doubts that burn : — 



' 'Twixt this and dawn, three hours my 

soul will smite 
With prickly seconds, or less tolerably 
With dull-blade minutes flatwise slapping 

me. 
Wait, Heart ! Time moves. — Thou lithe 

young Western Night, 
Just-crowned king, slow riding to thy right, 
Would God that I might straddle mu- 
tiny IO 
Calm as thou sitt'st yon never-managed 

sea, 
Balk'st with his balking, fliest with his 

flight, 
Giv'st supple to his rearings and his falls, 
Nor dropp'st one coronal star about thy 

brow 
Whilst ever dayward thou art steadfast 

drawn ! 
Yea, would I rode these mad contentious 

brawls 






<•* 



618 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



No damage taking from their If and How, 
Nor no result save galloping to niy Dawn ! 



' My Dawn ? my Dawn ? How if it never 

break? 
How if this West by other Wests is 

pieced, 20 

And these by vacant Wests on Wests in- 
creased — 
One Pain of Space, with hollow ache on 

ache 
Throbbing and ceasing not for Christ's own 

sake ? — 
Big perilous theorem, hard for king and 

priest: 
Pursue the West but long enough, H is 

East!, 
Oh, if this watery world no turning take ! 
Oh, if for all my logic, all my dreams, 
Provings of that which is by that which 

seems, 
Fears, hopes, chills, heats, hastes, patiences, 

droughts, tears, 
Wife-grievmgs, slights on love, embezzled 

years, _ 3 o 

Hates, treaties, scorns, upliftings, loss and 

gain, — 
This earth, no sphere, be all one sickening 

plane ! 



' Or, haply, how if this contrarious West, 
That me by turns hath starved, by turns 

hath fed, 
Embraced, disgraced, beat back, solicited, 
Have no fixed heart of Law within his 

breast, 
Or with some different rhythm doth e'er 

contest 
Nature in the East ? Why, 't is but three 

weeks fled 
I saw my Judas needle shake his head 
And flout the Pole that, east, he Lord con- 
fessed ! 40 
God ! if this West should own some other 

Pole, 
And with his tangled way perplex my 

soul 
Until the maze grow mortal, and I die 
Where distraught Nature clean hath gone 

astray, 
On earth some other wit than Time's at 

play, 
Some other God than mine above the sky ! 



' Now speaks mine other heart with cheer- 
ier seeming : 

Ho, Admiral ! o'er-defalking to thy crew 

Against thyself, thyself far overfew 

To front yon multitudes of rebel scheming? 50 

Come, ye wild twenty years of heavenly 
dreaming ! 

Come, ye wild weeks since first this canvas 
drew 

Out of vexed Palos ere the dawn was 
blue, 

O'er milky waves about the bows full- 
creaming ! 

Come set me round with many faithful 
spears 

Of confident remembrance — how I crushed 

Cat -hived rebellions, pitfalled treasons, 
hushed 

Scared husbands' heart-break cries on dis- 
tant wives, 

Made cowards blush at whining for their 
lives, 

Watered my parching soids, and dried their 
tears. 60 



' Ere we Gomera cleared, a coward cried, 

Turn, turn : here be three caravels ahead, 
From Portugal, to take us : ioe are dead ! 
Hold Westward, pilot, calmly I repUed. 
So when the last land down the horizon 

died, 
Go back, go back ! they prayed : our hearts 

are lead. — 
Friends, we are bound into the West, I 

said. 
Then passed the wreck of a mast upon our 

side. 
See (so they wept) God's Warning! Admi- 
ral, turn ! — 
Steersman, I said, hold straight into the 

West. 70 

Then down the night we saw the meteor 

burn. 
So do the very heavens in fire protest : 
Good Admiral, put about ! Spain, dear 

Spain ! — 
Hold straight into the West, I said again. 

vr 
' Next drive we o'er the slimy-weeded 

sea. 
Lo ! herebeneath (another coward cries) 

The cursed land of sunk Atlantis lies: 



SIDNEY LANIER 



619 



This slime will suck us down — turn while 

thou 'rt free! — 
But no! I said, Freedom bears West for me ! 
Yet when the long-time stagnant winds 

arise, 80 

And day by day the keel to westward flies, 
My Good my people's 111 doth come to 

be: 
Ever the winds into the West do blow ; 
Never a ship, once turned, might homeward 

Meanwhile we speed into the lonesome main. 
For Christ's sake, parley, Admiral ! Turn, 

before 
We sail outside all bounds of help from 

pain ! — 
Our help is in the West, I said once more. 



'So when there came a mighty cry of 

Land ! 
And we clomb up and saw, and shouted 

strong 90 

Salve Regina ! all the ropes along, 
But knew at morn how that a counterfeit 

band 
Of level clouds had aped a silver strand; 
So when we heard the orchard-bird's small 

song, 
And all the people cried, A hellish throng 
To tempt us onward by the Devil planned, 
Yea, all from hell — keen heron, fresh green 

weeds, 
Pelican, tunny-fish, fair tapering reeds, 
Lie-telling lands that ever shine and die 
In clouds of nothing round the empty sky. 100 
Tired A dmiral, get thee from this hell, and 

rest ! — 
Steersman, I said, hold straight into the West. 

VIII 

' I marvel how mine eye, ranging the Night, 
From its big circling ever absently 
Returns, thou large low Star, to fix on 

thee. 
Maria ! Star ? No star: a Light, a Light ! 
Would' st leap ashore, Heart ? Yonder burns 

— a Light. 
Pedro Gutierrez, wake ! come up to me. 
I prithee stand and gaze about the sea: 
What seest ? A dmiral, like as Land — a 

Light ! no 

Well ! Sanchez of Segovia, come and try : 
What seest ? Admiral, naught but sea and 

sky ! 



Well ! But / saw It. Wait ! the Pinta's 



gun 



Why, look, 't is dawn, the land is clear : 

't is done ! 
Two dawns do break at once from Time's 

full hand — 
God's, East — mine, West : good friends, 

behold my Land ! ' 
1876. 1876. 



TO BEETHOVEN 

In o'er-strict calyx lingering, 

Lay music's bud too long unblown, 

Till thou, Beethoven, breathed the spring : 
Then bloomed the perfect rose of tone. 

Psalmist of the weak, the strong, 
O Troubadour of love and strife, 

Co-Litanist of right and wrong, 
Sole Hymner of the whole of life, 

1 know not how, I care not why, — 

Thy music sets my world at ease, 10 

And melts my passion's mortal cry 
In satisfying symphonies. 

It soothes my accusations sour 

'Gainst thoughts that fray the restless 
soul: 
The stain of death; the pain of power; 

The lack of love 'twixt part and whole ; 

The yea-nay of Freewill and Fate, 
Whereof both cannot be, yet are; 

The praise a poet wins too late 

Who starves from earth into a star; 20 

The lies that serve great parties well, 
While truths but give their Christ a 
cross; 

The loves that send warm souls to hell, 
While cold-blood neuters take no loss; 

Th' indifferent smile that nature's grace 

On Jesus, Judas, pours alike; 
Th' indifferent frown on nature's face 

When luminous lightnings strangely 
strike 

The sailor praying on his knees 29 

And spare his mate that 's cursing God; 

How babes and widows starve and freeze, 
Yet Nature will not stir a clod; 



620 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Why Nature blinds us in each act 
Yet makes no law in mercy bend, 

No pitfall from our feet retract, 

No storm cry out, Take shelter, friend • 

Why snakes that crawl the earth should ply 
Rattles, that whoso hears may shim, 

While serpent lightnings in the sky, 

But rattle when the deed is' done; 4 o 

How truth can e'er be good for them 
That have not eyes to bear its strength, 

And yet how stern our lights condemn 
Delays that lend the darkness length; 

To know all things, save knowingness; 

To grasp, yet loosen, feeling's rein; 
To waste no manhood on success; 

To look with pleasure upon pain; * 

Though teased by small mixt social claims, 
To lose no large simplicity, 50 

And midst of clear-seen crimes and shames 
To move with manly purity; 

To hold, with keen, yet loving eyes, 
Art's realm from Cleverness apart, 

To know the Clever good and wise, 

Yet haunt the lonesome heights of Art; 

Psalmist of the weak, the strong, 
O Troubadour of love and strife, 

Co-Litanist of right and wrong, 

Sole Hymner of the whole of life, 60 

1 know not how, I care not why, 
Thy music brings this broil at ease, 

And melts my passion's mortal cry 
In satisfying symphonies. 

Yea, it forgives me all my sins, 

Fits life to love like rhyme to rhyme, 

And tunes the task each day begins 
By the last trumpet-note of Time. 

1876-77. 1877. 

THE MOCKING BIRD 

Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray 
That o'er the general leafage boldly grew, 
He summ'd the woods in song; or typic 

drew 
The watch of hungry hawks, the lone dismay 
Of languid doves when long their lovers 

stray, 



And all birds' passion-plays that sprinkle 

dew 
At morn in brake or bosky avenue. 
Whate'er birds did or dreamed, this bird 

could say. 
Then down he shot, bounced airily along 
The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made 

song 
Midnight, perched, prinked, and to his art 

again. 
Sweet Science, this large riddle read me 

plain: 
How may the death of that dull insect be 
The life of yon trim Shakspere on the 

tree ? 1 

1877. 



TAMPA ROBINS 

The robin laughed in the orange-tree : 
' Ho, windy North, a fig for thee : 
While breasts are red and wings are bold 
And green trees wave us globes of gold, 
Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me 
— Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree. 

'. Burn, golden globes in leafy sky, 
My orange-planets : crimson I 
Will shine and shoot among the spheres 
(Blitlje meteor that no mortal fears) 
And thrid the heavenly orange-tree 
With orbits bright of minstrelsy. 

■ If that I hate wild winter's spite — 
.The gibbet trees, the world in white, 
The sky but gray wind over a grave — 
Why should I ache, the season's slave ? 

I '11 sing from the top of the orange-tree 

Gramercy, winter's tyranny. 

' I '11 south with the sun, and keep my clime ; 
My wing is king of the summer-time; 
My breast to the sun his torch shall hold; 
And I '11 call down through the green and 
gold 
Time, take thy scythe, reap Miss for me, 
Bestir thee under the orange-tree.' ■ 
1877. .■ 1877. 

* . . . Von trim Shakspere on the tree 

leads back, almost twenty years from its writing, to 
the poet's college note-book, where we find the boy re- 
flecting : ' A poet is the mocking-bird of the spiritual 
universe. In him are collected all the individual songs 
of all individual natures.' (Mrs. Lanibk, note, in the 
Poems, 1882.) 






SIDNEY LANIER 



621 



FROM THE FLATS 

What heartache — ne'er a hill ! 
Inexorable, vapid, vague and chill 
The drear sand-levels drain my spirit low. 
With one poor word they tell me all they 

know; 
Whereat their stupid tongues, to tease my 

pain, 
Do drawl it o'er again and o'er again. 
They hurt my heart with griefs I cannot 

name : 
Always the same, the same. 

Nature hath no surprise, 
No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine eyes 
From brake or lurking dell or deep defile; 
No humors, frolic forms — this mile, that 

mile; 
No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes 
Beyond the bend of roads, the distant slopes. 
Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame : 

Ever the same, the same. 

Oh, might I through these tears 

But glimpse some hill my Georgia high 
uprears, 

Where white the quartz and pink the pebble 
shine, 

The hickory heavenward strives, the mus- 
cadine 

Swings o'er the slope, the oak's far-falling 
shade 

Darkens the dogwood in the bottom glade, 

And down the hollow from a ferny nook 
Lull sings a little brook ! 

1877. . 1877. 

THE STIRRUP-CUP 

Death, thou 'rt a cordial old and rare : 
Look how compounded, with what care \ 
Time got his wrinkles reaping thee 
Sweet herbs from all antiquity. 

David to thy distillage went, 
Keats, and Gotama excellent, 
Omar Khayyam, and Chaucer bright, 
And Shakspere for a king-delight. 

Then, Time, let not a drop be spilt: 
Hand me the cup whene'er thou wilt; 
'T is thy rich stirrup-cup to me; 
I '11 drink it down right smilingly. 

1877. 1877. 



SONG OF THE CHATTAHOO- 
CHEE 

Out of the hills of Habersham, 

Down the valleys of Hall, 
I hurry amain to reach the plain, 
Run the rapid and leap the fall, 
Split at the rock and together again, 
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, 
And flee from folly on every side 
With a lover's pain to attain the plain 

Far from the hills of Habersham, 

Far from the valleys of Hall. IO 

All down the hills of Habersham, 
All through the valleys of Hall, 
The rushes cried Abide, abide, 
The willful waterweeds held me thrall, 
The laving laurel turned my tide, 
The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay, 
The dewberry dipped for to work delay, 
And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide, 
Here in the hills of Habersham, 
Here in the valleys of Hall. 20 

High o'er the hills of Habersham, 

Veiling the valleys of Hall, 
The hickory told me manifold 
Fair tales of shade, the poplar tall 
Wrought me her shadowy self to hold, 
The chestnut, the oak, the walnut, the 

pine, 
Overleaning, with flickering meaning and 

sign, 
Said, Pass not, so cold, these manifold 

Deep shades of the hills of Habersham, 

These glades in the valleys of Hall. 30 

And oft in the hills of Habersham, 
And oft in the valleys of Hall, 
The white quartz shone, and the smooth 

brook-stone 
Did bar me of passage with friendly brawl, 
And many a luminous jewel lone 
— Crystals clear or a-cloud with mist, 
Ruby, garnet and amethyst — 
Made lures with the lights of streaming 
stone 
In the clefts of the hills of Habersham, 
In the beds of the valleys of Hall. 40 

But oh, not the hills of Habersham, 
And oh, not the valleys of Hall 

Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. 

Downward the voices of Duty call — 



622 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Downward, to toil and be mixed with the 

main, 
The dry fields burn, and the mills are to 

turn, 
And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, 
And the lordly main from beyond the plain 
Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, 
Calls through the valleys of Hall. 50 
1877. 1877. 



THE MARSHES OF GLYNN 1 

Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided 

and woven 
With intricate shades of the vines that my- 
riad-cloven 
Clamber the forks of the multiform 
boughs, — 

Emerald twilights, — 
Virginal shy lights, 
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the 

whisper of vows, 
When lovers pace timidly down through 

the green colonnades 
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark 
woods, 
Of the heavenly woods and glades, 
That rim to the radiant marginal sand-beach 
within 10 

The wide sea-marshes of Glynn; — 

Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon- 
day fire, — 

Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, 

Chamber from chamber parted with waver- 
ing arras of leaves, — 

Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer 
to the soul that grieves, 

Pure with a sense of the passing of saints 
through the wood, 

Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with 
good; — 

O braided dusks of the oak and woven 
shades of the vine, 

While the riotous noon-day sun of the June- 
day long did shine 

Ye held me fast in your heart and I held 
you fast in mine; 20 

1 The salt marshes of Glynn County, Georgia, imme- 
diately around the sea-coast city of Brunswick. 

The three ' Hymns of the Marshes ' . . . are the only 
written portions of a series of six ' Marsh Hymns ' that 
were designed by the author to form a separate volume. 
(Mrs. Landjb.) 



But now when the noon is no more, and 

riot is rest, 
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate 

of the West, 
And the slant yellow beam down the wood- 
aisle doth seem 
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a 

dream, — 
Ay, now, when my sold all day hath drunken 

the soul of the oak, 
And my heart is at ease from men, and the 

wearisome sound of the stroke 
Of the scythe of time and the trowel of 

trade is low, 
And belief overmasters doubt, and I know 

that I know, 
And my spirit is grown to a lordly great 

compass within, 
That the length and the breadth and the 

sweep of the Marshes of Glynn 30 
Will work me no fear like the fear they 

have wrought me of yore 
When length was fatigue, and when breadth 

was but bitterness sore, 
And when terror and shrinking and dreary 

unnamable pain 
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of 

the plain, — 

Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face 

The vast sweet visage of space. 
To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am 

drawn, 
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, 
as a belt of the dawn, 
For a mete and a mark 

To the forest-dark : — 40 

So: 
Affable live-oak, leaning low, — 
Thus — with your favor — soft, with a rev- 
erent hand 
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of 

the land !), 
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I 

stand 
On the firm-packed sand, 

Free 
By a world of marsh that borders a world 
of sea. 
Sinuous southward and sinuous northward 

the shimmering band 
Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of 
the marsh to the folds of the land. 50 
Inward and outward to northward and south- 
ward the beach-lines linger and curl 






SIDNEY LANIER 



623 



As a silver-wrought garment that clings to 
and follows the firm sweet limbs of 
a girl. 

Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving 
again into sight, 

Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim 
gray looping of light. 

And what if behind me to westward the 
wall of the woods stands high ? 

The world lies east: how ample, the marsh 
and the sea and the sky ! 

A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist- 
high, broad in the blade, 

Green, and all of a height, and undecked 
with a light or a shade, 

Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, 

To the terminal blue of the main. 60 

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the 

terminal sea ? 
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free 
From the weighing of fate and the sad 

discussion of sin, 
By the length and the breadth and the 

sweep of the marshes of Glynn. 

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and no- 
thing-withholding and free 

Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer 
yourselves to the sea ! 

Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the 
rains and the sun, 

Ye spread and span like the catholic man 
who hath mightily won 

God out of knowledge and good out of 
infinite pain 

/And sight out of blindness and purity out 
of a stain. 7 o 

As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the 
watery sod, 

Behold I will build me a nest on the great- 
ness of God: 

I will fly in the greatness of God as the 
marsh-hen flies 

In the freedom that fills all the space 
'twixt the marsh and the skies: 

By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends 
in the sod 

I will heartily lay me a-hold on the great- 
ness of God: 

Oh, like to the greatness of God is the 
greatness within 

The range of the marshes, the liberal 
marshes of Glynn. 



And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, 

out of his plenty the sea 
Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood- 
tide must be: go 
Look how the grace of the sea doth go 
About and about through the intricate 

channels that flow 
Here and there, 
Everywhere, 
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost 

creeks and the low-lying lanes, 
And the marsh is meshed with a million 

veins, 
That like as with rosy and silvery essences 

flow 
In the rose-and-silver evening glow. 
Farewell, my lord Sun ! 
The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets 

run 90 

'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of 

the marsh-grass stir; 
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that 

westward whirr; 
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents 

cease to run; 
And the sea and the marsh are one. 

How still the plains of the waters be ! 
The tide is in his ecstasy. 
The tide is at his highest height: 
And it is night. 

And now from the Vast of the Lord will 
the waters of sleep 

Roll in on the souls of men, 100 

But who will reveal to our waking ken 

The forms that swim and the shapes that 
creep 

Under the waters of sleep ? 

And I would I could know what swimmeth 
below when the tide comes in 

On the length and the breadth of the mar- 
vellous marshes of Glynn. 

1878. 1879. 



THE REVENGE OF HAMISH 

It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck 
in the bracken lay ; 
And all of a sudden the sinister smell of 

a man, 
Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran 
Down the hillside and sifted along through 
the bracken and passed that way. 



6a 4 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Then Nan got a-treruble at nostril; she was 
the daintiest doe: 
In the print of her velvet ilank on the 

velvet fern 
She reared, and rounded her ears in turn. 
Then the buck leapt np. and his head as a 
king's to a crown did go 

Full high in the breeze, and he stood as if 
Death had the form of a deer; 
And the two slim does long lazily stretch- 
ing arose. 10 
For their day-dream slowlier came to a 
close. 
Till they woke and were still, breath-bound 
with waiting and wonder and fear. 

Then Alan the huntsman sprang over the 
hillock, the hoimds shot by. 
The does and the ten-tined buck made a 

marvellous bound. 
The hounds swept after with never a 
sound, 
But Alan loud winded his horn in sign that 
the quarry was nigh. 

For at dawn of that day proud Maclean of 
Lochbuv to the hunt had waxed 
wild. 
And he cursed at old Alan till Alan fared 

off with the hounds 
For to drive him the deer to the lower 
glen-grounds : 

' I will kill a red deer.' quoth Maclean, 
• in the sight of the wife and the 
child." 20 

So gayly he paced with the wife and the 
child to his chosen stand; 
But he hurried tall Haruish the hench- 
man ahead: ' Go turn," — 
Cried Maclean. — "if the deer seek to 
cross to the Intra, 
Do thou turn them to me : nor fail, lest thy 
back be red as thy hand.' 

Xow hard-fortuned Hamish, half blown of 
his breath with the height of the 
hill. 
Was white in the face when the ten-tined 

buck and the does 
Drew leaping to burn-ward ; huskily rose 
His shouts, and his nether lip twitched, and 
his legs were o'er-weak for his 
will. 



So the deer darted lightly by Hamish and 
bounded away to the burn. 
But Maclean never bating his watch tar- 
ried waiting below ; 3o 
Still Hamish hung heavy with fear for 
to go 
All the space of an hour; then he went, and 
his face was greenish and stern, 

And his eye sat back in the socket, and 
shrunken the eye-balls shone. 
As withdrawn from a vision of deeds it 
were shame to see. 

• Xow, now, grim henchman, what is 't 

with thee ? ' 
Brake Maclean, and his wrath rose red as 
a beacon the wind hath upblown. 

' Three does and a ten-tined buck made 
out,' spoke Hamish, full mild, 
1 And I ran for to turn, but my breath it 

was blown, and they passed; 
I was weak, for ye called ere I broke me 
my fast.' 
Cried Maclean: 'Now a ten-tined buck in 
the sight of the wife and the child 40 

I had killed if the gluttonous kern had not 
wrought me a snail's own wrong ! ' 
Then he soimded, and down came kins- 
men and clansmen all: 
' Ten blows, for ten tine, on his back let 
fall, 
And reckon no stroke if the blood follow 
not at the bite of thong ! ' 

So Hamish made bare, and took him his 
strokes; at the last he smiled. 

• Xow I '11 to the burn, 1 quoth Maclean, 

1 for it still may be. 
If a slimmer-paimched henchman will 
hurry with me, 
I shall kill me the ten-tined btick for a gift 
to the wife and the child ! ' 

Then the clansmen departed, by this pith 
and that: and over the hill 
Sped Maclean with an outward wrath for 
an inward shame; 50 

And that place of the lashing full quiet 
became ; 
And the wife and the child stood sad; and 
bloody-backed Hamish sat still. 

But look! red Hamish has risen; quick 
about and about turns he. 



SIDNEY LANIER 



625 



1 There is none betwixt me and the crag- 
top ! ' he screams under breath. 
Then, livid as Lazarus lately from death, 
He snatches the child from the mother, and 
clambers the crag toward the sea. 

Now the mother drops breath; she is dumb, 

and her heart goes dead for a space, 

Till the motherhood, mistress of death, 

shrieks, shrieks through the glen, 
And that place of the lashing is live with 
men, 
And Mac-lean, and the gillie that told him, 
dash up in a desperate race. 60 

Not a breath's time for asking; an eye- 
glance reveals all the tale untold. 
They follow mad Hamish afar up the 

crag toward the sea, 
And the lady cries: ' Clansmen, run for 
a fee ! 
Yon castle and lands to the two first hands 
that shall hook him and hold 

' Fast Hamish back from the brink ! ' — and 
ever she flies up the steep, 
And the clansmen pant, and they sweat, 

and they jostle and strain. 
But, mother, 'tis vain; but, father, 't is 
vain ; 
Stern Hamish stands bold on the brink, and 
dangles the child o'er the deep. 

Now a faintness falls on the men that run, 
and they all stand still. 
And the wife prays Hamish as if he were 
God, on her knees, 70 

Crying: ' Hamish ! O Hamish ! but please, 
but please 
For to spare him ! ' and Hamish still dangles 
the child, with a wavering will. 

On a sudden he turns; with a sea-hawk 
scream, and a gibe, and a song, 
Cries : ' So ; I will spare ye the child if, in 

sight of ye all, 
Ten blows on Maclean's bare back shall 
fall, 
And ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow 
not at the bite of the thong ! ' 

Then Maclean he set hardly his tooth to his 
lip that his tooth was red, 
Breathed short for a space, said: 'Nay, 
but it never shall be ! 



Let me hurl off the damnable hound in 
the sea ! ' 
But the wife : ' Can Hamish go fish us the 
child from the sea, if dead ? 80 

' Say yea ! — Let them lash roe, Hamish ? ' 

— ' Nay ! ' — ' Husband, the lashing 

will heal; 
But, oh, who will heal me the bonny 

sweet bairn in his grave ? 
Could ye cure me my heart with the 

death of a knave ? 
Quick ! Love ! I will bare thee — so — 

kneel ! ' Then Maclean 'gan slowly 

to kneel 

With never a word, till presently down- 
ward he jerked to the earth. 
Then the henchman — he that smote 

Hamish — would tremble and lag; 
' Strike, hard ! ' quoth Hamish, full stern, 
from the crag; 
Then he struck him, and ' One ! ' sang 
Hamish, and danced with the child 
in his mirth. 

And no man spake beside Hamish; he 
counted each stroke with a song. 
When the last stroke fell, then he moved 
him a pace down the height, 90 

And he held forth the child in the heart- 
aching sight 
Of the mother, and looked all pitiful grave, 
as repenting a wrong. 

And there as the motherly arms stretched 

out with the thanksgiving prayer — 

And there as the mother crept up with a 

fearful swift pace, 
Till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie's 
face — 
In a flash fierce Hamish turned round and 
lifted the child in the air, 

And sprang with the child in his arms from 
the horrible height in the sea, 
Shrill screeching, ' Revenge ! ' in the 

wind-rush; and pallid Maclean, 
Age-feeble with anger and impotent pain, 
Crawled up on the crag, and lay flat, and 
locked hold of dead roots of a tree, 

And gazed hungrily o'er, and the blood 
from his back drip-dripped in the 
brine, 101 



626 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



And a sea-hawk flung down a skeleton 

fish as he flew, 
And the mother stared white on the 
waste of blue, 
And the wind drove a cloud to seaward, 

and the sun began to shine. 
1878. 1878. 



HOW LOVE LOOKED FOR HELL 1 

To heal his heart of long-time pain 
One day Prince Love for to travel was 
fain 

With Ministers Mind and Sense. 
' Now what to thee most strange may be ? ' 
Quoth Mind and Sense. ' All things above, 
One curious thing I first would see — 

Hell,' quoth Love. 

Then Mind rode in and Sense rode out: 
They searched the ways of man about. 

First frightfully groaneth Sense. io 
' 'T is here, 't is here,' and spurreth in fear 
To the top of the hill that hangeth above 
And plucketh the Prince : ' Come, come, 
't is here — ' 

• Where ? ' quoth Love — 

' Not far, not far,' said shivering Sense 
As they rode on. ' A short way hence, 

— But seventy paces hence : 
Look, King, dost see where suddenly 
This road doth dip from the height above ? 
Cold blew a mouldy wind by me ' 20 

(< Cold ? ' quoth Love) 

' As I rode down, and the River was black, 
And yon-side, lo ! an endless wrack 

And rabble of souls,' sighed Sense, 
' Their eyes upturned and begged and 

burned 
In brimstone lakes, and a Hand above 
Beat back the hands that upward 
yearned — ' 
' Nay ! ' quoth Love — 

' Yea, yea, sweet Prince ; thyself shalt see, 
Wilt thou but down this slope with me ; 30 

'T is palpable,' whispered Sense. 
At the foot of the hill a living rill 
Shone, and the lilies shone white above; 

1 This poem is quoted, with interesting comment, in 
Professor Josiah Koyce's Spirit of Modern Philosophy. 
In Lanier's Poems this is No. iii of ' Street-Cries.' 



'But now 'twas black, 'twas a river, this 
rill,' 
(' Black ? ' quoth Love) 

' Ay, black, but lo ! the lilies grow, 

And yon-side where was woe, was woe, — 

Where the rabble of souls,' cried 
Sense, 
' Did shrivel and turn and beg and burn, 
Thrust back in the brimstone from above — 
Is banked of violet, rose, and fern: ' 41 

' How ? ' quoth Love : 

' For lakes of pain, yon pleasant plain 
Of woods and grass and yellow grain 

Doth ravish the soul and sense : 
And never a sigh beneath the sky, 
And folk that smile and gaze above ' — 
' But saw'st thou here, with thine own 
eye, 

Hell ? ' quoth Love. 

' I saw true hell with mine own eye, 50 

True hell, or light hath told a lie, 

True, verily,' quoth stout Sense. 
Then Love rode round and searched the 

ground, 
The caves below, the hills above; 
' But I cannot find where thou hast found 

Hell,' quoth Love. 

There, while they stood in a green wood 
And marvelled still on 111 and Good, 

Came suddenly Minister Mind. 
' In the heart of sin doth hell begin: 60 

'T is not below, 't is not above, 
It lieth within, it lieth within: ' 

(' Where ? ' quoth Love) 

' I saw a man sit by a corse ; 

Hell 's in the murderer's breast : remorse ! 

Thus clamored his mind to his mind: 
Not fleshly dole is the sinner's goal, 
Hell 's not below, nor yet above, 
'T is fixed in the ever-damned soul ' - 

4 Fixed ? ' quoth Love — 

' Fixed : follow me, would'st thou but see : 
He weepeth under yon willow tree, 

Fast chained to his corse,' quoth 
Mind. 
Full soon they passed, for they rode fast, 
Where the piteous willow bent above. 
' Now shall. I see at last, at last, 

Hell,' quoth Love. 






SIDNEY LANIER 



627 



There when they came Mind suffered 

shame: 
' These be the same and not the same,' 

A-wondering whispered Mind. 80 

Lo, face by face two spirits pace 
Where the blissful willow waves above: 
One saith: ' Do me a friendly grace ' — 

(' Grace ! ' quoth Love) 

' Read me two Dreams that linger long, 
Dim as returns of old-time song 

That flicker about the mind. 
I dreamed (how deep in mortal sleep ! ) 
I struck thee dead, then stood above, 
With tears that none but dreamers weep ; ' 

' Dreams,' quoth Love ; 91 

' In dreams, again, I plucked a flower 
That clung with pain and stung with 
power, 

Yea, nettled me, body and mind.' 
' 'T was the nettle of sin, 't was medicine ; 
No need nor seed of it here Above; 
In dreams of hate true loves begin.' 

' True,' quoth Love. 

' Now strange,' quoth Sense, and ' Strange,' 

quoth Mind, 
1 We saw it, and yet 't is hard to find, 100 
— But we saw it,' quoth Sense and 
Mind. 
Stretched on the ground, beautiful- 
crowned 
Of the piteous willow that wreathed above, 
' But I cannot find where ye have found 

Hell,' quoth Love.' 
1878-79. 1884. 



TO BAYARD TAYLOR* 

To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly 
height, 
O'erseeing all that man but under- 
sees; 
To loiter down lone alleys of delight, 
And hear the beating of the hearts of 
trees, 



1 On Lanier's friendship with Bayard Taylor, see 
Professor Minis's Lanier and the Letters of Sidney 
Lanier, pp. 117-215. 

Lanier's beautiful picture of the Elysium of the 
Poets should be compared with Richard Hovey's, in 
' Seaward: a Threnody on the Death of Thomas William 
Parsons.' 



And think the thoughts that lilies speak in 
white 
By greenwood pools and pleasant pas- 
sages ; 

With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and 
soul, 
To pace, in mighty meditations drawn, 
From out the forest to the open knoll 
Where much thyme is, whence blissfid 
leagues of lawn 10 

Betwixt the fringing woods to southward 
roU 
By tender inclinations; mad with dawn, 

Ablaze with fires that flame hi silver dew 
When each small globe doth glass the 
morning-star, 
Long ere the sun, sweet-smitten through 
and through 
With dappled revelations read afar, 
Suffused with saintly ecstasies of blue 
As all the holy eastern heavens are, — 

To fare thus fervid to what daily toil 

Employs thy spirit in that larger Land 20 
Where thou art gone ; to strive, but not to 
moil 
In nothings that do mar the artist's hand, 
Not drudge unriched, as grain rots back to 
soil, — 
No profit out of death, — going, yet still 
at stand, — 

Giving what life is here in hand to-day 
For that that 's in to-morrow's bush, per- 
chance, — 
Of this year's harvest none in the barn to lay, 
All sowed for next year's crop, — a dull 
advance 
In curves that come but by another way 
Back to the start, — a thriftless thrift of 
ants 30 

Whose winter wastes their summer; O my 
Friend, 
Freely to range, to muse, to toil, is thine: 
Thine, now, to watch with Homer sails that 
bend 
Unstained by Helen's beauty o'er the 
brine 
Tow'rds some clean Troy no Hector need 
defend 
Nor flame devour ; or, in some mild 
moon's shine, 



628 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Where ainiabler winds the whistle heed, 

To sail with Shelley o'er a bluer sea, 
And mark Prometheus, from his fetters 
freed, 
Pass with Deucalion over Italy, 40 

While bursts the flame from out his eager 
reed 
Wild-stretching towards the West of 
destiny ; 

Or, prone with Plato, Shakspere, and a 
throng 
Of bards beneath some plane-tree's cool 
eclipse 
To gaze on glowing meads where, lingering 
long, 
Psyche's large Butterfly her honey sips; 
Or, mingling free in choirs of German 
song, 
To learn of Goethe's life from Goethe's 
lips; 

These, these are thine, and we, who still are 
dead, 
Do yearn — nay, not to kill thee back 
again 50 

Into this charnel life, this lowlihead, 

Not to the dark of sense, the blinking 
brain, 
The hugged delusion drear, the hunger fed 
On husks of guess, the monarchy of pain, 

The cross of love, the wrench of faith, the 
shame 
Of science that cannot prove proof is, the 
twist 
Of blame for praise and bitter praise for 
blame, 
The silly stake and tether round the 
wrist 
By fashion fixed,, the virtue that doth claim 
The gams of vice, the lofty mark that 's 
missed 60 

By all the mortal space 'twixt heaven and 
hell, 
The soul's sad growth o'er stationary 
friends 
Who hear us from our height not well, not 
well, 
The slant of accident, the sudden bends 
Of purpose tempered strong, the gambler's 
spell, 
The son's disgrace, the plan that e'er 
depends 



On others' plots, the tricks that passion 
plays 
(I loving you, you him, he none at all), 
The artist's pain — to walk his blood-stained 
ways, 
A special soul, yet judged as general — 
The endless grief of art, the sneer that 
slays, 7 1 

The war, the wound, the groan, the fu- 
neral pall — 

Not into these, bright spirit, do we yearn 
To bring thee back, but oh, to be, to be 
Unbound of all these gyves, to stretch, to 
spurn 
The dark from off our dolorous lids, to 
see 
Our spark, Conjecture, blaze and sunwise 
burn, 
And suddenly to stand again by thee ! 

Ah, not for us, not yet, by thee to stand: 
For us, the fret, the dark, the thorn, the 
chill; 80 

For us, to call across unto thy Land, 

' Friend, get thee to the minstrels' holy 

hill, 

And kiss those brethren for us, mouth and 

hand, 

And make our duty to our master Will.' 

1879. 1879. 



MARSH SONG — AT SUNSET 

Over the monstrous shambling sea, 

Over the Caliban sea, 
Bright Ariel-cloud, thou lingerest: 
Oh wait, oh wait, in the warm red West, — 

Thy Prospero I '11 be. 

Over the humped and fishy sea, 

Over the Caliban sea 
cloud in the West, like a thought in the 

heart 
Of pardon, loose thy wing, and start, 

And do a grace for me. 

Over the huge and huddling sea, 

Over the Caliban sea, 
Bring hither my brother Antonio, — Man,— 
My injurer: night breaks the ban: 

Brother, I pardon thee. 
1879-80. 1882 






SIDNEY LANIER 



629 



SUNRISE 1 

In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, 
fain 
Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the 
main. 
The little green leaves would not let me 

alone in my sleep; 
Up-breathed from the marshes, a message 

of range and of sweep, 
Interwoven with waftures of wild sea- 
liberties, drifting, 
Came through the lapped leaves sifting, 
sifting, 
Came to the gates of sleep. 
Then my thoughts, in the dark of the 

dungeon-keep 
Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City 

of Sleep, 
Upstarted, by twos and by threes assem- 
bling: 10 
The gates of sleep fell a-trembling 
Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter 
yes, 
Shaken with happiness: 
The gates of sleep stood wide. 

I have waked, I have come, my beloved ! 

I might not abide: 
I have come ere the dawn, O beloved, my 

live-oaks, to hide 
In your gospelling glooms, — to be 
As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh 

and the sea my sea. 

Tell me, sweet burly-bark'd, man-bodied 
Tree 

That mine arms in the dark are embracing, 
dost know 20 

From what fount are these tears at thy feet 
which flow ? 

They rise not from reason, but deeper in- 
consequent deeps. 

Reason 's not one that weeps. 
What logic of greeting lies 

1 ' Sunrise,' Mr. Lanier's latest completed poem, was 
written while his sun of life seemed fairly at the set- 
ting, and the hand which first pencilled its lines had 
not strength to carry nourishment to the lips. . . . 

' Sunrise,' the culminating poem, the highest vision 
of Sidney Lanier, was dedicated through his latest re- 
quest to that friend who indeed came into his life only 
near its close, yet was at first meeting recognized by 
the poet as ' the father of his spirit,' George Westfeldt. 
When words were very few and the poem was unread, 
even by any friend, the earnest bidding came : ' Send 
him my " Sunrise," that he may know how entirely we 
are one in thought.' (Poema, 1884.) 



Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the 
rain of the eyes ? 

O cunning green leaves, little masters ! like 

as ye gloss 
All the dull-tissued dark with your lumi- 
nous darks that emboss 
The vague blackness of night into pattern 
and plan, 

So 
(But would I could know, but would I 
could know), 30 

With your question embroid'ring the dark 

of the question of man, — 
So, with your sUences purfling this silence 

of man 
While his cry to the dead for some know- 
ledge is under the ban, 

Under the ban, — 
So, ye have wrought me 
Designs on the night of our knowledge, — 
yea, ye have taught me, 
So, 
That haply we know somewhat more 
than we know. 

Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms, 
Ye consciences murmuring faiths un- 
der forms, 40 
Ye ministers meet for each passion 

that grieves, 
Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves, 
Oh, rain me down from your darks that 

contain me 
Wisdoms ye winnow from winds that pain 

me, — 
Sift down tremors of sweet-within-sweet 
That advise me of more than they bring, — 

repeat 
Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now 

brought breath 
From the heaven-side bank of the river of 
death, — 
Teach me the terms of silence, — preach 

me 
The passion of patience, — sift me, — im- 
peach me, — 50 
And there, oh there 
As ye hang with your myriad palms up- 
turned in the air, 

Pray me a myriad prayer. 

My gossip, the owl, — is it thou 
That out of the leaves of the low-hanging 
bough, 



630 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



As I pass to the beach, art stirred ? 
Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird ? 



Reverend Marsh, low-couched along the sea, 
Old chemist, rapt in alchemy, 

Distilling silence, — lo, 60 

That which our father-age had died to 

know — 
The menstruum that dissolves all matter 

— thou 
Hast found it: for this silence, filling now 
The globed clarity of receiving space, 
This solves us all: man, matter, doubt, dis- 
grace, 
Death, love, sin, sanity, 
Must hi yon silence' clear solution lie. 
Too clear ! That crystal nothing who '11 

peruse ? 
The blackest night could bring us brighter 

news. 
Yet precious qualities of silence haunt 70 
Round these vast margins, ministrant. 
Oh, if thy soul 's at latter gasp for space, 
With trying to breathe no bigger than thy 

race 
Just to be fellow'd, when that thou hast 

found 
No man with room, or grace enough of 

bound 
To entertain that New thou tell'st, thou 

art, — 
'T is here, 't is here thou canst unhand thy 

heart 
And breathe it free, and breathe it free, 
By rangy marsh, in lone sea-liberty. 

The tide 's at full : the marsh with flooded 
streams 80 

Glimmers, a limpid labyrinth of dreams. 
Each winding creek in grave entrancement 

lies 
A rhapsody of morning-stars. The skies 
Shine scant with one forked galaxy, — 
The marsh brags ten: looped on his breast 
they lie. 

Oh, what if a sound should be made ! 

Oh, what if a bound should be laid 

To this bow-and-string tension of beauty 
and silence a-spring, — 

To the bend of beauty the bow, or the hold 
of silence the string ! 

I fear me, I fear me yon dome of diapha- 
nous gleam 90 



Will break as a bubble o'er-blown in a 

dream, — 
Yon dome of too-tenuous tissues of space 

and of night, 
Over-weighted with stars, over-freighted 

with light, 
Over-sated with beauty and silence, will 

seem 
But a bubble that broke in a dream, 
If a bound of degree to this grace be 

laid, 
Or a sound or a motion made. 

But no: it is made: list! somewhere, — 
mystery, where ? 

In the leaves ? in the air ? 
In my heart ? is a motion made : 100 

'T is a motion of dawn, like a flicker of 

shade on shade. 
In the leaves 't is palpable : low multitu- 
dinous stirring 
Upwinds through the woods ; the little ones, 

softly conferring, 
Have settled my lord's to be looked for; 

so; they are still; 
But the air and my heart and the earth are 

a-thrill, — 
And look where the wild duck sails round 
the bend of the river, — 
And look where a passionate shiver 
Expectant is bending the blades 
Of the marsh-grass in serial shimmers and 

shades,— 
And invisible wings, fast fleeting, fast 
fleeting, no 

Are beating 
The dark overhead as my heart beats, — 

and steady and free 
Is the ebb-tide flowing from marsh to sea 
(Run home, little streams, 
With your lapfulls of stars and dreams), 
And a sailor unseen is hoisting a-peak, 
For list, down the inshore curve of the creek 

How merrily flutters the sail, — 
And lo, in the East ! Will the East unveil ? 
The East is unveiled, the East hath con- 
fessed 120 
A flush: 't is dead; 'tis alive: 't is dead, ere 

the West 
Was aware of it: nay, 'tis abiding, 'tis un- 
withdrawn : 
Have a care, sweet Heaven ! 'T is Dawn. 

Now a dream of a flame through that dream 
of a flush is uprolled: 



SIDNEY LANIER 



631 



To the zenith ascending, a dome of un- 
dazzling gold 
Is builded, in shape as a bee-hive, from out 

of the sea: 
The hive is of gold undazzling, but oh, the 
Bee, 
The star-fed Bee, the build-fire Bee, 
Of dazzling gold is the great Sun- 
Bee 
That shall flash from the hive-hole over the 
sea. 130 

Yet now the dew-drop, now the morning 

gray, 
Shall live their little lucid sober day 
Ere with the sun their souls exhale 

away. 
Now in each pettiest personal sphere of 

dew 
The summ'd morn shines complete as in 

the blue 
Big dew-drop of all heaven: with these lit 

shrines, 
O'er-silvered to the farthest sea-confines, 
The sacramental marsh one pious plain 
Of worship lies. Peace to the ante-reign 
Of Mary Morning, blissful mother mild, 140 
Minded of nought but peace, and of a 

child. 

Not slower than Majesty moves, for a mean 
and a measure 

Of motion, — not faster than dateless Olym- 
pian leisure 

Might pace with unblown ample garments 
from pleasure to pleasure, — 

The wave-serrate sea-rim sinks unjarring, 
unreeling, 
Forever revealing, revealing, reveal- 
ing? 

Edgewise, bladewise, halfwise, wholewise, 
— 't is done ! 

Good-morrow, lord Sun ! 

With several voice, with ascription one, 

The woods and the marsh and the sea and 
my soul 150 

Unto thee, whence the glittering stream of 
all morrows doth roll, 

Cry good and past-good and most heavenly 
morrow, lord Sun. 

O Artisan born in the purple, — Workman 

Heat, — 
Parter of passionate atoms that travail to 

meet 



And be mixed in the death-cold oneness, — 
innermost Guest 

At the marriage of elements, — fellow of 
publicans, — blest 

King in the blouse of flame, that loiterest 
o'er 

The idle skies yet laborest fast ever- 
more, — 

Thou, in the fine forge-thunder, thou, in the 
beat 

Of the heart of a man, thou Motive, — 
Laborer Heat: 160 

Yea, Artist, thou, of whose art yon sea 's all 
news, 

With his inshore greens and manifold mid- 
sea blues, 

Pearl-glint, shell-tint, ancientest perfectest 
hues 

Ever shaming the maidens, — lily and rose 

Confess thee, and each mild flame that 
glows 

In the clarified virginal bosoms of stones 
that shine, 

It is thine, it is thine: 

Thou chemist of storms, whether driving 

the winds a-swirl 
Or a-flicker the subtiler essences polar that 

whirl 
In the magnet earth, — yea, thou with a 

storm for a heart, 170 

Rent with debate, many-spotted with ques- 
tion, part 
From part oft sundered, yet ever a globed 

light, 
Yet ever the artist, ever more large and 

bright 
Than the eye of a man may avail of: — 

manifold One, 
I must pass from thy face, I must pass 

from the face of the Sun: 
Old Want is awake and agog, every wrinkle 

a-f rown ; 
The worker must pass to his work in the 

terrible town: 
But I fear not, nay, and I fear not the thing 

to be done; 
I am strong with the strength of my lord 

the Sun: 
How dark, how dark soever the race that 

must needs be run, t 8o 

I am lit with the Sun. 

Oh, never the mast-high run of the seas 
Of traffic shall hide thee, 



632 



CHIEF AMERICAN POETS 



Never the hell-colored smoke of the fac- 


And ever by day shall my spirit, as one 


tories 


that hath tried thee, 


Hide thee, 


Labor, at leisure, in art, — till yonder 


Never the reek of the tune's fen-politics 


beside thee i go 


Hide thee, 


My soul shall float, friend Sun, 


And ever my heart through the night shall 


The day being done. 


with knowledge abide thee, 


December, 1SS0. 1882. 



LIST OF REFERENCES 



LIST OF REFERENCES 1 

BRYANT 

EDITIONS 

*The Life and Works of William Cullen Bryant, 6 volumes : vols, i and ii, Biography ; 
vols, iii and iv, The Poetical Works ; vols, v and vi, Prose Writings : D. Appleton & Co., 1883- 
84. (The standard edition, edited hy Parke Godwin.) — *The Poetical Works, Roslyn Edi- 
tion: D. Appleton & Co., 1903. (An excellent edition, complete — except the translations from 
Homer — in one volume ; with chronologies, bibliography, etc.) — The Iliad of Homer, trans- 
lated into English Blank Verse ; The Odyssey of Homer, translated into English Blank Verse : 
Roslyn Edition, 4 volumes ; Students' Edition, 2 volumes : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES 

*Godwin (Parke), Biography of William Cullen Bryant, with extracts from his private cor- 
respondence, 1883. (The standard biography.) — *Bigelow (John), William Cullen Bryant 
(American Men of Letters Series), 1890. — *Bradley (W. A.), Bryant (English Men of Letters 
Series), 1905. 

Bartlett (D. W.), Modern Agitators, or Pen Portraits of Living American Reformers, 1855. 

— Brown (E. R.), The Life and Poems of John Howard Bryant, 1899. (Containing in the bio- 
graphical sketch many allusions to William Cullen Bryant also.) — Bungay (George W.), Off- 
Hand Takings ; or Crayon Sketches of the Noticeable Men of our Age : Biography of Bryant, 
1854. — *Century Association (N. Y.), The Bryant Festival at ' The Century,' Nov. 5, 1864. 
(An account of the celebration of Bryant's seventieth birthday, containing Lowell's poem On 
Board the Seventy-Six, poems by Holmes, Whittier, Bayard Taylor, George H. Boker, Thomas 
Buchanan Read, Julia Ward Howe, R. H. Stoddard, H. T. Tuckerman, etc., and addresses by 
Emerson, Bancroft, Samuel Osgood, etc.), 1865. — Century Association (N. Y.), Bryant Me- 
morial Meeting of the Century, Nov. 12, 1878. (Containing Stedman's The Death of Bryant, 
Bayard Taylor's Epicedium, R. H. Stoddard's The Dead Master, and an oration by John Big- 
elow.) — Cummington, Mass., Bryant Centennial Celebration. (Containing addresses by Parke 
Godwin, E. R. Brown, John Bigelow, Charles Dudley Warner, John White Chadwick, Charles 
Eliot Norton, G. Stanley Hall, etc., and poems by Julia Ward Howe and John H. Bryant), 1894. 

— *Curtis (G. W.), Orations and Addresses, vol. iii: William Cullen Bryant: His Life, Char- 
acter, and Writings. A Commemorative Address, Dec. 30, 1878. — Derby (J. O), Fifty Years 
among Authors, 1884. — Finley (John H.) and Calkins (E. E.), The Bryant Centennial; a 
Book about a Day, Galesburg, 1894. — Godwin (Parke), Commemorative Addresses. — Greer 
(F. H.), William Cullen Bryant, in Universal Biography of Men of Mark of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury. — Hawthorne, Passages from French and Italian Note-Books: May 22, 1858. — Hill 
(D. J.), William Cullen Bryant (American Authors), 1879. — Kirkland (Mrs. C), William Cul- 
len Bryant : in Homes of American Authors, 1853 ; the same, in Littje Journeys to the Homes of 
American Authors, 1896. — Palmer (Ray), Biography of Bryant, 1877. — Powers (H. N.), 
William Cullen Bryant : in R. H. Stoddard's The Homes and Haunts of our Elder Poets. — Sym- 
ington (A. J.), William Cullen Bryant, a biographical sketch, with selections, 1880. — Taylor 
(Mrs. Bayard), On Two Continents, 1905. — Tuckerman (H. T.), Thoughts on the Poets, 1846. 

— Walsh (William Shepard), Pen Pictures of Modern Authors, 1882. (Quotations from Haw- 
thorne, John Bigelcw, etc.) — Whitman, Specimen Days, June 13-14, 1878: Death of William 
Cullen Bryant. (Complete Prose Works, pp. 106-107.) — Wilson (J. G.), Bryant and his Friends : 
some reminiscences of the Knickerbocker writers, 1885. — *(The Diary of a Poet's Mother, a 

1 The more important books and essays are marked with an asterisk. For explanations regarding the arrange- 
ment of the Reference-Lists, see Preface. 



636 LIST OF REFERENCES 

daily record kept by Mrs. Bryant for fifty-three years, is announced for early publication ; it is 
to be edited by Professor Richard Jones.) 

CRITICISM 

Alden (Joseph), Studies in Bryant, with an introduction by William Cullen Bryant. (An ele- 
mentary school text, with questions on the poems.) — Burton (R.), Literary Leaders. — Cheney 
(J. V.), That Dome in Air. — *Collins (Churton), The Poetry and Poets of America. — Har- 
tung (A. E. G.), Ueber Robert Burns poetische Epistelnund iiber den nordamerikanischen Dich- 
ter William Cullen Bryant. — Howe (M. A. DeW.), American Bookmen. — Matthews (B.), 
Introduction to the Study of American Literature, chapter vi. — Mitchell (D. G.), American 
Lands and Letters. — Nadal (E. S.), Essays at Home and Elsewhere. — Newcomer (A. G.), 
American Literature. — Nichol (John), American Literature, an Historical Sketch. — Osgood 
(Rev. Samuel), Bryant among his Countrymen: The Poet, the Patriot, the Man. — Otto (W-), 
William Cullen Bryants poetische Werke und Uebersetzungen. — Palmer (G. H), William 
Cullen Bryant : in Atlas Essays, New York, 1877. — Pattee (Fred Lewis), History of Amer- 
ican Literature. — Poe (Edgar Allan), Works, Virginia Edition: vol. viii, pp. 1, 2, Poems, by 
William Cullen Bryant (January, 1835) ; vol. ix, pp. 26S-305, Poems, by William Cullen Bryant, 
Fourth Edition (June, 1837) ; vol. x, pp. 85-96, A Notice of William Cullen Bryant (May, 1S40) ; 
vol. xiii, pp. 125-141, William Cullen Bryant (April, 1846). — See also vol. xi, pp. 150, 194, 195, 
223. — Poet-Lobe, How to Study Bryant's Thanatopsis, in Poet-Lore, vol. vi, pp. 520-526. — 
Powell (Thomas), Living Authors of America, 1850. — Richardson (C. F.), American Lit- 
erature, vol. ii. — Saunders (Frederic), Character Studies. — Shepard (W. S.), The Literary 
Life. — *Stedman (E. C), Poets of America. — Stewabt (George, Jr.), Evenings in the Library. 
- — Stoddard (R. H), Introduction to the 'Household' and 'Roslyn' editions. — Taylor 
(Bayard), Critical Essays and Literary Notes. — *Thayeb (W. R.), Throne-makers and Portraits. 

— Tbent (W. P.), A History of American Literature. — Vincent (L. H.), American Literary 
Masters, 1905. — Whipple (E. P.), Literature and Life. — Whipple (E. P.), Men of Mark. — 
*Whitman, Specimen Days, April 16, 1881 : My Tribute to Four Poets. (Complete Prose Works, 
pp. 173, 174.) — Wilkinson (W. C), A Free Lance in the Field of Life and Letters: Mr. 
Bryant's Poetry. — Wilson (John), Essays, critical and imaginative : American Poetry, Bryant. 
(Originally in Blackwood's Magazine, 1832 ; vol. xxxi, pp. 646-664. A generous early apprecia- 
tion of Bryant.) — Woodbebry (G. E.), America in Literature, chapter ii. 

TRIBUTES IN VERSE 

Bates (Charlotte Fiske), Risk and Other Poems : The Poet's Birthplace ; The Poet's Death ; 
The Birthday after Death. — Boker (G. H), Bryant, Nov. 5, 1864.— *Chadwick (J. W.), Later 
Poems, William Cullen Bryant : Read on the Hundredth Anniversary of his Birth. — Hayne 
(Paul H), Bryant Dead. — *Holmes, Bryant's Seventieth Birthday. — Howe (Julia Ward), 
A Leaf from the Bryant Chaplet. — *Lowell, Fable for Critics. (Poetical Works, Cambridge 
Edition, pp. 131, 132.) — *Lowell, On Board the Seventy-six. — Read (T. B.), To Bryant. — 
Stedman, The Death of Bryant. — *Stoddard (R. H.), Vates Patriae. — Taylor (Bayard), 
Epicedium, William Cullen Bryant. — Tuckerman (H. T.), To William Cullen Bryant on his 
Seventieth Birthday. — Whittier, To a Poetical Trio in the City of Gotham. (Satirical. Written 
in 1832. Poetical Works, Cambridge Edition, p. 610.) — *Whittier, Bryant on his Birth- 
day, 1864. 

POE 

EDITIONS 

*Complete Works, Virginia Edition, 17 volumes (including Biography and Letters), edited 
by James A. Harrison : T. Y. Crowell & Co., 1902. (The standard edition, superseding all others, 
both by its completeness — especially in the section of criticism — and by its carefully edited text.) 

— Works, 4 volumes, edited, with a memoir, by R. W. Griswold, and with notices of Poe's life 
and genius by N. P. Willis and J. R. Lowell, New York, 1850-56, etc. (Badly arranged and 
unreliable. The Memoir in particular is not to be trusted.) — Works, 4 volumes, edited by 
John H. Ingram, Edinburgh, 1874-75, etc (The best British edition.) — Works, 6 volumes, 
edited, with memoir, by R. H. Stoddard : New York, A. C. Armstrong & Son, 1SS4. (The 



POE 637 

memoir is unsatisfactory.) — *Works, 10 volumes, edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, 
and notes, by E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry: Stone & Kimball, Chicago, 1894-95. 

— Works, 10 volumes, Knickerbocker Edition, with introduction by Charles F. Richardson : G. 
P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1904. 

The Raven and Other Poems : Wiley & Putnam, New York, 1845. — Poetical Works, 
with a notice of his life and genius, by James Hannay, London, 1852, etc. — Poetical Works, 
with memoir by C. F. Briggs, London and New York, 1858, etc. — Poems, with memoir by 
R. H. Stoddard, New York, 1872, etc. — Poems, with an essay on his poetry by Andrew Lang, 
London, 1881, etc. — Poems and Essays, edited, with memoir, by John fi. Ingram, London, 
1884. — Poetical Works, Canterbury Poets' Edition, London, 1886. — The Raven, The Fall 
OF the House of Usher, and Other Poems and Tales, edited by W. P. Trent, Riverside 
Literature Series, 1897. — The Best Poems and Essays of Poe, edited, with a new biograph- 
ical and critical study, by Sherwin Cody, 1908. — Poems, edited by Charles W. Kent, Mac- 
millan's Pocket Classics, 1904. — (There are many other one-volume editions of the poems, none 
of them to be fully trusted. Most of them follow the bad arrangement of the 1845 edition.) 

BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES 

See the Griswold, Hannay, Briggs, Ingram, Stoddard, Stedman- Woodberry, Lang, Richard- 
son, Cody, and Kent editions mentioned above. 

*Harrison (J. A.), Life and Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, 2 volumes, 1903. (Also as vol. i 
and vol. xvii of the Virginia Edition of Poe's Works.) (The latest full biography. More than 
half of the Letters are here published for the first time.) — Didier (E. L.), The Life and Poems 
of Edgar Allan Poe, 1876. — Ingram (John H.), Edgar Allan Poe, in Atlas Essays, no. 2, 1877. 

— Gill (W. F.), Life of Poe, London, 1878. — Ingram (John H), Edgar Allan Poe : His Life, 
Letters and Opinions. 2 volumes, London, 1880 ; second edition, 1 volume, 1886. (This bio- 
graphy is perhaps the fairest and best-balanced in its judgment of Poe, but is now somewhat out 
of date. In the second edition no aecount was taken of new facts brought out by Prof. Wood- 
berry.) — *Woodberry (G. E.), Edgar Allan Poe (American Men of Letters Series), 18S5- (The 
first life of Poe based on thorough investigation of the facts ; and still the best critically ; but 
unsympathetic.) — Lauvriere (E.). Edgar Poe, sa vie et son ceuvre, 1904. (A thorough study ; 
emphasizing pathological considerations.) — *Trent (W. P.), Edgar Allan Poe. (Soon to be 
published, in the English Men of Letters Series ; and likely to prove the best brief biography.) 

Benton (Joel), In the Poe Circle; with some account of the Poe-Chivers controversy, and 
other Poe memorabilia, 1899. — Dargan (Olive T.), Semiramis and Other Plays, 1904. (The 
third play, ' The Poet,' deals with Poe.) — Gildersleeve (B. L.), Poe as a Lecturer : in Harri- 
son's New Glimpses of Poe. — Griswold (R. W.), Correspondence. — Harrison (J. A.), New 
Glimpses of Poe, 1901. —Kent (Charles W.), The Unveiling of the Bust of Edgar Allan Poe 
in the Library of the University of Virginia, October 7, 1899 ; being an account of Poe's con- 
nection with the University of Virginia, etc. — Minor (B. B.), The Southern Literary Messenger, 
1834 to 1863, 1905. — Moran (John J.), "A Defense of Edgar Allan Poe, 1885. —Rice (Sara 
S.), Edgar Allan Poe : A Memorial Volume, 1877. — Stoddard (R. H.), Recollections, Personal 
and Literary, edited by Ripley Hitchcock, 1904. — Walsh (William Shepard), The Literary 
Life : Edgar Allan Poe. — Weiss (Susan A. T.), The Last Days of Edgar Allan Poe : in 
Scribner's, March, 1878. — Weiss (Susan A. T.), Reminiscences of Poe : in the Independent, May 
5 and August 25, 1904: vol. lvi, p. 1010; vol. lvii, p. 443. — *Whitman (Sarah Helen), Poe 
and his Critics, 1860; second edition, 1885. — Whitman (Walt), Specimen Days: Broadway 
Sights (Prose Works, p. 12.) — *Willis (N P.), Hurrygraphs, 1851. (Also in Griswold' s and 
other editions of Poe's Works.) — Wilson (J. G.), Bryant and his Friends. — Woodberry 
(G. E.), The Poe-Chivers Papers : in the Century, January and February, 1903 : vol. xliii, pp. 
435-47, and 545-58. — Newcomer (A. G.), The Poe-Chivers Tradition reexamined : in the 
Sewanee Review, January, 1904 : vol. xii, p. 20. 

CRITICISM 

Barbey d'Aurevilly (Jules), Literature e"trangere. — Bakine (Arvede) [Mme. C^cile 
Vincens], Nevros^s : Hoffmann; Quincey ; Edgar Poe; Gerard de Nerval. — Barrett (Eliza- 
beth), in Home's Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, letter of May 12, 1845. — Baudelaire 
(Charles), Edgar Poe, sa vie et ses oeuvres : in his flistoires extraordinaires, translated from 
Poe. — Baudelaire (Charles), Notes nouvelles : in his Nouvelles Histoires extraordinaires. — 



638 LIST OF REFERENCES 

Beers (H. A.), Initial Studies in American Literature. — Benton (Joel), Baudelaire and Poe : 
in his In the Poe Circle. — Betz (L. P.), Poe in tier frauzosisehen Litteratur. — Brow NINO (E. 
B.), The Let tors of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning- : vol. i. p, 429. — Burton 
(K.), Literary Leaders. — Ciiapwiok (J. W.), Toe: in Chambers's New Cyclopaedia of English 
Literature, vol. iii. — Collins (Churton), The Poetry and Poets of America. — DeSHIiEB (C. 
D.), Afternoons with Authors : Sonnets of Poe. — France (Anatole), La vie littoraire, vol. iv. 

— FRUIT (J. P.), The Mind and Art of Poe's Poetry. — Fullek-Ossoli (Margaret), Life With- 
out and Life Within. (A review of The Raven and other Poems, L845.) — *Ga.TBS (L. E.), Studies 
and Appreciations. — HlossE (Ldniund), Quest ions at Issue: lias America produced a poet? — 
Geuener (Gustav), Notes on the Influenco of E. T. A. Hoft'mann upon Edgar Allan Poe : in (he 
Publications of the Modern Language Association, vol. xix, p. 1, — Gruener # (Gustav), Poe's 
Knowledge of German : in Modern Philology, vol. ii, p. L25. — Hennequin (Kntilo), Eerivains 
franoises. — IIowe (M. A.DeW.), American Bookmen. — HuTTON (R. 1 [,), Criticisms on Con- 
temporary Thought and Thinkers. (Review of vol. i of Ingram's edition). — *Kknt (0. W.), 
Poe the Poet. (Introduction to vol. vii of the Virginia Edition.) — Lang (A.), Letters to Dead 
Authors. — *Lano (A.). Preface to his edition of Poe's Poems. — Lawton (W. C), Introduc- 
tion to the Study of American Literature. — Linton (W. J.), Pot-pourri. (Parodies on Poe's 
poems, and according- to the author — definitive criticism on his work.) — Lowell (J. 11.), 
Edgar Allan Poe : in Graham's Magazine, February, 1845; reprinted in vol. iii of Griswold's 
edition of Poe's Works ; in vol. x of the Stedman-Woodberry Edition ; and in vol. i of the Vir- 
ginia Edition. — *Marie (11. W), Poe's Place in American Literature. (Introduction to vol. 
ii of the Virginia Edition.) — Mallakme (St6phane), Divagations: Edgar Poe. — Matthews 
(B.), Introduction to the Study of American Literature, chapter xii. — MATTHEWS (B.), Pen 
and Ink. (On the prose works.) — Mauolaik (Camille), L'art en silence : Edgar Poe ideologue. 

— Mitchell (0. G.), American Lands and Letters, vol. ii. — More (P. E.), Shelburne Essays, 
First Series: The Origins of Hawthorne and Poe. — Nenoio.ni (E.), Letteratura inglese. (Re- 
view of Heunequin's essay.) — Nichol (J.), American Literature. an historical study. — Onper- 
D0NK (J. L.), History of Anieriean Verse. — *Richaedson (C. F.), American literature, vol. ii, 
chapter iv. — Robertson (.1. M.), New Essays towards a Critical Method : Poe. — Salt (II. 
S.), Literary Sketches. — *Stedman (E. C), Poets of America. — *Stkdman (E. C), Introduction 
to vol. x of the Stedman-Woodberry edition of Poe's Works. — *S\viniu>kne, Under the 
Microscope, pp. 54, '>"». — To l man (A. II.), The Views about Hamlet and other essays : Was 
Poe Accurate P (Chiefly on 'The Gold Bug.') — Trent (W. P.), A History of American Litera- 
ture. — *Trknt (W. P.), Southern Writers: Introduction to the Selections from Poe. — Vin- 
cent (L. 11.). American Literary Masters. — Wendell (B.), A Literary History of America. — 
Whitman, Specimen Hays : Edgar Poe's Significance. (Complete Prose Works, p. 140.) — Wood- 
berry (G. E.), America in Literature, chapter iv. — Wyzewa (T. de), Eerivains Strangers. 

TRIBUTES IN VERSE 

*Boner (John II.), Poe's Cottage at Fordham: in the Century, vol. xxxix, p. 85 ; am! in 
Stedman's American Anthology, p. 487. — FawOETT (Edgar), Edgar A. Poe: in Edgar Allan 
Poe, a Memorial Volume. — Hayne (Paul IL), Poe : in Edgar Allan Poe, a Memorial Volume. 

— *Lowell, A Fable for Critics. — Mallarme (Ste"phane), Vers et Prose : Le Tombean 
d'Edg-ar Poe (Sonnet). — Malone (Walter), Poems: Poe's Cottage at Fordham. — Osgood 
(Frances Sargent), Poems, 1850 : The Hand that Swept the Sounding- Lyre. — *Stockard (A. 
J.), Fugitive Lines : Sonnets on Poe's Cottage. — *Tabb (John B.), To Edgar Allan Poe : in The 
Unveiling- of the Bust of Edgar Allan Poe. — Tyrrell (Henry), In the Ragged Mountains: in 

The Unveiling of the Bust of Edgar Allan Poe. — ^Whitman (Sarah Helen), Poems, 1878, pp. 
72-100, and 196-197. Wilson (Robert Burns), Memorial Poem : in The Unveiling of the 
Bust of Edgar Allan Pfle. — Winter (William), At Poe's Grave : in Edgar Allan Toe, a Memo- 
rial Volume. — Winter (William), The Wanderers : Poem read at the Dedication of the 
Actors' Monument to Poe. 

EMERSON 

EDITIONS 

Works, Little Classic Edition, 12 volumes ; Works. Riverside Edition, 12 volumes ; Com- 
plete Works, Centenary Edition, 12 volumes : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. (In any of these edi 
tions the Poems can be obtained separately in one volume. The *Centenary Edition has abou 



EMERSON 639 



6fty poems and fragments not contained in previous editions, and valuable notes by Dr. E. W. 
Emerson.) — Poems, New Household Edition, 1 volume : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. — *Cobbe- 

■POMDEirOB OF CaRLYLK AND E.MKBKON, 2 volumes. — CoBBKSPONDENCE OF JOHN STERLING 
AND EmEEBON, 1 volume. — f 'ORRESI'ONDENCE BETWEEN EMERSON AND HeBMAN GbiMM, 1 

volume. — *Lettebs fro.m Emerson to a Friend, 1 volume. — Selected Poems, edited by 
George H. Browne, Riverside Literature Series. 

BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES 

Bolton (S. K.), Emerson (Chiswiek Series). — *Cabot (J. B.), Memoir of Ralph Waldo Em- 
erson, 2 volumes, L887. (The authorized biography.) — Caet (E. L.), Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
Pod and Thinker, 1904 — *EmersON (E. W.), Emerson in Concord : A Memoir. (Very impor- 
tant ; a necessary supplement to Cabot's Memoir.) — Gabnett (Richard), Emerson (Great Writ- 
ers Series). — HOLMES (<). W.), Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Men of Letters Series), 1885. 

— Ibeland (Alex.), Ralph Waldo Emerson: His Life, Genius, and Writings. Second Edition, 
augmented, 1882. — Sanborn (F. B.), Emerson (Beacon Biographies), 1901. 

AlbEE (J.), Remembrances of Emerson, 1901. — Alcott (A. B.), Concord Days, 1872. — 
Alcott (A. B.), Emerson, 1865. — Alcott (A. B.), Ralph Waldo Emerson : An Estimate of his 
Character and Genius, in prose and verse, 1882. (Containing the preceding essay, and three 
poems.) — ALCOTT (A. B.), Ralph Waldo Emerson : Philosopher and Seer, 1888. (Identical -with 
the preceding.) — Alcott (Louisa M.), Reminiscences of Ralph Waldo Emerson: in Parton's 
Some Noted Princes, Authors, and Statesmen, 1880. — Bartlett (G. B.), Concord, Historic, 
Literary, and Picturesque. — *Beemer (Frederika), Homes of the New World ; impressions of 
America. Translated by Mary Howitt, JH53.— Bungay (George W.), Off-Hand Takings, 1854. 

— Clabkk (Charles and Mary Cowden), Recollections of Writers : Emerson. — Clabke (J. F.), 
Nineteenth Century Questions, 1897. — Conway (M. D.), Autobiography, Memories, and Expe- 
riences, 1904. — Conway (M. I).), Emerson at Home and Abroad. — Cooke (G. W.), Ralph Waldo 
Emerson: His Life, Writings, and Philosophy, 1881. — Cubtis (G. W.), Homes of American 
Authors. 1853 ; the .same, in Little Journeys to the Homes of American Authors, 1890. — *Cubtis 
(G- W.), Literary and Social Essays. — Cubtis (G. W.), The Easy Chair: Emerson Lecturing. — 
Fields (Mrs. Annie), Authors and Friends, 1890. — Fbothingham (O. B.), Memoir of William 
Henry Channing. — Fbothingham (O. B.), Theodore Parker: A Biography, 1874. — Gilman 
(Arthur), Poets' Homes. Pen and Pencil Sketches of American Poets and their Homes. Second 
Series, 1880. — Gbiswold (H. T.), Home Life of Great Authors. — Hale (E. E.), Balph Waldo 
Emerson ; with two early essays of Emerson's, 1899. — Haskins (D. G.), Ralph Waldo Emerson : 
His Maternal Ancestors ; with Some Reminiscences of Emerson. — Haavthobne, Passages from 
the American Note-Books, 1868, vol. ii : Sept. 28, 1841 ; Aug. 5, 15, 22, Oct. 10, 1842 ; April 8, 11, 
1843; May 14, 1850. — *Hawthohne, The Great Stone Face. — Hawthobne, Mosses from an 
Old Manse: The Old Manse. — Higginson (T. W.), Contemporaries, 1899. — Howe (Julia 
Ward), Reminiscences, 1819-1899, 1899. — Ibeland (Alex.), In Memoriam, Ralph Waldo Emer- 
son. — Landob (W. S.), An Open Letter to Emerson: in Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth 
Century. — *Lowell, Literary Essays : Emerson, the Lecturer. — Mabtineau (Harriet), Auto- 
biography, Period iv, Section iii. — Robinson (H. C), Diary, vol. ii, chapter xxii. — Sanbobn 
(F. B.), and Haebis (W. T.), Life of A. Bronson Alcott, 1893. — Sanborn (F. B.), Emerson 
and his Friends in Concord, 1890. — Sanborn (F. B.), The Personality of Emerson, 1903. — San- 
born (F. B.), Ralph Waldo Emerson : in Stoddard's The Homes and Haunts of Our Elder 
Poets, 1881. — Scuddeb (H. E.), Men and Letters; Essays in Characterization and Criticism: 
Emerson's Self. — *Steabns (F. P.), Sketches from Concord and Appledore : Emerson Him- 
self. — Thobeait, Miscellanies. — Teowbbidge (J. T.), My Own Story, 1904. — Wai.sh (Wil- 
liam Shepard), Pen Pictures of Modern Authors, 1882. (Quotations from N. P. Willis, Miss 
Bremer, and Hawthorne.) — Whipple (E. P.), Recollections of Eminent Men. — ^Whitman, Speci- 
men Days : A Visit, at the Last, to Ralph Waldo Emerson ; Boston Common — More of Emer- 
son ; By Emerson's Grave. (Complete Prose Works, pp. 181-184, 189-190.) — Willis (N. P.), 
Hurrygraphs, 1853. — Wolfe (T. F.), Literary Shrines ; The Haunts of Some Famous American 
Authors, 1895.— *Woodbuby (C. J.), Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1890. 

CRITICISM 

Ames (Rev. C. G.), Memorial Address, April 30, 1882. — *Arnold, Discourses in America. 
— Babtol (C. A.), Radical Problems: Transcendentalism. — Bates (Katharine Lee), Ameri- 






640 LIST OF REFERENCES 

can Literature. — *Beers (H. A.), Points at Issue: Emerson's Transcendentalism. — Benton 
(Joel), Emerson as a Poet. — Bijvanck (W. G. C), Poezie en leven in de 19de Eeuw : Emerson 
en Walt Whitman. — Birkell (Augustine), Obiter Dicta. — Burroughs (John), Birds and Poets, 
•with Other Papers. — Burroughs (John), Emerson and the Superlative: in Essays from The 
Critic. — Burroughs (John), Indoor Studies : Matthew Arnold's View of Emerson. — Burton 
(R.), Literary Leaders. — Chadwick (J. W.), Emerson: in Chambers's New Cyclopaedia of 
English Literature. — *Chapman (John Jay), Emerson and Other Essays. — Cheney (J. V.), 
That Dome in Air. — Concord, Mass., Social Circle, The Centenary of the Birth of Ralph 
Waldo Emerson. — Crozier (J. B.), The Religion of the Future. — Dana (W. F.), Optimism of 
Ralph Waldo Emerson. — Dowdbn (E.), Studies in Literature : The Transcendental Movement 
and Literature. — Eells (J.), Emerson: A Tribute, May 24, 1903. — Eliot (C. W.), Emerson as 
Seer: in the Atlantic, June, 1903. — Evans (E. P.), Beitrage zur amerikanischen Litteratur und 
Kulturgeschichte. — *Everett (C. C), Essays Theological and Literary : The Poems of Emerson. 
— Federn (Karl), Essays zur amerikanischen Litteratur. — Forster (Joseph), Four Great 
Teachers. — Francke (Kuno), Emerson and German Personality : in the International Quarterly, 
vol. viii, p. 93. — Friswell (J. H.), Modern Men of Letters Honestly Criticised. — Frothing- 
ham (0. B.), Transcendentalism in New England. — Froude (J. A.), Short Studies on Great 
Subjects, vol. iii: Representative Men. — Fuller-Ossoli (Margaret), Life Without and Life 
Within: Emerson's Essays. — Garnett (Richard), Essays of an ex-Librarian. — Gifford (Lord 
Adam), Lectures Delivered on Various Occasions. — Gordon (G. A.), Emerson as a Religious In- 
fluence: in the Atlantic, vol. xci, p. 577. — Grierson (Francis), The Celtic Temperament, and 
Other Essays. — *Grimm (F. Hermann), Fiinfzebn Essays, Erste Folge ; Ralph Waldo Emerson 
(Essay of 1861) ; same essay, in Neue Essays iiber Kunst und Litteratur. — Grimm (F. Hermann), 
Fiinfzehn Essays, Dritte Folge : Ralph Waldo Emerson. (Essay of 1S82, on Emerson's Death.) — 
Grimm (F. Hermann), Essays on Literature, translated by Sarah Adams. (Translations of both 
the preceding essays.) — Guernsey (A. H.), Ralph Waldo Emerson: Philosopher and Poet. — 
Hawthorne (J. ), Confessions and Criticisms : Emerson as an American. — Higginson (T. W.), 
and Boynton (H. W.), A Reader's History of American Literature. — Hill (A. S.), The Influ- 
ence of Emerson : in Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, vol. v, Child Memorial 
Volume. — Hunt (T. W.), Studies in Literature and Style: Emerson's English Style. — *Hut- 
ton (R. H), Criticisms on Contemporary Thought and Thinkers. — James (Henry, Sr.), Literary 
Remains. — James (Henry, Jr.), Partial Portraits : Cabot's Life of Emerson. — Johnson (C. F.), 
Three Americans and Three Englishmen. — Kennedy (W. S.), Clews to Emerson's Mystic 
Verse : in the American Author, June, 1903. — Kernahan (C), Wise Men and a Fool : A Poet 
who was not a Poet. — Lalana (P. F. K.), Emerson viewed with an Oriental Eye. — Langham 
(J. J.), An Englishman's Appreciation of Emerson. — Lawton (W. C), Introduction to the Study 
of American Literature. — Lawton (W. C), The New England Poets. — Lee (G. S.), Emerson 
as a Poet : in the Critic, vol. xlii, p. 416 ; May, 1903. — Lindsay (J.), Essays, Literary and Phi- 
losophical. — The Literary World, Emerson Number, May 22, 1880. — Lockwood (F. C), 
Emerson as a Philosopher. A Thesis presented to the Northwestern University. — Loforte- 
Randi (Andrea), Nelle letterature straniere. — Mabie (H. W.), Backgrounds of Literature. — 
*Maeterlinck (Maurice), Le Trevor des Humbles : Emerson. — Manning (J. M.), Half Truths 
and the Truth. — Massachusetts Historical Society, Tributes to Longfellow and Emerson. — 
Mead (E. D.), The Influence of Emerson. — Mitchell (D. G.), American Lands and Letters. — 
Montegut (Emile), Un penseur et poete am^ricain : in the Revue des deux Mondes, Aug. 1, 
1847, vol. xix, pp.' 462-494.— More (P. E.), Shelburne Essays, First Series: The Influence of 
Emerson. — Morley (J.), Critical Miscellanies, vol. i. — Nichol (J.), American Literature, an 
Historical Sketch. — Onderdonk (J. L.), History of American Verse. — Patmore (C), Princi- 
ple in Art. — Pattee (F. L.), History of American Literature. — Powell (T.), The Living 
Authors of America, 1850. — Richardson (C. F.), American Literature, vol. i, chapter ix (prose) ; 
vol. ii, chapter v (poetry). — Roz (Firmin), L'id^alisme americain : in the Revue des deux 
Mondes, vol. lxix. — Sanborn (F. B.), The Genius and Character of Emerson. Lectures (by sev- 
eral authors) at the Concord School of Philosophy. — Sanborn (F. B.), Emerson and Contempo- 
raneous Poets : in the Critic, vol. xlii, p. 143 ; May, 1903. — *Schmidt (J.), Neue Essays : Ralph 
Waldo Emerson. — Santayana (G.), Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. — Schonbach (A. E.), 
Ueber Lesen und Bildigung. — Searle (January) [George S. Phillips], Emerson, His Life and 
Writings. — Sharp (R. F.), Architects of English Literature. — * Stearns (F. P.), The Real and 
Ideal in Literature : Emerson as a Poet. — Stearns (F. P.), Cambridge Sketches : The Emer- 
son Centennial ; Emerson and the Greek Poets. — *Stedman (E. C), Poets of America. — Ste- 
phen (L.), Studies of a Biographer, vol. iv. — Stewart (George, Jr.), Evenings in the Library. — 
Stewart (George, Jr.), Essays from Reviews: Emerson the Thinker. — Thayer (W. R.), The 



LONGFELLOW 641 



Influence of Emerson. — *Trent (W. P.), A History of American Literature. — Vincent (L. H.), 
American Literary Masters, 1905. — Whipple (E. P.), American Literature and Other Papers : 
Emerson as a Poet ; Emerson and Carlyle. — Whitman, Specimen Days, April 16, 1881 : My 
Tribute to Four Poets. (Complete Prose Works, p. 173.) — Whitman, Letters to William Sloane 
Kennedy : in Poet-Lore, February, 1895. 

TRIBUTES IN VERSE 

Alcott (A. B.), Ion ; A Monody : in his Ralph Waldo Emerson, etc., 1882 and 1888. — *Ar- 
nold (Matthew), Poetical Works: Sonnet, written in Emerson's Essays. — Chadwick (J. W.), 
Later Poems: Ralph Waldo Emerson, May 25, 1903. — Channing (Ellery), Poems: Ode, to 
Emerson. — Cone (Helen Gray), Oberon and Puck : Ralph Waldo Emerson. — Cranch (C. P.), 
Ariel and Caliban, with Other Poems: Ralph Waldo Emerson. — *Holmes, At the Saturday 
Club. — *Holmes, For Whittier's Seventieth Birthday. — *Hosmer (F. L.), Hymn for the Fiftieth 
Anniversary of Emerson's Divinity School Address. — Johnson (R. U.), The Winter Hour and 
Other Poems: To Ralph Waldo Emerson, September, 1881. — Johnson (R. U.), The Winter 
Hour: Written in Emerson's Poems. — Larcom (Lucy), Wild Roses of Cape Ann and Other 
Poems: R. W. E., May 25, 1880. — Lazarus (Emma), To R. W. E. : in Sanborn's The Genius 
and Character of Emerson. — *Lowell, A Fable for Critics. — Lowell, Agassiz, section iii, 
stanza iv. — Moulton (Louise Chandler), In the Garden of Dreams : Ralph Waldo Emerson. — 
Parsons (T. W.), Poems : Emerson. — Sanborn (F. B.), The Poet's Countersign. An Ode : in 
Alcott's Ralph Waldo Emerson, etc. — *Thomas (Edith), Emerson: in the Critic, May, 1903. 

— *Whittier, The Last Walk in Autumn, stanza xiv. — *Woodberry (G. E.), Poems, 1903: 
Ode read at the Emerson Centenary. 

LONGFELLOW 

EDITIONS 

*Complete Works, Riverside Edition, 11 volumes (vols, i-vi, Poetical Works; vols, vii, viii, 
Prose Works ; vols, ix-xi, Translation of Dante) ; Craigie Edition, illustrated, 11 volumes ; 
Standard Library Edition, illustrated, 14 volumes (including the Life by Samuel Longfellow) : 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. — Complete Poetical Works, *Riverside Edition, 6 volumes ; 
Handy- Volume Edition, 5 volumes ; *Cambridge Edition, 1 volume ; New Household Edition, 
1 volume ; etc. : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES 

*Longfellow (Samuel), Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with Extracts from his 
Journal and Correspondence, 3 volumes, 1891. (The standard biography, and in every way sat- 
isfactory. It combines and supersedes the Life, 2 volumes, 1SS6, and the Final Memorials, 1 
volume, 1887.) — *Carpenter (G. R.), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Beacon Biographies), 
1901. (The best brief biography.) — Robertson (Eric S.), Life of Longfellow (Great Writers 
Series), 18S7. — Higginson (T. W.), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Men of Letters 
Series), 1902. 

Austin (G. L.), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : His Life, his Works, his Friendships, 1S83. 

— Conway (M. D.), Autobiography, Memories and Experiences, 1904. — Curtis (G. W.), 
Homes of American Authors, 1853 ; the same, in Little Journeys to the Homes of American 
Authors, 1896. — Davidson (Thomas), H. W. Longfellow, 18S2 ; also in the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, 9th edition. — *Fields (Mrs. Annie), Authors and Friends : Longfellow, 1807-1882, 
1896. — Greene (G. W.), Life of Nathaniel Greene (especially the ^Dedication). — Hale (Rev. 
E. E.), Fireside Travels : Cambridge Thirty Years Ago. — Higginson (T. W.), Old Cambridge, 
1899. — Holmes, in Tributes to Longfellow and Emerson, by the Massachusetts Historical 
Society. — *Howells (W. D.), My Literary Friends and Acquaintances. — Kennedy (W. S.), 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : Biography, Anecdote, Letters, Criticism, 1S82. — Lanman 
(Chas.), Haphazard Personalities, 1886. — Macchetta (Blanche Roosevelt), The Home Life of 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : Reminiscences of many Visits at Cambridge and Nahant, during 
1880, 1881 and 1882. — Maine Historical Society, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Seventy- 
fifth Birthday, 1882. — Massachusetts Historical Society, Tributes to Longfellow and 



642 LIST OF REFERENCES 

Emerson, 1882. — Mitfokd (M. R.), Recollections of a Literary Life, 1851. — Norton (C. E.), 
in Tributes to Longfellow and Emerson, by the Massachusetts Historical Society, — Norton 
(C. E.), in Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, vol. iv, 1888. — Rossktti (W. M.), 
Lives of Famous Poets, 1878. — Saunders (Frederic), Character Studies, with some personal 
Recollections, 1894. — Stearns (F. P.), Cambridge Sketches, 1905. — Stoddard (R. H.), 
Homes and Haunts of our Elder Poets, 1878. — Trowbridge (J. T.), My Own Story, 1904. — 
Underwood (F. H.), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a Biographical Sketch, 1882. 

CRITICISM 

Badbau (Adam), The Vagabond, 1859. — Bandow (Karl), Die lyrischen und epischen 
Gediehte des Amerikaners Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 185(3. — Bates (K. L.), American 
Literature. — Baumgartner (A.), Longfellow's Dichtungen : Ein literarisches Zeitbild aus dem 
Geistesleben Nordamerika's, 1887. — Bechgek (A.), Longfellow : Literarisch-hiographische 
Studie, 1883. — Bent (S. A.), The Wayside Inn, its History and Literature, 1897. — Bungay (G. 
W.), Traits of Representative Men, 1882. — Burton (R.), Literary Leaders, 1903. — Camerini 
(Eugenio), Nuovi profili letterari, 1875. — Chadwick (J. W.), in Chambers's Cyclopaadia of 
English Literature, vol. iii, 1904. — Cheney (J. V.), That Dome in Air. — Coleridge (Sara), 
Memoir and Letters, vol. ii, chapter vi (on 'Evangeline' and 'Hyperion'). — Curtis (G. W), 
Literary and Social Essays, 1894. — Depret (Louis), La Po^sie en Am^rique, 1870. — Depret 
(Louis), Chez les Anglais, 1879. — Deshler (C. D.), Afternoons with Authors : The Sonnets of 
Longfellow, 1879. — Devey (J.), A Comparative Estimate of Modern English Poets, 1873. — 
Fiske (John), The Unseen World, and other Essays: Longfellow's Dante, 1902. — Friswell 
(J. H.), Modern Men of Letters Honestly Criticised, 1870. — Gannett (W. C), Studies in 
Longfellow (Riverside Literature Series). — Gostwick (Joseph), English Poets, 1875. — Hat- 
ton (Joseph), Old Lamps and New: Tennyson and Longfellow. — Hazeltine (M. W.), Chats 
about Books, Poets and Novelists, 1883. — Henley (W. E.), Views and Reviews, 1890. — 
Hutton (R. H.), Criticisms on Contemporary Thought and Thinkers. — Johnson (C. F.), Three 
Americans and Three Englishmen, 1886. — Knortz (Karl), Longfellow: Literar-historische 
Studie. — Lang (Andrew), Letters on Literature, 1889. — Lawton (W. O), Introduction to the 
Study of American Literature. — Lawton (W. C), The New England Poets. — Matthews 
(B.), Introduction to the Study of American Literature. — Newcomer (A. G.), American Liter- 
ature. — Nichol (John), American Literature, an Historical Sketch, 1882. — Palmer (George 
Herbert), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : in Atlas Essays, No. 2, 1877. — Patsch (E.), Long- 
fellow und seine Stellungin der nordamerikanischen Litteratur, 1883. — Pattee (F. L.), A His- 
tory of American Literature. — Poe (Edgar Allan), Works, Virginia Edition: vol. x, pp. 39, 40, 
Hyperion (October. 1839) ; vol. x, pp. 71-80, Voices of the Night (February, 1840) ; vol. xi, pp. 
64-85, Ballads and Other Poems (March, April, 1842) ; vol. xii, pp. 41— 10(>, Imitation — Plagi- 
arism — Mr. Poe's Reply to Outis — The Longfellow War (March 87 April 5, 1845) ; vol. xiii, 
pp. 54-73, The Spanish Student (August, 1845). — Prins (A. de), Etudes am^ricaines, 1877. 
— *Richardson (C. F.), American Literature, vol. ii, chapter iii. — Schonbach (A. E.), Gesam- 
melte Aufsiitze zur neueren Litteratur. — Sharp (R. F.), Architects of English literature. — 
Sprenger (R.), Zu Longfellow's poetischen Werken, 1903. — Siemt (O.), Der Stabreim bei 
Longfellow, 1897. — *Stedman (E. C.), Poets of America. — Stewart (George, Jr.), Evenings in 
the Library, 1S78. — Stewart (George, Jr.), Essays from Reviews, 1892. — Taylor (B.), Critical 
Essays and Literary Notes, 1880. — Trent (W. P.), A History of American Literature. — 
Varnhagen (Hermann), Longfellow's Tales of A Wayside Inn und ihre Quellen, 1884. — 
Vincent (L. H.), American Literary Masters, 1905. — Wendell (B.), A Literary History of 
America. — Whipple (E. P.), Essays and Reviews : Poets and Poetry of America. — Whitman, 
in Essays from the Critic : The Death of Longfellow. — *Whitman, Specimen Days : My Tribute 
to Four Poets ; The Death of Longfellow. (Complete Prose Works, pp. 173, 174 ; 180, 187.) — 
Whittier, Prose Works, vol. ii : Longfellow's Evangeline. — Williams (S. F.), Essays, Criti- 
cal, Biographical, and Miscellaneous. — Winter (William), English Rambles: In Memory of 
Longfellow. — Winter (William), Old Shrines and Ivy. — Worden (J. Perry), Uber Longfel- 
low's Beziehnngen zur deutschen Litteratur. — (For references, especially on ' Evangeline ' and 
' Hiawatha,' see the notes at the beginning of those poems.) 



WHITTIER 643 



TRIBUTES IN VERSE 

Bates (Charlotte Fiske), Risk and Other Poems: The Craigie House; the same, revised, in 
Cambridge Sketches by Cambridge Authors. — *Bates (Katharine Lee), Longfellow : InMemo- 
riam. — *Bunner (H. O), Airs from Arcady and Elsewhere : Longfellow. — Cone (Helen Gray), 
Oberon and Puck : Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. — *DoBSON (Austin), In Memoriam : in the 
London Athenaeum, no. 2840, p. 411. — Cranch (C. P.), Ariel and Caliban, with other Poems : 
Longfellow. — *Fawcett (Edgar), Romance and Revery : Longfellow in Westminster Abbey. — 
Freeland (H. W.), Elegy on the Death of Longfellow. — Gilder (R. W.), Lyrics : Longfellow's 
' Book of Sonnets.' — *Hayne (Paul H.), Complete Poems : Personal Sonnets, To Henry Wads- 
worth Longfellow ; To Longfellow (On Hearing he was 111) ; Longfellow Head. — Holmes, To 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, May 27, 1808. — *Holmes, For Whittier's Seventieth Birthday. — 
*HoLMES, At the Saturday Club. — Holmes, Our Dead Singer, H. W. L. — Lowell, A Fable for 
Critics. — *Lowell, To H. W. L. on his Birthday, 27th February, 18G7. — Lowell, Agassiz, 
section iii, stanza iv. — Mifelin (Lloyd), The Slopes of Helicon and Other Poems. — Nichol 
(John), in Stedman's Victorian Anthology, p. 255. — Riley (J. W.), Green Fields and Running 
Brooks : Longfellow. — Savage (Minot J.), Poems : The People's Poet. — Thomas (Edith M.), 
Vale et Salve : in the Critic, 1882. — Watson (William), Wordsworth's Grave and Other Poems : 
On Longfellow's Death. — *Whittier, The Poet and the Children. — Whittier, On a Fly- 
Leaf of Longfellow's Poems. — Winter (William), Wanderers: Longfellow. — (See also a 
large number of poems to Longfellow, pp. 307-339 of Kennedy's Lonyfellow, from The Literary 
World, The Critic, Baldwin's Monthly, etc., etc.) 

WHITTIER 

EDITIONS 

*Complete Works, Riverside Edition, 7 volumes (vols, i-iv, Poetical Works; vols, v-vii, 
Prose Works) ; Amesbury Edition, illustrated, 7 volumes ; Standard Library Edition, illustrated, 
9 volumes (including the Life by S. T. Pickard) : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. — Poetical Works, 
*Riverside Edition, 4 volumes ; Handy- Volume Edition, 4 volumes ; *Cambridge Edition, 1 
volume ; New Household Edition, 1 volume ; etc. : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES 

*PiCKARD (Samuel T.), Life and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier, 2 volumes, 1894. (The 
standard biography. Excellent.) — Linton (W. J.), Life of John Greenleaf Whittier (Great 
Writers Series), 1893. (Of little value, except for its bibliography.) — Burton (Richard), John 
Greenleaf Whittier (Beacon Biographies), 1901. — Higginson (T. W.), John Greenleaf Whittier 
(English Men of Letters Series), 1902. — *Carpenter (G. R.), John Greenleaf Whittier (Ameri- 
can Men of Letters Series), 1903. (The best brief biography.) 

Bacon (E. M.), Literary Pilgrimages in New England: The Amesbury Home of Whittier ; 
The Country of Whittier. — Bremer (Frederika), Homes of the New World, 1853. — Bungay 
(George W.), Off-Hand Takings, 1854. — Butterworth (H), The Home of J. G. Whittier, in 
Parton's Some Noted Princes, Authors, and Statesmen. — *Claflin (Mrs. M. B.), Personal Re- 
collections of John Greenleaf Whittier, 1893. — Davis (Miss Rebecca T.), Gleanings from Merri- 
mac Valley. — *Fields (Mrs. Annie), Whittier: Notes of his Life and of his Friendships, 1893 : 
the same, in Authors and Friends, 1896. — Garrison (Wm. Lloyd), John Greenleaf Whittier: 
An Address Delivered before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, December 17, 1892. — 
Garrison (W. P. and F. J.), William Lloyd Garrison ; the Story of his Life told by his Children, 
1S89. — Gosse (Edmund), A Visit to Whittier : in the Bookman, 1899, vol. viii, p. 459. — Grimke 
(A. H.), William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist, 1891. (Numerous allusions to Whittier.) — 
Griswold (H. T.), Home Life of Great Authors. — Haverhill, Mass., A Memorial of John 
Greenleaf Whittier, 1893. — Higginson (T. W.), Contemporaries. — Higginson (T. W.), Cheerful 
Yesterdays, 1899. — Kennedy (W. S.), John Greenleaf Whittier, the Poet of Freedom (American 
Reformers Series), 1892. — Kennedy (W. S.), John Greenleaf Whittier, his Life, Genius, and 
Writings, 1882. — May (S. J.), Some Recollections of our Anti-slavery conflict, 1869. — Mitford 
(M. R.), Recollections of a Literary Life, 1851. — *Pickard (S. t.), Whittier-Land, 1904. — 
Pickard (S. T.), Whittier as a Politician, Illustrated by his Letters to Prof. Elizur Wright, 



644 LIST OF REFERENCES 

1900. — Porter (Maria S.), Recollections of L. M. Alcott, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Robert 
Browning, with Memorial Poems, 1893. — Rantoul (R. S.), Some Personal Reminiscences of the 
Poet Whittier : in the Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, April, 1901. — Sargent 
(Mrs. John T.), Sketches and Reminiscences of the Radical Club of Chestnut Street, 18S0. — 
Spofford (Harriet P.) : in J. L. and J. B. Gilder's Authors at Home, 18S8. — Stearns (F. P.), 
Sketches from Concord and Appledore, 1895. — Stoddard (R. H.), Homes and Haunts of our 
Elder Poets, 1878. — Taylor (Mrs. Bayard) and Scudder (H. E.), Life and Letters of Bayard 
Taylor, 1884. (Numerous allusions to Whittier.) — Trowbridge (J. T.), My Own Story, 1904. — 
*Underwood (F. H.), John Greenleaf Whittier, a Biography, 1883. — Ward (Elizabeth Stuart 
Phelps), Chapters from a Life. — Whittier (C. C), Genealogy of the Whittier Family, 1622- 
18S2, 1882. — Wolfe (T. F.), Literary Shrines : The Haunts of Some Famous American Au- 
thors. 

CRITICISM 

Bates (K. L.), American Literature. — Brace (Donald G.), Whittier as an Anti-Slavery Poet : 
in the Columbia Monthly, April-May, 1904. — Burton (R.), Literary Leaders, 1903. — Collins 
(Churton), The Poetry and Poets of America. — Cheney (J. V.), That Dome in Air. — Dall 
(Mrs. Caroline Wells Healey), Barbara Frietchie, a Study, Boston, 1S92. — Flower (B. 0.), 
Whittier, Prophet, Seer and Man. — Friends' School, Providence, R. I., Proceedings at Pre- 
sentation of Portrait of Whittier. — Hawkins (C. J.), The Mind of Whittier, 1904. — Hazel- 
tine (M. W.), Chats about Books. — Howe (M. A. DeW.), American Bookmen, 1898. — 
Lawton (W. C), The New England Poets. — Lawton (W. C), Introduction to the Study of 
American Literature. — Matthews (B.), Introduction to the Study of American Literature. — 
Maulsby (D. L.), Whittier's New Hampshire : in the New England Magazine, vol. xxii, p. 631, 
1900. — Mead (E. D.), The Eulogy: in the Haverhill Memorial of John Greenleaf Whittier. — 
Mitchell (D. G.), American Lands and Letters, 1899. — Newcomer(A. G.), American Litera- 
ture. — .Nichol (J.), American Literature. — Onderdonk (J. L.), History of American Verse. — 
Richardson (C. F.), American Literature, vol. ii, chapter vi. — Stedman (E. C), Poets of 
America. — Stewart (George, Jr.), Evenings in the Library. — Stewart (George, Jr.), Essays 
from Reviews. — Taylor (B.), Critical Essays and Literary Notes, 1880. — Teincet (Jean), 
Un poete ameVicain: in the Revue britannique, 1899, vol. v, p. 5. — Trent (W. P-), A History of 
American Literature. — Vincent (L. H.), American Literary Masters, 1905. — Wendell (B.), 
Stelligeri and Other Essays. — Whipple (E. P.), American Literature and other Papers : Ameri- 
can Literature. — Whipple (E. P.), Essays and Reviews : Poets and Poetry of America. — Whit- 
man (W.), Specimen Days, April 16, 1881. (Complete Prose Works, p. 173). — Woodberry 
(G. E.), Makers of Literature, 1900. 

TRIBUTES IN VERSE 

Bates (Charlotte Fiske),Risk and Other Poems : Oak Knoll, Danvers ; On his Seventieth Birth- 
day. — Carleton (Will), Ode to Whittier : in the Haverhill Memorial of John Greenleaf Whittier. 
— Chad wick (J. W.), Later Poems : John Greenleaf Whittier, Read before the Brooklyn Insti- 
tute on the Anniversary of his Birthday, 1892. — Cranch (C. P.), Ariel and Caliban, with Other 
Poems: To John Greenleaf Whittier, December 5, 1877. — Garrison (Wm. L.), Verses Read 
at the Whittier Memorial Gathering, October 7, 1892 : printed with his Address delivered before 
the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, December 17, 1892. — Hayne (Paul H.), Complete 
Poems : To the Poet Whittier on his Seventieth Birthday. — *Holmes, For Whittier's Seventieth 
Birthday. — Holmes, To John Greenleaf Whittier on his Eightieth Birthday. — *Holmes, In 
Memory of John Greenleaf Whittier : December 17, 1807 — September 7, 1892. — Larcom (Lucy), 
Wild Roses of Cape Ann and Other Poems: John Greenleaf Whittier, December 17, 1877. — 
Longfellow, The Three Silences of Molinos. — *Lowell, A Fable for Critics. — *Lowell, 
To Whittier on his Seventy-fifth Birthday. — Porter (Maria S.). Recollections of L. M. Alcott, 
John Greenleaf Whittier, and Robert Browning : John Greenleaf Whittier. — Sangster (Mar- 
garet), Whittier : in Stedman's American Anthology. — Shurtleff (E. W.), Whittier, in Pro-? 
eeedings at the Presentation of Portrait of Whittier, Friends' School, Providence. — *Stedman, 
Poetical Works : Ad Vatem. — Taylor, Poetical Works : A Friend's Greeting, 1877. — *Whit- 
man ( W.), Leaves of Grass : As the Greek's Signal Flame (for Whittier's Eightieth Birthday). — 
Whitney (A. D. T.), White Memories : John Greenleaf Whittier. — (See also the ' Whittier 
Number' of the Literary World, December, 1877.) 



HOLMES 645 



HOLMES 

EDITIONS 

*Complete Works, Riverside Edition, 14 volumes (vols, i-xi, Prose Works ; vols, xii-xiv, 
Poems) ; Autocrat Edition, illustrated, 13 volumes (in this and the following edition the poems 
occupy only two volumes) ; Standard Library Edition, illustrated, 15 volumes (including the 
Life by John T. Morse, Jr.) : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. — Poetical Works, *Riverside Edition, 
3 volumes; *Cambridge Edition, 1 volume; Household Edition, 1 volume; etc.: Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co. 

BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES 

*Morse (John T., Jr.), Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 2 volumes, 1896. (The 
standard biography.) — Crothers (S. M.), Oliver Wendell Holmes. (To be published in 1906, 
in the American Men of Letters Series.) 

Ball (James), Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and his Works ; Being a brief Biographical and 
Critical Review, London, 1878. — Fields (Mrs. Annie), Authors and Friends, 1896. — Gris- 
WOLD (H. T-), Home-Life of Great Authors. — Higginson (T. W.), Old Cambridge. — 
*Howells (W. D.), My Literary Friends and Acquaintances. — Jerrold (Walter), Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, London, 1893. (A compilation.) — Kennedy (W. S.), Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
Poet, Litterateur, Scientist, 1883. — Mitford (M. R.), Recollections of a Literary Life, 1851. — 
Noble (J. H.), Impressions and Memories : Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1S95. — Rollins (A. W.), 
Oliver Wendell Holmes : in J. L. & J. B. Gilder's Authors at Home. — Smalley (G. W.), 
Studies of Men : Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1895. — Smith (J. E. A.), The Poet among the Hills ; 
Oliver Wendell Holmes in Berkshire, his Berkshire poems, etc., 1895. — Trowbridge (J. T.), 
My Own Story, 1904. 

CRITICISM 

Burton (R.), Literary Leaders, 1903. — *Collins (Churton), The Poetry and Poets of 
America. — The Critic, Holmes Number, August 30, 1884. — Curtis (G. W-), Literary and 
Social Essays, 1895. — Haweis (H. R.), American Humorists. — Howe (M. A. DeW.), American 
Bookmen. — Lang (A.), Adventures among Books: Oliver Wendell Holmes. — Lawton (W. 
O), Introduction to the Study of American Literature. — Lawton (W. O), The New England 
Poets. — Lodge (H. O), Certain accepted Heroes, and Other Essays in Literature and Politics : 
Dr. Holmes, 1897. — Matthews (Brander), Introduction to the Study of American Literature, 
chapter xiii. — Meynell (Alice), The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays : Dr. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes. — Newcomer (A. G.), American Literature. — Onderdonk (J. L.), History of 
American Verse. — Payne (W. M.), Little Leaders, 1895. — Richardson (C. F.), American 
Literature, vol. ii, chapter vi. — Stearns (F. P.), Cambridge Sketches: Doctor Holmes. — 
*Stedman (E. C), Poets of America. — *Stephen (L.), Studies of a Biographer, 1898. — 
Stewart (George, Jr.), Evenings in the Library. — Stewart (George, Jr.), Essays from 
Reviews. — Taylor (B.), Critical Essays and Literary Notes : Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1877. — 
Trent (W. P.), A History of American Literature, 1903. — Vincent (L. H.), American Liter- 
ary Masters, 1905. — Vossion (Louis), Un poete americain : Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1896. — 
Wendell (B.), A Literary History of America, 1900. — Whipple (E. P.), Essays and Re- 
views : Poets and Poetry of America, 1848. — Whittier, Prose Works, vol. iii : Mirth and 
Medicine. — Whittier, Prose Works, vol. ii : Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

TRIBUTES IN VERSE 

Cranch (C. P.), Ariel and Caliban : To Oliver Wendell Holmes, set. 70, — *Gosse (Edmund), 
An Epistle to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, on his Seventy-fifth Birthday, August 29. 1884. — 
Larcom (Lucy), Wild Roses of Cape Ann : Oliver Wendell Holmes, August 29, 1879. — Lathrop 
(Geo. Parsons), Youth to the Poet (To Oliver Wendell Holmes) : in Scribner's Monthly, vol. xix. 
— Lowell, A Fable for Critics. — Lowell, Agassiz, section iii, stanza iii. — *Lowell, To 
Holmes on his Seventy-fifth Birthday. — *Trowbridge (J. T.), Filling an Order. — *Whittier, 
Our Autocrat. — Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes on his Eightieth Birthday. — *Whittier, 
To Oliver Wendell Holmes. — *Winter (William) Wanderers : Oliver Wendell Holmes, or 
the Chieftain. — (See also the Critic, Holmes Number, August 30, 1884, for Poems by Julia 
C R. Dorr, R. W. Gilder, E. E. Hale, Bret Harte, Edith M. Thomas, etc.) 



646 LIST OF REFERENCES 

LOWELL 

y 

EDITIONS 

*Complete Wokks, Riverside Edition, 11 volumes; Standard Library Edition, illustrated, 11 
volumes ; Elmwood Edition, illustrated, 16 volumes (including' the Letters of Lowell and the 
Life by H. E. Scnidder) : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. — Wokks, Popular Edition, 6 volumes : 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. — Poetical Works, *Riverside Edition, 4 volumes ; *Cambridge Edi- 
tion, 1 volume ; Household Edition, 1 volume : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. — *Letters, edited by 
Charles E. Norton, 2 volumes : Harper & Brothers ; the same, 3 volumes : Houghton. Mifflin & 
Co. (The three-volume edition of the Letters is sold only as a part of the Elmwood Edition of 
Lowell's Complete Works.) — Impressions of Spain, compiled by J. B. Gilder. (Official de- 
spatches, etc., during Lowell's ministry to Spain.) 

BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES 

*Scudder (H. E.), James Russell Lowell, a Biography, 1901. (The standard biography.) — 
*Greenslet (F.), James Russell Lowell, his Life and Work, 1905. (The best brief biographi- 
cal and critical study.) — Hale (E. E., Jr.), James Russell Lowell (Beacon Biographies), 1899. 

Bremer (Frederika), Homes of the New World, 1S53. — Briggs (C. F.), James Russell 
Lowell : in Homes of American Authors, 1S53 ; the same, in Little Journeys to the Homes of 
American Authors, 1S96. — Conway (M. D.), Autobiography, Memories, and Experiences, 1904. 

— Griswold (H. T.),Home Life of Great Authors. — Hale (Rev. E. E.), James Russell Lowell 
and his Friends. — Higginson (T. W.), Book and Heart : Last Years in Cambridge. — Higgin- 
son (T. W.), Old Cambridge. — Higginson (T. W.), Cheerful Yesterdays. — Higginson (T. 
W.), Contemporaries. — * Ho wells (W. D.), Literary Friends and Acquaintances. — The 
Literary World, Lowell Number, June 27, 1885. — Lowndes (F. S. A), Literary Asso- 
ciations of the American Embassy : in the Fortnightly Review, June, 1905. — Pond (George E.), 
Lowell at Harvard : in the Liber Scriptorum of the New York Authors' Club. (Reminiscences of 
Lowell's class in Dante). — Sanborn (F. B.), James Russell Lowell : in Homes and Haunts of our 
Elder Poets, 187S. — Smalley (G. W.), London Letters and Some Others: Lowell in England, 
1891.— Stead (W. T.), Character Sketches, 1S91. —Stearns (F. P.), Cambridge Sketches, 
1905. — Trowbridge (J. T.), My Own Story, 1904. — Underwood (F. H.), James Russell 
Lowell, 1882. — Underwood (F. H.), The Poet and the Man, Recollections and Appreciations 
of James Russell Lowell, 1S93. — Wendell (B.), Stelligeri, and Other Essays Concerning 
America : Mr. Lowell as a Teacher. 

CRITICISM 

Beals (S. B.), Outline Studies in James Russell Lowell, his Poetry and Prose. — Burton 
(R.), Literary Leaders. — Chadwick (J. W.), Lowell : in Chambers's New Cyclopaedia of Eng- 
lish Literature, vol. iii. — Cheney (J. V.), That Dome in Air. — Collins (Churton), The Po- 
etry and Poets of America. — Curtis (G. W), James Russell Lowell, an Address, 1892 ; the same, 
in his Orations and Addresses, vol. iii ; also, in Memorials of Two Friends, N. Y. , 1902. — Desh- 
ler (C. D.), Afternoons with the Poets: Sonnets of Lowell. — Haweis (H. R.), American Hu- 
morists. — Howe (M. A. DeW.), American Bookmen. — *James (Henry, Jr.), Essays in London 
and Elsewhere. — Lawton (W. C), The New England Poets. — Lawton (W. O), An Introduc- 
tion to the Study of American Literature. — Mabie (H. W.), My Study Fire : the Letters of 
Lowell. — MacArthur (H.), Realism, and Romance. — Matthews (B.), Introduction to the 
Study of American Literature. — Meynell (A.), The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays. — 
Newcomer (A. G.), American Literature. — Nichol (J.), American Literature. — Poe, Com- 
plete Works, Virginia Edition, vol. xi : Poems by James Russell Lowell ; vol. xiii : The Fable 
for Critics. — Richardson (C F.), American Literature, vol. ii, chapter vii. — Roosevelt (Theo- 
dore), James Russell Lowell, in the Critic, vol. ix, p. 86. — Stedman (E. C), Poets of America. 

— Stewart (George, Jr.), Essays from Reviews. — Stewart (George, Jr.), Evenings in the 
Library. — Taylor (B.), Critical Essays and Literary Notes. — *Trent (W. P.), A History of 
American Literature. — Vincent (L. H.), American Literary Masters, 1905. — Watson (W.), 
Excursions in Criticism : Lowell as a Critic. — *Wendell (B.), A Literary History of America. 

— Whipple (E. P.), Essays and Reviews, 1S61. — Whipple (E. P.), Outlooks on Society, Litera- 



WHITMAN 647 



ture and Politics: Lowell as a Prose Writer. — Whitman (W. ), Letter to Sylvester Baxter, 
beginning, ' Camden, N. J., Aug. 13, '91. Let me send my little word too to James Russell 
Lowell's memory.' (Boston Public Library MS.) — Wilkinson (W. C), A Free Lance in tbe 
Field of Life and Letters. — *Woodberry (G. E.), Makers of Literature. 

TRIBUTES IN VERSE 

Aldrich (T. B.), Unguarded Gates and Other Poems: FJmwood. — Bolton (Mis. S. K.). 
The Inevitable and Other Poems : James Russell Lowell. — Cone (Helen Gray), The Ride to 
the Lady and Other Poems: The Gifts of the Oak. — Ceanch (C. P.), The Bird and the Bell, 
with Other Poems : J. R. L. on his Fiftieth Birthday. — Ceanch (C. P.), Ariel and Caliban, 
with Other Poems : J. R. L., on his Homeward Voyage. — Emerson, in Greenslet's James Rus- 
sell Lowell, p. 144. — Field (Eugene), James Russell Lowell. — Gildee (R. W.), Two Worlds 
and Other Poems: J. R. L., on his Birthday. — Gildee (R. W.), Tbe Great Remembrance: 
Lowell. — Holmes, Farewell to James Russell Lowell. — Holmes, At a Birthday Festival : To 
James Russell Lowell. — Holmes, To James Russell Lowell. — Holmes, For Whittier's Seven- 
tieth Birthday. — Holmes, To James Russell Lowell on his Seventieth Birthday. — *Holmes, 
James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891. — *Longfelloyt, The Herons of Elmwood. — Paesons (T. 
W.), James Russell Lowell: in the Literary World, August 29,1891. — Savage (Rev. Minot 
J.), These Degenerate Days. — Stoey (W. W.), To James Russell Lowell: in Blackwood's 
Magazine, October, 1891: also in the Critic, October 10, 1891. — *Whittiee, A Welcome to 
Lowell. — *Whittiee, James Russell Lowell. — (See also the Literary World, June 27, 1885, 
for poems by Wm. Everett, Rose Terry Cooke, Charlotte Fiske Bates, Will Carleton, Margaret 
J. Preston, Clinton Scollard, Oscar Fay Adams, etc.) 



WHITMAN 

EDITIONS 

*Leaves of Geass, including Sands at Seventy, Good-bye my Fancy, Old Age Echoes (Whit- 
man's Complete Poetical Works), and A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd- Roads, 1 volume ; 
*Complete Prose Works, 1 volume ; *Calamus, A Series of Letters Written during the Years 
1868-1880, by Walt Whitman to a young friend (Peter Doyle), edited with an Introduction by R. 
M. Bucke ; *The Wound Dresser, A Series of Letters Written from the Hospitals in Washing- 
ton during the War of the Rebellion, edited by R. M. Bucke : Small, Maynard & Co. — *Notes 
and Fragments : Left by Walt Whitman and now edited by Dr. R. M. Bucke : Privately Printed, 
1899. (Also in the Camden Edition, below.) — In Re Walt Whitman, edited by his Literary Ex- 
ecutors : David McKay, 1833. (Contains nine articles by Whitman.) — ^Complete Works, Cam- 
den Edition, 10 volumes : G. P. Putnam's Sons. (Sold only by subscription.) — Walt Whitman's 
Diaey in Canada, with Extracts from other of his Diaries and Literary Notebooks, edited by 
W. S. Kennedy, 1904: Small, Maynard & Co. — An Ameeican Peimee, edited by Horace 
Traubel, 1904: Small, Maynard & Co. — (The above are the only authorized or in any way com- 
plete editions of Whitman's writings.) — Leaves of Geass : T. Y. Crowell & Co. (A reprint of 
the 1860 edition.) — Leaves of Geass : David McKay. (Containing only such poems as had ap- 
peared before 1872, with variorum readings — not always accurate — from earlier editions.) — 
*Selections feom the Peose and Poetey of Walt Whitman, edited by O- L. Triggs. (The 
authorized volume of selections, and by far the best.) — *Poems, selected and edited by W. M. 
Rossetti: London. 186S; new edition, 1886. — *Leaves of Geass, Edition of 1860, a facsimile 
reproduction of Whitman's copy, with his notes for revision, is announced by Horace Traubel 
for publication by subscription. 

BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES 

*Bccke (R. M.), Walt Whitman, 1883. (An authorized biography.) — *In Re Walt Whit- 
man, edited by his literary executors, 1893. (Designed to supplement and complete the author- 
ized biography.) — *Bucke (R. M. ), Haened (T. B.), and Traubel (Horace), Life of Whitman: 
in vol. i of the Camden Edition of Whitman's Works. — *Platt (I. H.), Walt Whitman (Beacon 



LIST OF REFERENCES 
Biographies)) 1904. (The latest and best brief book on Whitman.) — *Tratjbibi (Horace), With 

Walt Whitman in Camden. L905. (A diary record of Whitman's life and conversation during his 
last years." 1 — Volumes on Whitman aro soon to be added to the American Men of letters Series 
(by Pliss Perry), and to the English Men ot Letters Series (bj G. K- Carpenter). 

AbnOUD (Edwin), Seas and Lands, IS91, pp. 78-84. — Askuam (Richard) [ Henry Bryan 
BlNNs], Lite of Whitman. London, UVo. — Pa/ ax of xtf (Leon). Walt Whitman, l'homme, 
Peenvre. la pivphotie. Paris, 1905 or 1906. — BuCKE (R MA. The Man Walt Whitman : fa In Eta 
Wait Whitman. — *BuRROUGHS (John), Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person, lSt>7. — 
CAMDEN'S Compliments to Walt Whitman. May SI, LSS9, edited by Horace Tranbel. LS89. 
(Containing' Whitman's Autobiographic Note and Response : Poems by Rhys and Tranbel ; 
Addresses by R. W. Gilder, Julian Hawthorne, Hamlin Garland, etc; and letters from Tenny- 
son, Rossetti. Morris. Powden, Stodman. Whittiov. etc.) — C&ARKE (Wm.), Wall Whitman. 
London. 1892. — The CONSERVATOR, many artieles on Whitman. — DONALDSON (T. C.), Walt 
Whitman, the Man, IS96. — GxLHCAN (Arthur), Pen and Pencil Sketches of American Poets and 
their Homes. IST^ 1 . — Cot iv> (R P.), Walt Whitman among the Soldiers: in Gems from Walt 
Whitman, 1889. — GOUUD (R P.), Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman. L900. — HUBBARD (Elbert), 
Walt Whitman: ."> Little Journeys to the Homes of American Authors, lSiH>. — Johnstos 
(John), Diary Notes of a Visit to Walt Whitman and Some of His Friends, in LS90. Privately 
primed. 1890, published, 1898 — ^Ksnnrd? (W. S.), Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, with 
Extracts from his Letters and Remarks on his Writings, LS96. — MOBSB (Sidney HA. My Sum- 
mer with Walt Whitman. 1SST : fa In Be Walt Whitman. — O'CONNOR (W. lb). The Good Cray 
Poet, a Vindication, 1866. (Reprinted in Buoke's Walt Whitman.) — *0'CoNNOR (W. IP, Three 
Tales. Cf.c Carpenter represents Whitman.) — O'Connor (W. D.), The Good Cray Poet. Sup- 
plemental: fa In Re Walt Whitman. — Posskttx (W. M.b Lives of Famous Poets, ISTS. — 
Sfx.yvyx (George), Walt Whitman in Camden: in J. L. & J. B, Gilder's Authors at Home. ISSS. 
— SKINNER (C. ML), Walt Whitman as an Editor: in the Atlantic, November, 1908, vol. xcii, 
p. 679. — Stoddard (R ID. Homes and Haunts of our Elder Poets. — Traubei (Horace), 
Walt Whitman at Date: in the "New England Maga.ino. May. L891, n. s. vol. iv, pp. 275-292 J 
also in In Re Walt Whitman. — TrAUBEL (Horace), Walt Whitman : Poet and Philosopher and 
Man : in Lippinoott's Maga;ine. vol. xlvii. p. 2ST. IS91 ; also in In Re Walt Whitman. — TRAUBEL 
(Horaoe), Lowell-Whitman, a Contrast: ;';; Poet-Lore. January, 1892. — *Traubbx (Horace), 
Notes from Conversations with George W. Whitman, 1S98 : i>< In Re Walt Whitman. — TRAUBEL 
(Horace). Conversations with Walt Whitman : in the Arena. January . 1896 — *TRAU BRL (Horace), 
editor. Walt Whitman Fellowship Papers. — TRAUBEL (Horace), editor. At the Grave-side of 
Walt Whitman. — ^Trow bkipge (J. T.), Reminiscences of Walt Whitman: in the Atlantic, 
vol. Ixxxix. p. 163, February, 1902. — *Tkowbkxx^gk (J, T.), My Own Story, 1904. — Wox.fk 
(T. F.), Literary Shrines, the Homes of Some Famoxis American Axxthors : A Hay with the Good 
Gray Poet. 1895, 

CRITICISM 

Austin (A.), Poetry of the Period. — Bijya>vk (W. G. C). Poezie en Leven in do 10de 
Eeuw: Emerson en Walt Whitman. — BORN (Helena). Whitman's Ideal Pemoeraev and Other 
Writings. 1902. — Bvchaxax (P.). David Gray and Other Essays. 1868. — *BuCHANAK (R.), 
The Fleshly School of Poetry: note, on p. 96 — BUCHANAN (ID, A Look Pound Literature: 
The American Socrates. 1886. — BuCKE | P. M.). Walt Whitman and the Cosmic Sense, in In Re 
Walt Whitman. — BrCKE (R. M.), Cosmic Consciousness. 1901. — Pvkkv (Charles Bell). The 
Open Road, or the Highway of the Spirit : An Inquiry into Whitman's Absolute Selfhood. A 
Thesis Presented to Cornell University. — BURROUGHS (John). Birds and Poets: The Plight of 
the Eagle, ISTS. — BURROUGHS (John). Walt Whitman and his Recent Critics, in In Pe Walt 
Whitman. — BrKKOi'OH? (John). Art for Life's Sake, in the Dial, October. 1898. — ♦BUR- 
ROUGHS (John), Whitman: A Study, iSSHi — Burton (E.), Literary Leaders. L908. — CAR- 
PENTER (Edward), Angels' Wings : Wagner, Millet, and Whitman. ISPS. — *ChAPMAN (J. J.), 
Emerson and Other Essavs. — Chenky (J. V.), That Dome in Air, 1895. — CuniFvn (P.), 
Larghi Orizzonti : Walt Whitman e Parte nuova. — Clxffoxsp (W. K.), Leetxxres and Addresses : 
Cosmic Emotion. — The CONSERVATOR, many artieles on Whitman. — Cox way (M. lb), Walt 
Whitman, »n the Fortnightly Review, October 15, 1865. (Quoted, in part, in Walsh's Pen Pic- 
tures of Modern Anthors.) — *P>ov\'pf.>" (Edward). Studies in Literatxire, ITS'J-IST" : The Poetry 
of Democracy, Walt Whitman. (From the Westminster Review. July, 187.1). — *Ex,x.is (Have- 
lock), The New- Spirit. 1S90. — *Emex?sox. Letter to Whitman, quoted in Piatt's Walt Whit- 
man, pp. 21, 2$. — "^Emf.kson. Letter ta Carlyle, May 6, L856: The Correspondence of Carlyle 



WHITMAN' 649 



an'J hmer-.on. vol ii p. / . ■'.y.ii.v.'js, in ''•'■ . Talk--; with Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 

12 or, 1899. — F< 



an' 

Poet*: Introduction. — Gambebaie (Luig eelti (Italian tea selee- 

t.ion 1 iron Leaves oi Grass) i Introduction, 1887. — • Gakbesade (Luigi), La Vita e le Open 
di Walt. Whitman: in './"> Bivista dltalia, roL i, p. 181 ; translated Ln par*, in the f . 
September, 1904,- ';a/ (William), Walt. Whitman: Bis Be 

Melbourne, 1 (95. —*QriLCBBNn (Anne), An Englishwomi . .. I Whitmar. 

Late Letter* to W. .M. Bossetti: i« if. II. Gilchrist's Anne G 

i jo •' -, mi In Be Walt. Whitman. *3uxnBSn (Anne), A Confession ot Faith, f« U. EL CKL- 
Christ's Anne Gilchrist, Her Life and Writings, US T o/m in B. P. Gould's Anne Gilchrist 
Walt. Whitman. — *Gomb (Edmund), Critical K . 'J ,), Walt. 

Whitman: Man and Poet, I '/.iimif. (William Norman), Modern Poet-Propl 

critical an'J interpretative: Wait. Whitman the Camdei 97- Basked (T. B.), The 

Poetoi [romortality; in [n Be Walt Whitman- — Hashed (T. B.), Walt Whitman ami 

Walt Whitman and Physique; Walt Whitman an-: . Publishers: 

viii of die Camden Edition. — Bieorssos (T. W.)« Contemporaries, 1899. — BoufBH 
(Edmond), Walt Whitman's Poetry, a Stud] election, 1902.— Howe (M.A. DeW.), 

American Bookmen, - B, Jr.)* Walt Whitman's Letts 

tare, April L6 ; 1 (B Jr.), The War and J.. The Wound 

eratnre, May 7, 1898. — Jasbacovs (P.), La Poena di Walt Whitman, e I'Evolnzkme delle 
Forme Bitmiche, Turin. 1898. — Keebbdt (W 8.), The Pool man, 1886. — K. 

(Kail;, Vorwort nod Etnleitung (introducing the German translation of selected poei 
Knortz and Zurich. 1889; translated, in In Be Walt " Ksobtz (Karl), 

Walt. Whitman; Der Diebter der Demokratie, 1899. — Laeieb (C. D.), Walt Whitman : u< Me 
Chantanqnan, 1892, vol. sv, pp. 311-313. — *L 1866 to 1881 : To Bayard Taylor, 

Pebrnai • — Lasikb, The English Novel and it-. Development; Lecture iii. — Lx 

b (B.), Walt. Whitman, an Address. — *Mabts HI. W.;. Backgrounds ot Literatnre: 
America in the Poems of Walt Whitman, 1908. — *Macfhaj£ (Andrew) Essai in Puritanism, 
1905.— MatsABD (Mrs. M. T.), Walt. Whitman, the Poet of the Wider .Selfhood, 1903.— 
MaTSABD (Lanrens), Walt Whitman' h Comradeship : in the Whitman Fellowship Papers. — 

Neecbtsi (E.), Letteratura inglese: U Poeta della Ohierra amerieana. — Newcomeb (A. G.), 
American Literatnre. — Sichos. John;. American Literature, an Historical Sketch. 1882. — 

Noi'.i.f (( dies in American Literature. 1898. — *Sot.i. (Boden), Essays on Poetry 

and I'-. I Walt Whitman. 1886. — Notes (Carleton E.), Whitman's Messag 

Eoung .Man : Ml tAc Conservator, January. 1905. — OSE .i American 

Ver-;e. 1901 (G. L.), Art in Theory: Whitman as> a Romanticist. — BbVS (E.), 

Poems by Walt Whitman (The Canterh Introduction.] C. Pj, 

American Literatnre. — Bobebtsow (J. M.), Walt Whitman, Poet and Democrat, Edinburgh, 
1884. — Bodlestos (T. W.), Debet Wordsworth and Walt Whitman, Dresden, 1883;fra> 
tn [n Re Walt. Whitman. — / l;o-i:n j (W. M.), Poems of Whitman, Selected and Edited : Pre- 

08. — Bossbto fW. M.;, Bush in Bossetti Pre-Bapbaelitism. (Allu:-..'. 
Whitman, pp. 134, 147, 159-160.) — Sadies (W. M.), Walt Whitman. Two Addresses: The 
Great. Side of 'Walt Whitman; The Questionable Side of Walt Whitman. 1899. — Sastataea 
(George), Walt Whitman, A Dialogue: »« (/"- Harvard Monthly. May, 1890. — *SastavaEa 
(George), Interpretations of Poetry and Beligion : The Poetry of Barbarism, 1900. — Santa- 
yana (George), Introduction to the Selections from Walt Whitman: t« G. B. Tar:.-: 
American Prose. — Sabbaztb (Gabriel), La Benaissance de la poesie an^ : -1889: 

Walter Whitman; </'>; same, translated by Harrison 8. Morris: «V< In Be Walt Whitman. — 
Scbxaf (Johannes), Walt Whitman. Lyrih desehat noir, Pan! Verhnne. — Scheldt Miudolf), 
iasker; Litteratur-Stndier, Copenhagen, 1882 ; translated, in Jn Be Walt Whitman. 
— 'Sj of America, 1885. — *StEVE»SOE (B. L.), Familiar Studies of Men 

and Books, 1882. — Stbvbssos, Miscellanies, voL iL — Swiebdbse, William Blake, A Critical 

E»»ay, ]8(i8. — *Swibbdbsb, Under the Microscope, 1872. — •SwrsBtrBSE, Studies in Prose and 

r: Whitmania, 1894 (From the Fortnightly Renew, August 1. 1887.) — *8tejqedb (J. 

Essays, 1890, roLii: Democratic Art, with Special Reference to Walt Whitman; */«; wotc, 

(fl Essays Speculative and Suggestive. — *8vMO«D* (J. A.), Walt Whitman, a Study, 1893. — 

*Tbateb (W. B.), Throne-Makers and Portraits. — *Tkkm fW. P of American 

Literature. — Tbioos (O. L.), Browning and Whitman, a Study in Democracy, 1893. — Tbkhm 

CO. L.), Selections from Whitman'-; Prose and Poetry: Introduction, 1898. — TsDXBDS ' W. B.), 

Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass: An Introduction. London. 1905. — Vdjcbbt (L. II j. 
American Literary Masters, 1905. — Vo>' E> - D£ (A.), Walt. Whitman and Arno Holz : tfl Poet- 



650 LIST OF REFERENCES 

Lore, June, 1905. — Wendell (B.), A Literary History of America, 1900. — *Whitman, Walt 
Whitman and his Poems ; Leaves of Grass ; An English and an American Poet : in In Re Walt 
Whitman. — Prefaces to Leaves of Grass : in Complete Prose Works. — A Backward Glance 
o'er Travel' d Roads : in Leaves of Grass, final edition. — Wilkie (James), The Democratic 
Movement in Literature, 18S6. — Wyzewa (T. de), Ecrivains Strangers, 1S99. 

TRIBUTES IN VERSE 

*Barker (Elsa), To Walt Whitman: in the Conservator, 1903. — Barlow (George), From 
Dawn to Sunset : Walt Whitman. — Block (L. J.), The New World and Other Verse : Walt 
Whitman. — *Bunnek (H. G), Airs from Arcady and Elsewhere : Home, Sweet Home, with 
Variations : vi, Walt Whitman. (The best of all parodies on Whitman's style, and at the same 
time a genuine tribute to him.) — Brown (J. H), Poems Lyrical and Dramatic : To Walt 
Whitman. — D'Annunzio (Gabriele), Poema Paradisiaco, p. 216. — Garland (Hamlin), Walt 
Whitman : in In Re Walt Whitman. — *Gilder (R. W.), A Wondrous Song : in the Conservator, 
June, 1905. — Horton (George), in In Re Walt Whitman, p. 22. — Law (James D.), Dreams 
o' Hame and Other Scotch Poems : A Few Words to Walt Whitman. — Lloyd (J. William), 
Wind-Harp Songs: Mount Walt Whitman. — Maynard (Laurens), For Whitman's Birthday, 
1895: in the Conservator, June, 1895. — Morris (H. S), Madonna and Other Poems: Walt 
Whitman; also in Stedman's American Anthology. — Piatt (J. J.), To Walt Whitman the 
Man: in the Cosmopolitan, November, 1892. — Rhys (Ernest), A London Rose and Other 
Poems : To Walt Whitman on his Seventieth Birthday : also in Camden's Compliments to Walt 
Whitman. — *Stedman (E. C), Walt Whitman, March 30, 1892. — *Symonds (J. A.), Life and 
Death, a Symphony : in In Re Walt Whitman, pp. 1-12. — *Swinburne, Songs before Sunrise : 
To Walt Whitman in America, 1871. — Williams (F. H), The Flute Player and Other 
Poems : Walt Whitman, May 31, 1SS6 ; Walt Whitman, March 26, 1892 : the second is also in 
Stedman's American Anthology. 

LANIER 

EDITIONS 

*Poems, edited by his wife, with a memorial by William Hayes Ward, 1 volume : Charles 
Scribner's Sons. — *The Science of English Verse, 1 volume : Charles Scribner's Sons. — 
Retrospects and Prospects, Descriptive and Historical Essays ; Music and Poetry, a 
Volume of Essays ; The English Novel, A Study in the Development of Personality : Charles 
Scribner's Sons. — Shakspere and his Forerunners, Studies in Elizabethan Poetry and its 
Development from Early English, edited by H. W. Lanier, 2 volumes : Doubleday, Page & Co. 
— *Letters of Sidney Lanier, Selections from his Correspondence 1S66-1881, 1 volume 
Charles Scribner's Sons. — Select Poems, edited with an Introduction and Notes by Morgan 
Callaway, Jr. : Charles Scribner's Sons. 

BIOGRAPHY AND REMINISCENCES 

Ward (W. H), Memorial : in Poems of Sidney Lanier, 1884. — *Mims (Edwin), Sidney Lanier 
(American Men of Letters Series), 1905. 

Baskervill (W. M.), Sidney Lanier: in Southern Writers, Biographical and Critical Studies, 
1896-1897. — Boykin (Laurette), Home Life of Sidney Lanier, 1889. — Browne (William 
H.), Memorial Address before the Johns Hopkins University, October 22, 1881 (privately 
printed). — Gilman (D. C), editor, The Forty-sixth Birthday of Sidney Lanier, February 3, 
1888. (Containing poems by John B. Tabb, Richard Burton, Edith Thomas, etc. ; letters from 
Lowell, Stedman, Gilder, etc ; and a bibliography by Richard Burton.) — *Gilman (D. C), 
Sidney Lanier, Reminiscences and Letters : in the South Atlantic Quarterly, April, 1905. — 
Hayne (Paul H), A Poet's Letters to a Friend : in the Critic, vol. v, pp. 77, 78, 89, 90, February 
13, 20, 18S6 : also in The Letters of Sidney Lanier. — Newell (A. C), Lanier's Life at 
Oglethorpe College: in the Atlanta Constitution, February 27, 1S94.- — *Northrup (M. H), 
Sidney Lanier, Recollections and Letters, in Lippincott's Magazine, March, 1905. — Turnbull 
(Mrs. Lawrence), The Catholic Man : A Study, IS90. (The character of Paul represents Sidney 
Lanier.) — West (C. N.), A Brief Sketch of the Life and Writings of Sidney Lanier, 1888. — 



LANIER 651 

Wills (George S.), Sidney Lanier : in the Publications of the Southern History Association, vol. 
iii, pp. 190-211, 1899. (With a complete bibliography of Lanier's writings.) 

CRITICISM 

*Bentzon (Th.) [Mme. Th^rese Blanc], Choses et gens d'Ame'rique : Un musicien poete, 
Sidney Lanier, 1898 : translated, in Littell's Living Age, May 14, 21. 1898. — Gosse (Edmund), 
Questions at Issue, 1893. — Higginson (T. W.), Women and Men : The Victory of the Weak, 
188S. — *Higginson (T. W.), Contemporaries, 1899. — Higginson (T. W.), and Botnton (H. 
W.), A Reader's History of American Literature, 1903. — *Kent (Charles W.), A Study of 
Lanier's Poems: in the Publications of the Modern Language Association, vol. vii, pp. 33-63, 
1892. — Morris (H. S.), The Poetry of Sidney Lanier : in the American, Philadelphia, February 
18, 1888. — Newcomer (A. G.), American Literature. — Stedman (E. C), Poets of America, 
1885. — *Thayer (W. R.), Letters of Sidney Lanier to Mr. and Mrs. Peacock, Introduction: in 
the Atlantic, vol. 74, pp. 14-17, 1894 ; also, in the Letters of Sidney Lanier, pp. 3-9. — Thayer 
(W. R. ), in the Independent, June 12, 1884, Sidney Lanier and his Poetry ; December 18, 1884, 
Lanier's Poems. — Thayer (W. R.), Sidney Lanier's Poems: in the American, Philadelphia, 
December 20, 1884. — Tolman (A. fl.), The Views about Hamlet and Other Essays: Lanier's 
Science of English Verse, 1904. — Trent (W. P.), Southern Writers : Introduction to the Selec- 
tions from Lanier, 1905. — Ward (W. H.), Sidney Lanier, Poet: in the Century, April, 1888. 
— Wendell (B.), A Literary History of America. — Wilkinson (W. C), in the Independent, 
September, 18SG. 

TRIBUTES IN VERSE 

Barbe (W.), Ashes and Incense. — Burroughs (Ellen), in the Literary World, vol. xxi,p. 40, 
February 1, 1890. — Burton (Richard), To Sidney Lanier: in The Forty-sixth Birthday of 
Sidney Lanier. — Cummings (James), The Stranger's Invocation before the Bust of Lanier: in 
The Forty-sixth Birthday of Sidney Lanier. — Fiske (Isabella H.), Sidney Lanier: in the New 
York Times Saturday Review, September 2, 1905. — Garland (Hamlin), in the Southern 
Bivouac, vol. ii, p. 759, May, 18S7. — Hayne (Paul H.), Complete Poems : The Pole of Death, 
In Memory of Sidney Lanier. — Hayne (William H.), Sylvan Lyrics and Other Verses : Sidney 
Lanier. — *Hovey (Richard), The Laurel, an Ode: To Mary Day Lanier. — Reese (Lizette 
W.), in the Southern Bivouac, vol. ii, p. 488, January, 1887. — Reese (Lizette W.), With a Copy 
of Lanier's Poems : in the Independent, vol. 44, p. 322, March 3, 1892. — Roberts (Charles G. 
D.), In Divers Tones: To the Memory of Sidney Lanier; On Reading the Poems of Sidney 
Lanier. — Roberts (Charles G. D.), For a Bust of Lanier : in the Independent, vol. xlii, p. 625, 
April 30, 1891. — *Tabb (J. B.), Poems : p. 116, To Sidney Lanier; p. 117, On the Forthcoming 
Volume of Sidney Lanier's Poems. — Thomas (Edith M.), Sidney Lanier : in The Forty-sixth 
Birthday of Sidney Lanier. — Turnbull (Mrs. Lawrence), In Memoriam, Sidney Lanier, died 
September 7, 1881 : in The Forty-sixth Birthday of Sidney Lanier. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 



^A-^d-^f 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

William Cullen Bryant was born at Cummington, Mass., November 3, 1794. Of 
what sturdy New England stock he came may be guessed from the entry in his mother's 
diary (which she kept for fifty-three years without missing a day), under that date: 
' Stormy wind N E — churned — unwell, seven at Night a Son Born.' Two days later 
the entry reads : ' Clear Wind N W — Made Austin a coat. . . .' Bryant's mother, like 
Longfellow's, was a descendant of John and Priscilla Alden of the Plymouth Colony. 
His earliest American ancestor on his father's side is said, like so many others, to have 
come over in the Mayflower. It is at least certain that he was at Plymouth in 1632, 
and he was constable of the colony in 1663. Bryant's father, his grandfather, and his 
grandmother's father were all New England country doctors. His father was a genial 
and generous man, a lover of poetry, especially that of the school of Pope. He en- 
couraged his boy to read Pope's Iliad, and to act the old story over again with wooden 
shields and swords and mock-heroic costume; and also encouraged him in his early writ- 
ing and in his later devotion to poetry, though not always in sympathy with the style 
and manner of his work. In all these points he reminds us of Browning's father. 

Bryant began to write verses when he was eight years old. He showed similar 
precocity in other ways. Though he was never a strong child, yet ' On my first birth- 
day,' he says, ' there is a record that I could already go alone, and on the 28th of March, 
1796, when but a few days more than sixteen months old, there is another record that I 
knew all the letters of the alphabet.' He was sent to school at three years old, and could 
read well at four. His early verses were mostly in heroic couplets, and include school 
poems and versions of a part of the Book of Job and the first book of the iEneid, etc. 
They are much like the verses written in colonial days by worthy Puritan divines. Like 
Elizabeth Barrett, he published his first volume at the age of thirteen. This was a satire 
on the political events of the time, and it actually had a second edition the following 
year — a thing which probably has happened to no other poet when so young. 

Bryant was prepared for college, as was usual in those tunes, by studying in the fami- 
lies of country ministers. From one he learned Latin, from another Greek. It took him 
eight months to go through the Latin grammar, the New Testament in Latin, Virgil's 
JEneid, Eclogues, and Georgics, and a volume of Cicero's orations. After a summer's 
work on the farm he then attacked Greek, and ' at the end of two calendar months,' 
accordmg to his own testimony, ' knew the Greek Testament from end to end almost as 
if it had been English.' This was when he was fourteen years old. The following year 
he mastered his mathematics, and entered the sophomore class of Williams College at 
the age of fifteen. 

Before he had quite completed the year at Williams, he withdrew from college, intend- 
ing to prepare himself for the junior class at Yale. But when the time came for entering 
there in the fall, it was found that the family means would not allow Bryant to finish a 
college course, and he accordingly turned to the study of the law as the quickest way to 
prepare himself for earning a living. He passed his preliminary bar examinations in 
1814, was admitted as attorney in 1816, and practised for nine years. 

In the meantime ' Thanatopsis ' and the ' Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood,' 
at first called ' A Fragment,' had been published in the North American Review for Sep- 
tember, 1817. The story of how ' Thanatopsis ' had been written when Bryant was only 



656 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

sixteen or seventeen years old, and how his father, having received a letter asking for 
contributions to the Review, found these unfinished poems in a desk and submitted them to 
the editors, who were at first unable to believe that they had been written by so young a 
man as Bryant, or even by any one ' on this side of the Atlantic,' has often been told. 
(See the notes on ' Thanatopsis,' pp. 1, 2; Bigelow's Bryant, pp. 38-41; or Bradley's 
Bryant, pp. 27-33.) Bryant was asked to be a regular contributor to the North American, 
and his next important poem published there was the lines ' To a Waterfowl.' A col- 
lection of his Poems was published in September, 1821, containing eight pieces, five of 
which are included in the present volume. The slight success of this book, of which only 
270 copies were sold in five years, showed that an audience for the best poetry had still 
to be created in America. Bryant's name was already known, however, as that of the 
most promising of the younger poets, and he had been invited to deliver the annual Phi 
Beta Kappa poem at Harvard in 1821. It was for this occasion that ' The Ages,' the 
longest poem in the volume of 1821, had been written. 

Bryant wrote very little from the time when he was admitted to the bar, in 1816, until 
1821, except the noble ' Hymn to Death,' which he took up and completed at the time 
when his father died, in March, 1820. Soon after this a new impulse came into his life, 
in his love for Miss Frances Fairchild, whom he married June 11, 1821. Of the many 
poems written for her at this time, Bryant preserved only one, ' O fairest of the rural 
maids.' Throughout his life he was very severe in his criticism of his own verses, and 
is said to have destroyed more than he printed. 

Bryant was weary of the law (see the last stanza of ' Green River '), but the sale of 
his volume of Poems was not such as to give him hope of making a living by purely 
literary work. During the five years following its publication his total profit from the 
sale had been $14.92. In 1825, however, after two visits to New York, he found employ- 
ment there as associate editor of the New York Review and Athenaeum Magazine, just 
about to be established. The first number appeared in June, 1825, and Bryant moved to 
New York to take up the editorial work which was to keep him there for the rest of his 
life. New York was then a village of 150,000 inhabitants, with the northern city limits 
at what is now Canal Street. The part of New York still known as Greenwich Village, 
south of Washington Square, was then a summer resort. 

Bryant's first magazine, like so many others at that time, was not successful, and lived 
for only a year. At the beginning of 1826 he again took up the practice of the law for a 
short time. Later in the year, however, he was asked to be assistant editor of the New 
York Evening Post, and three years later became editor-in-chief. His connection with 
the paper as editor and part owner lasted for fifty-two years. 

Bryant was so engrossed with his editorial work (for many years he kept office hours 
from seven in the morning till four in the afternoon), and with the many demands of life 
in a growing metropolitan and cosmopolitan city, that he gave little time to poetry. In 
1832 he visited the West (accidentally seeing Lincoln, who was leading a company of 
Illinois volunteers across the prairie to the Black Hawk war), and wrote his poem ' The 
Prairies;' he wrote no other poem of importance for three years. A new collection of 
his poems had been published in 1831, both in America and in England (see the note on 
the ' Song of Marion's Men,' p. 17), which considerably increased his reputation. In 
1834 to 1836 he took his first trip to Europe, visiting England, France, Italy, and Ger- 
many, where, at Heidelberg, he met Longfellow, then preparing himself for his pro- 
fessorship at Harvard. 

Bryant was always fond of travelling, and visited Europe again in 1845, in 1849, in 
1852-53, when he saw something of the Oriental coimtries also, in 1857, and again in 
1858, when he met, at Rome and Florence, the Brownings, W. W. Story, Crawford, 
Page, Miss Hosmer (the sculptress), Frederika Bremer, Hawthorne, and Landor, whom 
he greatly admired; and still again in 1866. His impressions were recorded hi letters to 
the Evening Post, some of which have been collected in his Letters from a Traveller, Let- 
ters from the East, and Letters from Spain and other Countries. He also travelled exten- 
sively in America at various times. His life, during all these years, was uneventful ; the 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 657 



time which he could give to writing was almost wholly filled with editorial work, and 
he produced only a few poems from year to year. New editions of his poems were, how- 
ever, published, always with some additions, in 1834, 1836, 1842, 1844, and a collection 
in two volumes hi 1854. 

Bryant was an active worker in the formation of the Republican party in 1855. In 
1859 he presided at a lecture given by Lincoln. Lincoln said: ' It was worth the journey 
to the East to see such a man,' and Bryant was so impressed with Lincoln's personality 
that he threw the whole influence of the Post in favor of his nomination for the Presidency 
in the following year, and was himself presidential elector on the Republican ticket. The 
Post was always a distinct power in national life, and especially so during the Civil 
War. Bryant had never been an abolitionist, but he was one of the strongest supporters 
of the Lnion, and, once the war had begun, of the policy of emancipation. His criticism 
of the, administration was sometimes severe, especially in the matter of its greenback 
policy, but he retained close relations with Lincoln and was one of his most valued 
advisers. The struggle of these years had but few echoes in his poetry, except in two 
poems of 1861, ' Our Country's Call ' and ' Not Yet,' and in three later poems, ' My 
Autumn Walk,' ' The Death of Lincoln,' and the ' Death of Slavery.' He seems rather 
to have sought a refuge in poetry from the strain of his daily work and the anxiety of 
the time. It was in 1862-63 that he wrote ' Sella ' and the ' Little People of the Snow,' 
which have more lightness and charm than anything else in his work, and made a trans- 
lation of the Fifth Book of the Odyssey. A collection of his later work was published 
in 1863, with the title Thirty Poems. 

Already Bryant had long been recognized as the chief of our elder poets, and was called 
the ' Father of American Song.' This position, and still more the service which he had 
done and was domg as a man and a citizen, almost to the exclusion of further poetical 
work, were practically recognized by a meeting at the Century Club in New York, of 
which Bryant was for many years President. To this meeting the American republic of 
letters sent its best representatives, men of a generation just younger than Bryant, yet 
whose literary reputation was already greater than his, to do him honor on his seventieth 
birthday. Whittier wrote, — 

Who weighs him from his life apart 
Must do his nobler nature wrong, 

and 

His life is now his noblest strain, 
His manhood better than his verse. 

Holmes sent the finest of his many poetical tributes to contemporaries, and Lowell wrote 
for this occasion ' On Board the '76 ; ' but perhaps the greatest tribute was Emerson's 
address. This was the culminating pomt in Bryant's career. He spoke of himself as ' one 
who has carried a lantern in the night, and who perceives that its beams are no longer 
visible in the glory which the morning pours around him.' It is true that Bryant is inferior 
to his younger contemporaries hi the scope, the abundance, and the beauty of his poetical 
work. But he remains the pioneer of American poetry, and neither hi the high nobility of 
his writing, nor in his dignity and his faithful work as a man, has he been surpassed. 

In 1866 Mrs. Bryant died. Bryant's feeling of his loss is expressed only hi the one 
poem ' A Life-Time.' He gave himself up during the following years to his translation of 
Homer. The Iliad was completed and published in 1870, the Odyssey hi 1872. During 
the last years of his life he wrote a few poems, characterized by the same high dignity of 
expression which marks all his best work, and showing no loss of power. ' The Flood of 
Years ' comes as the conclusion of his work and as a fitting pendent to ' Thanatopsis ' at 
its commencement. This and ' A Life-Time ' were the last poems he wrote. 

He continued his editorial work till the last year of his life, walking daily to his office 
and back, a distance of three miles. Many New Yorkers still remember his impressive 
personality, the large, high forehead, flowing white hair, deep-set clear-seeing eyes 
under shaggy brows, and erect carriage. During these last years he was more and more 
in request as a public speaker, and was often called ' the old man eloquent.' Though he 






658 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

was not an orator in the usual sense of the word, his addresses were always impressive, 
appropriate, and full of well-knit thought. The best have been preserved in his prose 
works, and deal with Fitz-Greene Halleck, Shakspere, Scott, Burns, Franklin, Goethe, 
etc. His earlier addresses, especially those on Irving (1860) and Cooper (1852), must not 
be forgotten. When he was in his eighty-fourth year he paid a noble tribute to Mazzini 
in an oration at the unveiling of the statue in Central Park. He was somewhat exhausted 
by the effort and by the heat of the day ; and on returning to the home of his friend, 
General Wilson, he fell at the doorstep, receiving injuries which resulted in his death, 
June 12, 1878. 

Bryant's life extended from the administration of Washington to that of Hayes — from 
the first presidency until after the centennial of the country. For more than fifty years 
during the formative period of the nation, he was a strong though quiet influence in its 
development. It is therefore impossible, as it would be unjust, to ' judge him from his 
life apart.' A keen judge, and never too generous a critic — Edgar Allan Poe — wrote 
of him so early as 1846 : ' In character, no man stands more loftily than Bryant. . . . 
His soul is charity itself, in all respects generous and noble.' It was this generous and 
noble character that Bryant freely gave to his times. He entered into all the life of a 
great material city, the centre of the country, as editor, orator, and public man. His life 
was too full for him to devote much of it to poetry, the most lasting part of his life-work, 
and to take that permanently high rank among American poets which some think he 
might have attained. Yet it is doubtful whether, if he had given more time to poetry, his 
limitations rather than his power might not have become more evident. His was not 
a genius of overflowing richness, of passion, of imagination. His range is narrow. But 
within his range he is supreme. What he gives us is the expression of simple and noble 
thought on life, and still more on death ; and our first, and still the greatest, expression of 
American Nature in poetry. Whether or not he is the ' American Wordsworth ' (see 
Lowell's Fable for Critics), he is the first and greatest poet of Nature in America ; not of 
larks and nightingales and English primroses would he write, like most of the provincial 
poets who preceded him, but of the bobolink, and the veerie, and the fringed gentian ; not 
of the English ponds and hills, but of the American lakes and mountains. This was Amer- 
ica's ' Declaration of Independence ' in poetry. Then too, in the highest of poetic forms in 
English, he is perhaps the greatest master since Milton. The blank verse of even Words- 
worth, Landor, or Browning has not the power or the convoluted richness of expression 
through long interwoven rhythmic periods that Bryant's has. In ' Thanatopsis,' the ' In- 
scription for the Entrance to a Wood,' ' A Winter Piece,' the ' Hymn to Death,' ' Monument 
Mountain ' (the best of his poems on Indian subjects), ' A Forest Hymn,' ' The Prai- 
ries,' the ' Antiquity of Freedom,' and the ' Flood of Years,' this noble rhythmic form 
fitly expresses the high dignity of his thought, and these together fitly represent his char- 
acter and his life. 

EDGAR ALLAN POE 

Edgar Allan Poe was born at Boston, January 19, 1809, in the same year as Holmes 
and Tennyson, Lincoln and Gladstone, Mendelssohn and Chopin, and Charles Darwin. On 
his father's side he came of a good Maryland family, going back to John Poe, who 
emigrated from the north of Ireland to Pennsylvania about the middle of the eighteenth 
century, and soon moved to Maryland. The poet's grandfather, General David Poe, was 
Assistant-Quartermaster-General in the Revolution, and a close friend of Lafayette's. 
His son, David Poe, Jr., studied law, but soon abandoned it for acting, and in 1805 mar- 
ried Elizabeth Arnold, who had been born and brought up to the stage. Her mother was 
an English actress, and she had been first married to C. D. Hopkins, a comedian, who 
died in 1805. It seems that David Poe proved to have little talent as an actor, and his 
wife, delicate, beautiful, strong-willed, and versatile, was the support of the family. They 
had three children, of whom Edgar was the second. The little troop wandered up and 
down from Maine to California, but found their best patrons and friends in Richmond. 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 659 



It was at Richmond that Poe's mother died, of consumption, in December, 1811. His 
father had probably died some months before. 

Poe was adopted by Mr. John Allan, a Scotch tobacco merchant of Richmond, not at 
all a rich man as has so often been stated. It is of record that he made an assignment 
for the benefit of creditors in 1822. In 1825, however, just before Poe left home for the 
University of Virginia, Mr. Allan received an inheritance from his uncle, one of the rich 
men of the State, which made him well-to-do. In the meantime he had attempted to 
extend his business to London. The most important result of this was that he took Poe 
to England and placed him for five years in the Manor House School, Stoke-Newington. 
Poe's story ' William Wilson ' is full of reminiscences from this period, and much of 
his work is colored by it. Probably on some vacation trip to Scotland with his adopted 
parents he, saw that lake among the hills which is the subject of one of his earliest yet 
most characteristic poems — one of those which he says were written before he was twelve 
years old : — 

THE LAKE 

In youth's spring it was my lot 

To haunt of the wide earth a spot 

The which I could not love the less ; 

So lovely was the loneliness 

Of a wild lake, with black rock bound, 

And the tall pines that tower'd around. 

But when the night had thrown her pall 

Upon that spot — as upon all, 

And the wind would pass me by 

In its stilly melody, 

My infant spirit would awake 

To the terror of the lone lake. 

Yet that terror was not fright — 

But a tremulous delight, 

And a feeling undefined, 

Springing from a darken'd mind. 

Death was in the poison'd wave 

And in its gulf a fitting grave 

For him who thence could solace bring 

To his dark imagining ; 

Whose wildering thought could even make 

An Eden of that dim lake. 

The poem was published in this form in his first volume, when he was eighteen years old, 
and was retained in every subsequent edition of his poems, in the edition of 1831 being 
inserted as a part of ' Tamerlane.' In the successive editions he made less changes in this 
than in any other of his earliest poems. The memory of a mystic lake of poisoned waves 
' with black rock bound ' reappears often in others of his works, until it becomes the 
' dim lake of Auber ' in his greatest poem. The love of loneliness and of night, the 
tremulous delight in terror, the thought of a darkened mind that seeks for death and 
finds in it an Eden, all remain characteristic of his later writing. 

In 1820 the Allans returned to Richmond, and until 1825 Poe was at school there ; he 
distinguished himself in athletics (especially swimming), in declamation, and in French. 
It was natural enough that his first school-boy love should be for a woman older than 
himself, but perhaps hardly natural that this should be the mother of one of his school- 
mates, and certainly not so that a healthy boy should haunt her grave for months, as is 
recorded of Poe ; for she died in 1824, the first of his many Helens and Lenores. Just 
before going away to the University he had a somewhat more normal love affair with a 
girl nearly two years younger than he (he was sixteen himself), a Miss Royster. They 
became ' engaged,' at least according to the lady's later account. Poe wrote to her from 
the University, but the letters were intercepted by her father, and she was soon married 
to a Mr. Shelton. Perhaps in this simple story is to be foimd the whole basis of Poe's 
' Tamerlane,' almost certainly written during the following year. 

The University of Virginia had been opened under Jefferson's patronage in March, 
1825. Poe registered as a student there on February 14, 1826, and remained for one 
year. During this time he obtained distinction in Latin, French, and Italian, and was 



660 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

. _...._ _ 

fairly regular in his attendance, but sometimes (not habitually) drank, and gambled with 
passionate recklessness. His gambling debts at the end of the year are said to have been 
about $2000. Mr. Allan refused to pay these debts of honor, withdrew Poe from the Uni- 
versity, and set him to work at a desk in his own counting-room. 

Poe did not submit to this employment long, but ran away, somehow reached Boston, 
and soon published there (1827) his first volume: Tamerlane and Other Poems, By a Bos- 
tonian. (See note 1 on page 36, and note 2 on page 39.) By the time the book was pub- 
lished, Poe, perhaps unable to find any other means of subsistence, had already (May 26, 
1827) enlisted in the United States army, under the name of Edgar A. Perry. He served for 
nearly two years. He seems to have served faithfully; on January 1, 1829, he was pro- 
moted for merit to be Sergeant-Major. Early in 1829 Mrs. Allan died. Poe had been 
recalled to Richmond to see her, but arrived too late. There was, however, a partial re- 
conciliation with Mr. Allan, who obtained a substitute for him in the army, and after 
some effort secured his nomination to West Point. 

While waiting for this appointment he had published at Richmond (1829) Al Aaraaf, 
Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. For this volume he re-wrote, condensed, and for the most 
part greatly improved the ' Tamerlane.' (See the notes on pages 37 and 38.) ' Al 
Aaraaf ' is on the whole a less successful production than ' Tamerlane.' In ' Tamer- 
lane ' he had deplored the triumph of ambition over love, in ' Al Aaraaf ' he seems to 
be celebrating the claims of beauty as superior to all others, even those of love. The 
poem, however, has not, as ' Tamerlane ' has, any clear thread of narrative on which to 
string its ideas and pictures, and even these are entirely vague and almost meaningless. 
' Al Aaraaf ' seems to show the influence of Shelley, as ' Tamerlane ' (in the first form 
of which there occurs, unquoted, ' A sound of revelry by night ') shows that of Byron. 
' Al Aaraaf ' also suffers from the fact that Poe never took the time to re-write it as he 
did ' Tamerlane.' There is in it, however, one supremely beautiful ' Burst of Melody ' 
(as Professor Trent has entitled it in his Selections from Poe), the song to Ligeia. There 

are also in the volume of 1829 two exquisite lyrics, both entitled ' To ,' and an early 

form of the poem ' A Dream within a Dream.' When we remember that Poe was barely 
twenty when this volume was published, and that Keats was twenty-two when his first 
volume (not containing any of his greatest work except the ' Sonnet on Chapman's 
Homer ') appeared, we feel that Lowell was almost justified in writing to Poe (May 8, 
18-13) : ' Your early poems display a maturity which astonished me, and I recollect no 
individual (and I believe I have read all the poetry that ever was written) whose early 
poems were anything like as good.' 

Poe entered West Point July 1, 1830. His work there was at first fairly good. He 
ranked third in French and seventeenth hi mathematics, in a class of eighty-seven. Late 
in this year Mr. Allan married again, and Poe seems to have felt that he had no more to 
expect from him in the way of support or inheritance. In January of 1831 he deliberately 
neglected all duties at the academy for two weeks, was court- marshalled, and dismissed. 

' When in doubt, publish a volume of poems,' seems, says some one, to have been the 
rule of Poe's life. After his dismissal from West Point, he went to New York and 
brought out his third volume, entitled simply Poems. This volume contained (and Poe 
was still only twenty-two years old) what is, perhaps, his most beautiful lyric, the first 
' To Helen,' and the poems ' Israfel,' ' The City in the Sea,' ' The Sleeper,' ' Lenore ' 
in its earliest form, and ' The Valley of Unrest.' His fellow cadets at West Point, to 
whom he dedicated the volume, and through whose subscriptions he had been enabled to 
publish it, were naturally disappointed at receiving such poems as these, instead of the 
satirical verses on their professors which they had expected. 

For the next two years practically nothing is known of Poe's life. We find him in Bal- 
timore hi 1833, living with his father's sister, Mrs. Clemm. He had written six Tales of 
the Folio Club, and one of these, ' The Manuscript found in a Bottle,' won him a prize of 
one hundred dollars and the friendship of John P. Kennedy. The second prize of fifty 
dollars, offered for the best poem submitted, would have been awarded to Poe's ' Coli- 
seum,' except that the judges felt unwilling to give both prizes to one competitor. This 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 661 



success gave Poe a practical start in literature, or rather journalism, and Mr. Kennedy 
secured for kiui a position on The Southern Literary Messenger, published at Richmond. 

Meanwhile there had come to Poe the one genuine, deep, and lasting love of his 
lifetime, that for his child-cousin, Virginia Clemm. A license for marriage was obtained 
on September 22, 1834, when Virginia was barely twelve years old. There seems to have 
been no marriage at this time. In any case, after Poe moved to Richmond a new license 
was obtained, in May, 1836, and the marriage took place, while Virginia was still only in 
her fourteenth year. 

Poe showed great ability as an editor and journalistic writer. He made the magazine 
famous, and greatly increased its circulation. But he was irregular in his habits and not 
to be depended upon. He had not learned to master the tendency against which he later 
struggled — at least for many months and even years of his life — so successfully. ' No 
man is safe,' his employer wrote to him, ' that drink's before breakfast.' He lost his 
position in January, 1837, went to New York, where he published in 1838 the Narrative 
of Arthur Gordon Pym, and then to Philadelphia, where he lived for the next six years. 

During these years he did a great amount of literary hack-work, and did it well, and 
also wrote some of his best stories and criticism. His Tales of the Grotesque and Ara- 
besque were published, in two volumes, at the end of 1839 (dated 1840). He was editor 
for a while of the Gentleman's Magazine and later of Graham's Magazine, two of the most 
important periodicals of the time. It has repeatedly been assumed that he lost his positions 
on both these magazines through incapacity caused by drinking, but the weight of evidence 
seems to disprove this. Mrs. Clemm stated positively, speaking of the period from 1837 
to 1841, that ' for years I know he did not taste even a glass of wine ' (Harrison's Life 
of Poe, p. 161), and this testimony is so strongly confirmed by others who knew him well 
during this time, that we may perhaps accept fidly his own statement of the matter as 
made in a letter of 1841 : ' At no period of my life was I ever what men call intemper- 
ate, — I never was in the habit of intoxication. . . . But, for a period, while I resided in 
Richmond and edited the Messenger, I certainly did give way, at long intervals, to the 
temptation held out on all sides by the spirit of Southern conviviality. My sensitive tem- 
perament could not stand an excitement which was an every-day matter to my companions, 
— in short it sometimes happened that I was completely intoxicated. For some days after 
each excess I was invariably confined to bed. But it is now quite four years since I have 
abandoned every kind of alcoholic drink — f our years, with the exception of a single 
deviation. . . .' 

A few facts seem now to be clearly established after the years of controversy over this 
disagreeable question. It is certain that Poe was not, as has so often been stated, an 
abandoned or habitual drunkard. It is also certain that the effect of even small quan- 
tities of alcohol was, in his case, especially severe ; that he was to some extent the 
victim of a hereditary tendency (' There is one thing,' his cousin William Poe wrote to 
him, 'I am anxious to caution you against, and which has been a great enemy to our 
family ... a too free use of the bottle ') ; and that the surroundings of his early life 
and the habits of the University and of West Point in those times did much to strengthen 
this tendency. It is also certain, and this has not been sufficiently recognized, that for 
many years Poe struggled manfully against this tendency, and succeeded, in spite of occa- 
sional relapses, and in the midst of all kinds of difficulties, discouragements, anxiety, 
poverty, and physical weakness, in doing an amount of work, and of highly intellectual 
work, that would have been impossible for a man so weak as he has usually been repre- 
sented. 

Two strong motives governed his life, so far as it could be governed : his devotion to 
his beautiful child-wife and to her mother, whom he calls his ' more than mother ' in the 
beaiitiful sonnet which is the simple expression of his genuine feeling for her : and his 
passionate desire for literary fame, which, at its worst, showed itself in petty envy and 
carping criticism of his contemporaries, but which, at its best, became a noble devotion 
to the ideal of beauty. 

Every point in Poe's life and character has been the subject of controversy and con- 



662 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

flicting statements, except one, — the genuineness, simplicity, and, until his wife's death, 
constancy, of his devotion to the two women who made his home. ' I shall never 
forget,' wrote the owner of Graham's Magazine, within a year after Poe's death, when 
the attacks upon him were bitterest, 'how solicitous of their happiness he was. . . . 
His whole efforts seemed to be to procure the comfort and welfare of his home. Ex- 
cept for their happiness, and the natural ambition of having a magazine of his own, I 
never heard him deplore the want of wealth. . . . His love for his wife was a sort of 
rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty, which he felt was fading before his eyes. I 
have seen him hovering around her when she was ill, with all the fond fear and tender 
anxiety of a mother for her first-born, — her slightest cough causing in him a shudder, 
a breast chill, that was visible. I rode out one summer evening with them, and the 
remembrance of his watchful eyes, eagerly bent upon the slightest change of hue in that 
loved face, haunts me yet as the memory of a sad strain.' 

Virginia is described as of wonderful delicate loveliness, like that of Ligeia. She 
was a beautiful singer. In 1842, while singing for her husband, she broke a blood 
vessel in her throat, and this resulted in serious hemorrhages, which afterward recurred 
often, and sometimes brought her almost to the point of death. It was to Poe as if she 
had died many times, — as often, even, as he has expressed hi his poetry that one theme 
which he calls the highest of all, the death of a beautiful woman. 

Early in 1844 the little family moved to New York, Poe still hoping to found there 
a magazine of his own. For some time he worked on the staff of the Evening Mirror, 
under N. P. Willis, whose description of his faithfulness, industry, and courtesy must 
not be overlooked by any one trying to estimate his character during these years. 1845 
was the year that gave Poe his national reputation. ' The Raven' appeared in the 
Evening Mirror on January 29, and was immediately copied by newspapers throughout 
the country, just as the first of Lowell's Biglow Papers was to be, a little more than a year 
later. His Tales were published by Wiley and Putnam, and had considerable success. 
He became associate-editor of the Broadway Journal, in which he republished, in their 
final perfected form, many of his earlier poems. And finally, all the poems which he 
wished to preserve were collected and published, toward the end of the year, in a volume 
entitled The Raven and Other Poems. 

Meantime, Poe was involved in many bitter controversies, through his severe criticism 
of his contemporaries. The Broadway Journal, of which he had finally obtamed exclu- 
sive control in October, 1845, failed to prove a financial success, and involved him in 
considerable debt ; its publication had to be discontinued at the end of the year. 
Early in 1846 Poe moved, with his family, to the cottage at Fordham, in what is now the 
Borough of the Bronx, New York City. Here the little family lived through a year of 
wretchedness. Poe's strength, both of body and of character, was seriously impaired. 
Virginia's illness became more and more serious, until she died on January 30, 1847. 
Poe was seriously ill for a long time, but gradually recovered. It was at the end of this 
' most immemorial year ' that he wrote his ' Ulalume.' 

In the year and a half that followed, all Poe's weaknesses were accentuated, and a new 
weakness, which is comprehensible, but not pleasant to contemplate, was added, in his 
abject appeal for the sympathy and sometimes for the hand of one woman after another. 
Yet his intellect and genius shone out at intervals almost more brightly than before. 
During this time he wrote ' Eureka' and ' The Bells,' the strange and wonderful lyric 
' For Annie,' and ' Annabel Lee' — the last certainly a reminiscence of his child- wife 
Virginia. He became engaged to Sarah Helen Whitman, a poetess of extreme romantic 
temperament, his first meeting with whom is described in the second ' To Helen ; ' but the 
engagement was broken through the efforts of her friends. Her loyal defence of Poe 
against his critics after his death is to be remembered. Poe was hi Richmond in 1848, 
and again in 1849, hoping to get help there for the establishment of the new magazine 
which he was still planning; he found there the Mrs. Shelton who, as Miss Royster, had 
been his first love, and who was now a widow. He became engaged to her, his friends in 
Richmond raised a fund to help him start anew hi life, and he left Richmond on Sep- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 663 

tember 30, to return to New York and settle up bis affairs. It will never be known what 
happened on the following days, but he was found, October 3, in the back room of a saloon 
in Baltimore which was being used as a polling place. It has been suggested that he was 
drugged by an electioneering gang and made to serve as a repeater ; and also that he had 
been drugged by robbers, for his money was gone. He was taken to a hospital, and died 
there, four days later, on Sunday, October 7, without having recovered consciousness. 
The attending physician testified that he was not under tbe influence of liquor, but this 
does not seem to be important, though it may refute the repeated statement that his 
death was caused by delirium tremens. 

Poe's character has often been judged harshly, but the case is one rather for human 
pity than for harsh judgment. His life was a tragedy, and in part a tragedy of hereditary 
fate, against which his human will struggled as best it could. He should be judged with 
the same charity which his New England contemporaries showed in their many beautiful 
tributes to Burns, whose life and character have points of resemblance with Poe's, though 
Burns's poetry is so much more human and less strange. 

In many ways Poe is unique among the chief American poets : in his life, for he is tbe only 
one who lived in extreme poverty and loneliness ; the only one of weak character and ill- 
repute ; the only one (except Lanier) who died young. He is unique hi his batred of com- 
monplace and of convention, in his intense devotion to poetry, in his love of mere music 
in verse, in his power to express emotion and his inability to express character, in his 
comparative blindness to Nature (except that strange unreal region of Nature which he 
creates for himself ' out of place, out of time '), in his exaltation of love, in his strange 
visionary conceptions of death. He is the only American who has been intensely a poet, and 
the only American poet (as Hawthorne is our only prose writer) who can justly be said, 
in any strict and narroAV use of the word, to have had genius. 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

The story of Emerson's life, so far as its external events are related to his poetry, can 
be told briefly. He was the last of nine successive generations of ministers. Thomas 
Emerson emigrated from England to Ipswich, Mass., about 1635. At about the same time, 
Emerson's first American ancestor in another line, Peter Bulkeley (see the beginning of 
1 Hamatreya '), settled in Concord as the first minister of that parish. Emerson's grand- 
father, William Emerson, was minister hi Concord at the beginning of the Revolution, and 
on April 19, 1775, urged the minute-men to stand their ground near his parsonage, the 
' Old Manse.' In 1776 he left Concord to join the troops at Ticonderoga, but caught a 
fever on his way there, and died in the same year. Emerson's father was minister of the 
First Church, Boston, which had already become Unitarian. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803. His father died when he was 
eight years old, and the family was left in comparative poverty. Yet his mother, with 
devoted help from her sons, succeeded hi obtaining an education for all of them. His 
eldest brother, William, graduated at Harvard in 1818, and studied for two years in 
Germany. Ralph Waldo graduated at Harvard in 1821, and his younger brothers, Edward 
and Charles, in 1824 and 1828. 

Ralph was prepared for Harvard at the Boston Latin School, where, in his eleventh 
year, he made a brief verse translation from Virgil's Eclogues, which has been preserved 
and published. He entered college in 1817, with the appointment of ' President's Fresh- 
man,' receiving free lodging for the work of carrying official messages ; and he saved 
three-fourths of the cost of his board by waiting at table in the college Commons, and in 
the last years of his course earned something by tutoring. He did not especially distin- 
guish himself in his studies, being generally thought the least brilliant of the brothers, 
but he was well liked by both teachers and students, and was elected class poet at the 
end of his course, as Lowell was later. He was only eighteen when he graduated, but im- 
mediately began work as a school-teacher, and when his older brother, William, went to 



664 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

Germany, took charge of his school for young ladies in Boston. He wrote long after : 
' I was nineteen, had grown up without sisters, and, in my solitary and secluded way of 
living, had no acquaintance with girls. I still recall my terrors at entering the school.' 
It was on the occasion of his weekly escape from these ' terrors 'to his home in Roxbury, 
which was then the country (and not at his retirement to Concord, as has often been said), 
that he wrote the poem ' Good-bye, proud world.' 

He soon entered the Divinity School at Harvard, where he studied under Dr. W. E. 
Channing and Professor Andrews Norton ; and was ' approbated to preach ' in October, 
1826. He had no settled parish, and had not as yet much confidence in himself, his doc- 
trines, or his power to speak. ' Whatever Heaven has given me or withheld,' he wrote at 
this time, ' my feelings, or the expression of them, is very cold, my understanding and my 
tongue slow and ineffective.' His feelings were soon to be roused and quickened, however, 
and his expression vivified. In December, 1827, he was preaching at Concord, N. H., 
and met there Miss Ellen Tucker, then sixteen years old, to whom he became engaged 
just a year later. Of the beautiful lyrics written for her, one, beginning ' And Ellen, when 
the graybeard years,' which was written in 1829, but remained unpublished for seventy- 
five years, deserves to stand beside anything even of Landor's for its simplicity and con- 
densation, and for that peculiar feeling of the eternal which a brief and perfect poem 
can give. 

In 1829 he was appointed assistant pastor of the Hanover Street Church, Boston (the 
church of the Mathers). In September he was married. His wife was already frail from 
consumption, and she died two years later. Emerson found even the liberal doctrines and 
simple forms of the Unitarian Church somewhat too strict for him, and felt himself 
compelled, in the following year, 1832, to give up his pastorate. He still preached occa- 
sionally for a few years, but for the rest of his life the public lecture platform wasliis 
chief pulpit ; for he never ceased to be, in a way, a preacher. 

In December, 1832, Emerson sailed for Europe, going by the then unusual southern 

route, and visited first Sicily and Italy. The fragments ' Written in Naples,' and 

' Written at Rome,' are significant of his mood and thoughts at this time. The first, with 

its remembrance of 

beauty in the fogs 
Of close low pinewoods in a river town, 

foreshadows the idea which is primarily Emerson's, but for which Whittier found its 

most perfect expression in his 

He who wanders widest, lifts 

No more of Beauty's jealous veils 
Than he who from his doorway sees 
The miracle of flowers and trees, 

and reminds us that Emerson was to be the poet of ' Woodnotes,' and, after Bryant, the 
chief poet of Nature in America, with its own peculiar and distinctive beauties. The sec- 
ond, ' Written at Rome,' with its 

And ever in the strife of your own thoughts 
Obey the nobler impulse ; that is Rome, 

shows that Emerson was already on the track of his answer to the Sphinx's riddle. 

He sought in Europe not things biit men, not relics of the past but living thoughts. 
For him Florence seems to have meant Landor, in his villa at the foot of the Fiesolan 
hill. He passed through France uncomprehending, thinking it a land ' where poet never 
grew,' and went to visit the almost unknown Carlyle on his Scotch hillside, and Words- 
worth by his English Lakes. His friendship for Carlyle lasted till the end of his life, and 
he did Carlyle great service in introducing his works to America, taking charge of all 
the material details of their publication here. He seems to have been much amused at 
first to see Wordsworth pause in his garden walks and stand apart to declaim his own son- 
nets, but on second thought recollected that that was what he had come for, and listened 
with reverence. 

On his return, Emerson settled in Concord. He had been through his Lehrjahre and 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 665 

Wanderjahre, had found his own place, intellectually and spiritually, in the universe, and 
had acquired confidence in his own thought and his right and power to deliver a message 
to the world. He now abandoned, as unimportant, the negative side of his earlier Uni- 
tarianism and of his revolt from the forms and formal beliefs even of Unitarianism it- 
self; and insisted on what is the positive side of Unitarianism, and, more broadly, of 
idealistic philosophy, — the thought that every man (as well as the Christ, though not in 
the same degree ) has in himself something of the divine, is himself a part of the ' World- 
Soul,' and therefore has within himself, and himself is, the measure of all things ; and 
so can meet fearlessly all the Sphinx-riddles of the universe. The other side of this con- 
ception is his thought that all Nature is but another manifestation, or another part of the 
same manifestation, of the ' World-Soul; ' and that Nature is thus most closely related to 
the central reality in man. Hardly more than this need be said, I think, in elucidation 
of the so-called obscure and mystic poems of Emerson, and in elementary statement of 
his much-discussed ' transcendentalism.' 

Strong in this belief in the intellectual mdependence of himself and of every individual 
man, Emerson prepared that famous address on ' The American Scholar,' which was 
given before the Phi Beta Kappa of Harvard University hi 1837. That and his little 
book called Nature, published in the previous year, give us the two sides of his thought 
just stated. In the Phi Beta Kappa address, however, he stated this thought more espe- 
cially as related to the intellectual attitude of America in 1837, and as a protest against its 
provincialism. ' Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of other 
lands, draws to a close . . . We will walk on our own feet ; we will work with our own 
hands; we will speak our own minds ... a nation of men will for the first time exist, be- 
cause each believes himself inspired by the Divine Will, which also inspires all men.' This 
address was America's Declaration of Independence in the intellectual life. His Divinity 
School address, in the following year, was a spiritual declaration of independence : ' Let me 
admonish you, first of all, to go alone ; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred 
in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil . . . Thank God 
for these good men, but say, " I am also a man." . . . Yourself a new-born bard of the 
Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint yourself at first hand with the 
Deity.' These two addresses aroused great opposition, but Emerson entirely disregarded 
it, and went quietly on his way. He seems to have regretted it only so far as he felt that 
opposition to him personally might injure the success hi America of Carlyle's works, for 
which he stood sponsor. 

In the years of this (as it then seemed) revolutionary thinking and speaking, Emer- 
son was living a quiet, simple, practical life at Concord, taking his part in the affairs of 
the village, even accepting an election as hog-reeve of the township, delivering the 
Bi-Centennial Address in 1835, and writing the Hymn for the Completion of the Battle 
Monument hi 1837. In 1834 his brother Edward died, and in 1836 his youngest brother, 
Charles. It was in 1838, ' at the mid-point of life's pathway,' as Dante expresses it in the 
first line of his Divina Commedia, that Emerson wrote the beautiful ' Dirge ' for them : — 

I reached the middle of the mount 

Up which the incarnate bou! must climb, 
lnd paused for them, and looked around, 

With me who walked through space and time. 

Five rosy boys with morning light 

Had leaped from one fair mother's arms, 
Fronted the sun with hope as bright, 

And greeted God with childhood's psalms. 



The winding Concord gleamed below, 

Pouring as wide a flood 
As when my brothers, long ago, 

Came with me to the wood. 

But they are gone, — the holy ones 
Who trod with me this lovely vale; 

The strong, star-bright companions 
Are silent, low, and pale. 



666 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

My good, my noble, in their prime, 

Who made this world the feast it was, 
Who learned with me the lore of time, 

Who loved this dwelling-place ! 

They took this valley for their toy, 

They played with it in every mood ; 
A cell for prayer, a hall for joy, — 

They treated Nature as they would. 

They colored the horizon round ; 

Stars flamed and faded as they bade, 
All echoes hearkened for their sound, — 

They made the woodlands glad or mad. 

I touch this flower of silken leaf, 

Which once our childhood knew ; 
Its soft leaves wound me with a grief 

Whose balsam never grew. 

From this time on, Emerson's life was diversified only by home joys and sorrows. He 
married in 1835 Miss Lidian Jackson of Plymouth. In October, 1836, was born the 
beautif ul boy who died in January, 1842, the ' wondrous child ' of his ' Threnody.' Some 
of his most important poems were published in the Dial in 1840 and 1841, and he was 
editor of that short-lived transcendentalist magazine from 1842 to 1844. The first series 
of his Essays was published in 1841, the second in 1844, the second edition of Nature in 
1849, Representative Men in 1850, and English Traits in 1856. He had taken a second brief 
trip to Europe hi 1847-48. The only important collections of his verse during his life- 
time were the Poems of 1846 (dated 1847), May Day and Other Pieces, 1867, and a selec- 
tion in the Little Classics edition, 1876, including a few poems not previously collected. The 
editions of the Poems, 1883, and 1904 (Centenary Edition), both contain very important 
additions. His lecture field was extended in 1843 to New York and Philadelphia, in 1847- 
48 to England and Scotland, in 1854 to the States of the new Northwest, Michigan and 
Wisconsin, in 1862 to Washington, where Lincoln attended his lecture on ' American Civili- 
zation.' From 1854 to 1868 he gave many lecture courses in the West, and in 1871 went 
as far as the Pacific coast, but the larger part of his lectures were still given hi New Eng- 
land, especially at Boston and Concord. In 1870 he gave a regular course in the Gradu- 
ate School of Harvard, then just established. ■During these years his life hi Concord was 
enriched by the friendships with Thoreau, Alcott, and Ellery Channing, as well as by his 
acquaintance in Boston and Cambridge with Longfellow, Agassiz, Holmes, and Lowell ; 
he and Hawthorne were good neighbors, but never intimate friends. Concord became a 
shrine of pilgrimage, and many of the best and ablest minds of the time, as well as many 
unbalanced and vague idealists, made themselves, like Lowell, Emerson's faithful ' liege- 
men.' 

Emerson always refused to be drawn into the anti-slavery contest as an active worker. 
He gives his reasons in full hi the ' Ode to W. H. Channing.' He advocated the purchase 
of the slaves, for two billion dollars,, — less than the war ultimately cost, in mere money 
expenditure, to the North alone. But though he did not identify himself with the abolition- 
ists, he never hesitated on occasion to express his views clearly. His first speech on Ameri- 
can Slavery was given at Concord in 1837, and his address on Emancipation in 1844; he 
voted with the Free-Soil party in 1850, joined in the mistaken opposition to Webster 
in 1851, denounced the Fugitive Slave Law and the assault on Charles Sumner, and took 
part in the memorial service for John Brown of Ossawatomie. In January, 1861, with 
Wendell Phillips, he was mobbed at the Tremont Temple hi Boston. During the war he 
was a strong advocate of unconditional emancipation. But that he did wisely m keeping 
for the most part to ' his chosen work,' was proved by the outcome. His political idealism, 
his belief in man, which finds its perfect expression in the famous quatrain of ' Volunta- 
ries,' became a pervading influence. To this influence, more than to anvthing else, said 
Lowell, 'the young martyrs of our Civil War owe the astounding strength of thoughtful 
heroism that is so touching in every record of their lives.' It was Emerson who was chosen 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW $67 

to give the address at the Harvard Commemoration for which Lowell's great Ode was 
written. 

The last ten years of Emerson's life were somewhat clouded by a gradual failure of his 
mental powers, especially of the memory, but he was always, as Whitman has described i 
him in his reminiscences, beautiful in old age. Holmes tells us of the last time he saw 
Emerson, at Longfellow's funeral, in 1882. Twice he rose, and looked intently on the face 
of the dead poet, and the last time turned and said to a friend near him, ' That gentleman 
was a sweet, beautiful soul, but I have entirely forgotten his name.' Emerson died just a 
month after Longfellow, April 24, 1882. 

' I am born a poet,' wrote Emerson in 1835 ; ' of a low class, without doubt, yet a poet. 
That is my nature and vocation. My singing, to be sure, is very husky, and is for the most 
part in prose. Still, I am a poet in the sense of a perceiver and true lover of the har- 
monies that are hi the soul and in matter, and specially of the correspondences between 
these and those.' At other times, Emerson said of himself, ' I am not a great poet.' On 
the other hand, Mr. Stedman calls him ' our most typical and inspiring poet.' It has often 
been said that he could not write poetry at all, and as often replied that he could write 
nothing else. Of course the question is largely one of definitions. Emerson's own dictum, 
' The great poets are judged by the frame of mind they induce,' which has often been 
quoted hi settlement of the question, is too vague to be of any real help. It would apply 
equally well as a standard for the judgment of great prose writers, or great orators. Con- 
fusion arises on the one hand from identifying poetry with whatever is noble and imagi- 
native hi thought or feekng, and on the other hand, from narrowing it to the mere sing- 
ing faculty. The lyric is only one of the many poetic forms ; and the lyric element in 
poetry is only one of its important elements. In the nineteenth century, to be sure, the 
lyric almost usurped to itself the whole domain and conception of poetry. But this error 
can be only a passing one. What lasts from century to century in poetry is even more 
often those words or phrases which condense thought or feeling or vision into simple 
and well-shaped rhythmic form, than the verse that merely appeals to the senses with 
easy-flowing or even haunting melody. We may even admit that Emerson was not a born 
singer, — many of the greatest poets have not been, hi the narrow lyric sense of the word, 
— and still maintain, without falling into the opposite error of identifying poetry with 
that nobility of thought and originality of imagination which are merely possible material 
for poetry, that he was a born poet. Eor he proved himself a poet hi the form as well as 
in the substance of his work. That he did not altogether lack the lyric note, the ' Earth 
Song ' in ' Hamatreya,' a few passages in ' Woodnotes ' and ' May Day,' and many stanzas 
of ' My Garden,' of ' Waldeinsamkeit,' and of the ' Concord Ode,' at once show. But, what 
is far more important, he has in a supreme degree the faculty of fitting thought to the 
form of verse rather than merely to its melody. Many a line, many a quatrain, many brief 
passages, and a few complete poems, stand, and are beginning more and more to stand 
out, in Emerson's work, like those lines of which Holmes said that a moment after they 
were written it seemed ' as if they had been carved on marble for a thousand years.' 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born at Portland, Maine, February 27, 1807, 
the second of eight children. He came of an old New England family. His father and his 
great-grandfather were graduates of Harvard College. On his mother's side he was de- 
scended from John and Priscilla Alden of Plymouth, and his maternal grandfather, Gen- 
eral Peleg Wadsworth, was a distinguished officer in the Revolution. He spent a happy 
boyhood in Portland, the memory of which returns often in his poems, especially hi ' My 
Lost Youth.' The first book that he remembered with delight was Irving's Sketch Book, 
which he read hi numbers when it appeared. His first published verses, the ' Battle of 
Lovell's Pond,' were printed in the Portland Gazette when he was thirteen years old. 

It might have been expected that he would go to Harvard College, as his father had 



668 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

done. But his father was now a trustee of Bowdoin, the chief college of Maine, which 
had only recently heen set apart from Massachusetts as a separate state. Longfellow 
entered the sophomore class at Bowdoin in 1822, and graduated in 1825, ranking second 
' in his class. Hawthorne was in the same class; and Franklin Pierce, later President of the 
United States, and Hawthorne's close friend, was in the next preceding class. 

In his last year at college, when the question of choosing a career in life became press- 
ing, Longfellow wrote to his father (December 5, 1824) : ' I take this early opportunity 
to write to you, because I wish to know fully your inclination with regard to the profes- 
sion I am to pursue when I leave college. For my part, I have already hinted to you what 
would best please me. I want to spend one year at Cambridge for the purpose of reading 
history, and of becoming familiar with the best authors in polite literature ; whilst at the 
same time I can be acquiring a knowledge of the Italian language, without an acquaint- 
ance with which I shall be shut out from one of the most beautiful departments of letters. 
The French I mean to understand pretty thoroughly before I leave college. After leav- 
ing Cambridge, I would attach myself to some literary periodical publication, by which 
I could maintain myself and still enjoy the advantages of reading. Now, I do not think 
that there is anything visionary or chimerical in my plan thus far. The fact is — and I 
will not disguise it in the least, for I think I ought not — the fact is, I most eagerly 
aspire after future eminence in literature ; my whole soul burns most ardently for it, and 
every earthly thought centres hi it. There may be something visionary in this, but I flatter 
myself that I have prudence enough to keep my enthusiasm from defeating its object 
by too great haste. Surely, there never was a better opportimity offered for the exertion 
of literary talent in our own country than is now offered. To be sure, most of our literary 
men thus far have not been professedly so, until they have studied and entered the prac- 
tice of Theology, Law, or Medicine. But this is evidently lost time. . . . Whether Na- 
ture has given me any capacity for knowledge or not, she has at any rate given me a very 
strong predilection for literary pursuits, and I am almost confident in believing, that, if I 
can ever rise in the world, it must be by the exercise of my talent in the wide field of lit- 
erature . With such a belief, I must say that I am unwilling to engage in the study of 
the law.' 

On the last day of the year he wrote again: 'I am very desirous to hear your opinion 
of my project of residing a year at Cambridge. Even if it should be found necessary for 
me to study a profession, I should, think a twelve-months' residence at Harvard before 
commencing the study would be exceedingly useful. Of divinity, medicine, and law, I 
should choose the last. Whatever I do study ought to be engaged in with all my soul, — 
for I will be eminent in something. The question then is, whether I could engage hi the 
law with all that eagerness which in these times is necessary to success. I fear that I 
could not. . . . Let me then reside one year at Cambridge; let me study belles-lettres; 
and after that time it will not require a spirit of prophecy to predict with some degree 
of certainty what kind of a figure I could make in the literary world.' His father 
answered: ' A literary life, to one who has the means of support, must be very pleasant. 
But there is not enough wealth in this country to afford encouragement and patronage to 
merely literary men. And as you have not had the fortune (I will not say whether good 
or ill) to be born rich, you must adopt a profession which will afford you subsistence as 
well as reputation. I am happy to observe that my ambition has never been to accumu- 
late wealth for my children, but to cultivate their minds in the best possible manner, and 
to imbue them with correct moral, political, and religious principles, — believing that a 
person thus educated will with proper diligence be certain of attaining all the wealth 
which is necessary to happiness. With regard to your spending a year at Cambridge, I 
have always thought it might be beneficial ; and if my health should not be impaired and 
my finances should allow, I should be very happy to gratify you.' The letter goes on 
with a kindly criticism of some verses by Longfellow which had just been published. 

Longfellow regretfully accepted his father's decision, choosing, among the three pos- 
sible professions, the law. ' I can be a lawyer,' he says. ' This will support my real ex- 
istence, literature my ideal one.' Just at the right moment, however, there came an 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 669 

apparent solution of the difficulty in the shape of an offer from the trustees of Bowdoin to 
establish for Longfellow a professorship of modern languages, on condition that he should 
spend some time in Europe preparing for the position. His father provided the necessary 
money for foreign travel and study. The season of the year was not favorable for sail- 
ing, so it was not until the following May (1826), that he began the long voyage from 
New York to Havre. Meanwhile he spent some time in reading law in his father's 
office, and more in writing verses, some of which were printed in the Atlantic Souvenir 
of Philadelphia, and others in the United States Literary Gazette of Boston, to which he 
had already contributed during his last year in college. A few of these pieces were pre- 
served in the section entitled ' Earlier Poems ' of Longfellow's first volume of original 
verse, published fourteen years later. 

On arriving in Europe, in June, 1826, he went first to Paris, and spent about eight 
months there; then to Spain (where he met Washington Irving), for nearly a year; then 
to Italy for almost another year (1828); and to Germany for his last six months, return- 
ing home in August, 1829. He had acquired a good practical knowledge of French, 
Spanish, and Italian, but had found German more difficult, and made comparatively little 
progress in it. 

Longfellow entered on his work as a teacher of modern languages and literatures in 
September, 1829. The idea that study of the modern languages could form any serious 
part of a college curriculum was at that time a new one. Only one important profes- 
sorship in the subject existed. There were not even any elementary text-books for Eng- 
lish speaking students, and Longfellow had to begin by making his own. He published 
a translation of L'Homond's French Grammar ; an elementary reading book in French, 
called Manuel de Proverbes Dramatiques • and a similar book for Spanish ; he wrote in 
French a syllabus of the elements of Italian grammar, and edited a collection of extracts 
from Italian writers, writing his preface hi Italian. He attended carefully and thoroughly 
to his work, hearing recitations, composing and correcting exercises, etc., and found time 
to write, outside of his text-books, only a few articles for the North American Review, 
dealing in elementary fashion with the French, Italian, and Spanish languages and liter- 
atures. He found the profession which he had chosen no less exacting than the law 
would have been, and almost more so; since, by employing him on work closely similar 
in kind to that which he most desired to do, it left him little freshness of mind for origi- 
nal composition. His work was well and faithfully done, however; he had the respect 
and liking of his students ; and in 1834 the most important position within the field of his 
chosen work was offered to him, the ' Smith Professorship of the French and Spanish Lan- 
guages and Literatures and of Belles Lettres,' at Harvard, previously held, since its foun- 
dation in 1816, by Ticknor. With the offer came a suggestion from the President of the 
University: 'Should it be your wish, previously to entering upon the duties of the office, 
to reside hi Europe, at your own expense, a year or eighteen months, for the purpose of 
a more perfect attainment of the German, Mr. Ticknor will retain his office till your 
return.' 

Longfellow eagerly accepted this offer. He had been married in 1831 to Mary Potter 
of Portland, and they sailed for Europe in April, 1835. They went first to England, then 
to Holland, where Mrs. Longfellow fell ill, and died in November. Longfellow was 
more than most men one for whom it was 'not good that he should be alone.' The rest 
of his year hi Europe was spent in the shadow of sorrow and loneliness. He studied 
faithfully, mastered the German language, and buried himself in the reading of the 
modern German romantic literature, the influence of which is so strong in his prose 
romance, Hyperion. This romance was hi part inspired by Miss Frances Appleton, 
whom he met the following summer in Switzerland, and who appears in it as Mary Ash- 
burton. 

On his return to America in the autumn (1836), he entered on the duties of his profes- 
sorship at Harvard. He had somewhat less of routine work to do than at Bowdoin, and more 
lecturing. He had one assistant for each of the foreign languages taught, but still retained 
personal oversight of the work of each student, and often was confined to his classroom 



670 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

work for three whole days in each week. He now formed broader and richer friend- 
ships than he had known before, particularly with Charles Sumner, then teaching in the 
Harvard Law School, with C. C. Felton, professor of Greek, and later President, with 
George S. Hillard, and others; and renewed his college friendship with Hawthorne. He 
had grown with the experiences of life, and now found the mechanical duties which filled 
so much of his time more irksome than before. ' Perhaps the worst thing in college life,' 
he wrote in his Journal, ' is this having your niind constantly a playmate for boys, con- 
stantly adapting itself to them, instead of stretching out and grappling with men's minds; ' 
and again: 'Lecturing is all well enough, and hi my history is an evident advance upon 
the past. But now one of my French teachers is gone, and this dragooning of schoolboys 
in lessons is like going backward.' On the whole, however, he believed hi his work : 
' Have I been wise to give up three whole days (in the week) to college classes ? I think 
I have ; for thus I make my presence felt here, and have no idle time to mope and grieve ; ' 
and again: ' After all Cambridge delighteth my heart exceedingly. I have fallen upon 
books with a most voracious appetite; ... no doubt, if I could bring myself to give up 
all my time to the college ... I could get along very comfortably, but the idea of stand- 
ing still or going backward is not to be entertained.' Constantly the memory of his 
early ambitions, and of how little he has done to achieve them, returns to him : ' I could 
live very happily here if I could chain myself down to college duties and be nothing but 
a professor. I should then have work enough, and recreation enough. But I am too 
restless for this. What should I be at fifty ? A fat mill-horse, grinding roimd with 
blinkers on. . . . This will not do. It is too much for one's daily bread when one can 
live on so little.' 

These extracts are from his Journal of 1838-39 ; and it is in these same years that he 
is writing the few brief and simple poems that are the real beginning of his poetical 
work : the ' Psalm of Life,' the ' Light of Stars,' the ' Hymn to the Night,' ' Footsteps of 
Angels,' and the ' Beleaguered City.' These five poems and four others almost equally 
well known, with seven ' Earlier Poems,' were collected and published in a slender volume 
called Voices of the Night, in 1839. Hyperion was published in the same year. Two years 
later he published another small collection entitled Ballads and Other Poems, containing 
the ' Skeleton in Armor,' the ' Wreck of the Hesperus,' the ' Village Blacksmith,' ' En- 
dymion,' the ' Rainy Day,' ' Maidenhood,' and ' Excelsior.' In 1842 the ' Spanish Student ' 
appeared, as a serial, in Graham's Magazine. 

Longfellow was now thirty-five years old. His health was somewhat impaired by his 
years of close work, and he found himself compelled to take a half-year's leave of ab- 
sence, which he spent 'mostly at Marienberg, hi Germany. Here began his lasting friend- 
ship with Freiligrath, who later translated ' Hiawatha.' On his way home he passed 
through England, met - Landor and Dickens, read Dickens's American Notes, and was 
particularly impressed with ' the grand chapter on slavery,' as he calls it. During the re- 
turn voyage, being confined to his cabin for about a fortnight, he wrote the seven brief 
Poems on Slavery.' These, with one additional poem, were published in a little volume of 
thirty-one pages, hi December, 1842, and were hailed with delight by the abolitionists, 
who felt that a very strong ally had joined their forces. Longfellow, however, declined 
to accept the congressional nomination which was offered him through Whittier by the 
Liberty party, or to take any further part hi the anti-slavery contest. He even omitted 
the poems on slavery from the first collected edition of his poems, an act for which he 
has been severely blamed. Yet even Lowell, ardent abolitionist as he was at the time, and 
uncompromising as he was on the question of omitting any of his own anti-slavery poems, 
felt that Longfellow was justified in doing so, since he might well consider these poems to 
be the least valuable part of his work. It is probable, also, that the gentle Longfellow,, 
who did not lack courage, but who did lack ' the fighting edge,' omitted the poems rather 
from a genuine desire to avoid wounding any of his readers than from mere policy. In 
any case, the poems are unimportant. ' I have attempted only to invest the subject with 
a poetic coloring,' wrote Longfellow to John Forster; and that is all he succeeded in doing; 
many will say, with a false poetic coloring. The Poems on Slavery have none of the deep 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 671 

conviction and intensity of Wkittier's or Lowell's, and are more closely related to Ger- 
man literary romanticism than to American social conditions. 

Longfellow bad not even yet ' found himself,' and had barely begim, in a few ballads, 
his real poetical work. He had written in bis Journal in 1840, speaking of a visit to Mr. 
Norton: 'There I beheld what perfect happiness may exist on this earth, and felt how 
I stood alone in life, cut off for a while from those dearest sympathies for which I long.' 
It was at Marienberg that he wrote the sonnet ' Mezzo Cammin,' oppressed with a feeling 
that, though he was the author of a few brief and popular poems, yet he had spent half 
of man's allotted years without having begun that ' tower of song with lofty parapet,' 
which it had been his ambition to build. He was almost entirely dependent upon home 
life and home affection; and when he at last found these, in his marriage with Miss 
Frances Appleton, in 1843, his maturity and the creative period of his life really began. 
He finished his work as a mere editor and compiler (except for the Poems of Places, much 
later) with the ' Poets and Poetry of Europe,' hi 1845. At the end of that year was pub- 
lished the Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems, dated 1846, which closes the first period of 
his work, and already shows a great advance in artistic quality over the crude moralizing 
and vaguely romantic commonplace of his earliest work. The first collected edition of his 
poems had been published in a sumptuous volume by Carey and Hart of Philadelphia, in 
1845, and ' Evangeline ' was just begun. 

The characteristics of all Longfellow's work, which are especially marked in its first 
period, are not such as appeal either to the intellectual critic or to the lover of art for 
art's sake. A good deal of its romantic imagery strikes us now as false, and its simplicity 
as bathos. .' Excelsior ' is a truly imaginative conception, but in expression it degenerates 
into ' A tear stood in his bright blue eye. But still he answered with a sigh,' etc. The 
expression is truly imaginative hi that French passage from which he took the idea of the 
' Old Clock on the Stairs,' yet Longfellow makes of it such lines as ' Some are married, 
some are dead,' which is almost as bad as the line that Tennyson declared to be typical 
Wordsworthian blank verse, ' A Mr. Wilkinson, a clergyman.' But it is the very triumph 
of these early poems that most of their lines seem more commonplace than they really 
are, because they have become, by their simplicity and genuineness, a part of the uni- 
versal feeling of the race. Simple and genuine they are, except for the false romantic 
imagery already spoken of, such as is found in the ' Reaper and the Flowers.' Their 
appeal is universal; and to each individual it may at some time be new, as it was to all 
the young America of 1840. Even in our sophisticated times, it would be a pretty poor 
sort of youth who would not still be thrilled at his first readmg of the ' Psalm of Life.' 
' The Day is Done,' hackneyed as it is, is still full of simple and restful beauty. 

On the last day of 1845, Longfellow wrote in bis Journal : * Peace to the embers of 
burnt-out things ; fears, anxieties, doubts, all gone ! I see them now as a thin blue smoke, 
hanging in the bright heaven of the past year, vanishing away into utter nothingness. 
Not many hopes deceived, not many illusions scattered, not many anticipations disap- 
pointed ; but love fulfilled, the heart comforted, the soul enriched with affection ! ' The 
first period of his life and writing was in fact finished, and his next fifteen years were to 
contain the largest and the most important part of his poetical work. In the earlier period 
he had been growing, experimenting, preluding ; in the third and last period, which 
was to follow 1861, he touched deeper notes sometimes, and attained to greater artistic 
beauty and condensation ; but he produced no such large body of lasting work as in the 
middle period. 

This middle period, from the end of 1845 to the beginning of 1861, contains ' Evange- 
line ' (1847) ; ' Hiawatha ' (1855) ; the ' Courtship of Miles Standish ' (1858) ; the < Build- 
ing of the Ship,' and other poems, especially of the home, in The Seaside and the Fireside 
(dated 1850, published 1849) ; the Golden Legend (1851) ; the ' Saga of King Olaf ' and 
others of the best Tales of a Wayside Inn, not published until later ; ' My Lost Youth ; ' 
the ' Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz ; ' and some of Longfellow's most beautiful poems of 
childhood, including ' Children,' and ' The Children's Hour.' Longfellow's own home was 
made complete in these years by the coming of his five children, three girls and two boys, 



672 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

and his outside life was broadened by his growing friendship with Agassiz, Lowell, and 
Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, and by his continued close relations with Sumner. The duties 
of his professorship, however, were becoming more and more irksome to him. ' What 
vexes me most,' he wrote in 1847, ' is being cribbed and shut up in college, not that I dis- 
like work, but that I have other work to do than this ; ' and again later : ' I seem to be 
quite banished from all literary work save that of my professorship. ... I am tired, not 
of work, but of the sameness of work . . . these hours in the lecture-room, like a schoolmas- 
ter ! It is pleasant enough when the mind gets engaged in it, — but " art is long and life 
is short. " ' In 1853 he wrote nothing except the brief poem to Lowell, ' The Two Angels.' 
In 1854, realizing that his means were quite adequate for his support without a college 
salary, — they had been so since his second marriage, — he finally decided to resign his 
professorship and devote himself entirely to literature. The next few years were full 
of work. ' Hiawatha ' was written immediately after his retirement from the professor- 
ship, the Courtship of Miles Standish and other Poems was published in 1858, and in the 
next three years were written many of his best shorter poems and some of the Tales 
of a Wayside Inn. 

Longfellow had his greatest success as a narrative poet. For the average reader ' the 
tale 's the thing,' and Longfellow possessed the surprisingly rare faculty of telling a 
simple story well. For him too the tale was the thing ; he realized by instinct the simple 
and essential first point that it must be constantly interesting, and he had the faculty of 
making it so. In local flavor and truth of detail his work is vastly inferior to Whittier's. 
Some score of years after he wrote the ' Wreck of the Hesperus,' he still vaguely wondered 
just where the Reef of Norman's Woe might be, though it was not fifteen miles from 
his own slimmer home. He knew the country of ' Hiawatha ' only through books, and for 
' Evangeline ' he formed his ideas of the Mississippi from reading (perhaps mostly in 
Chateaubriand), and from a pictorial diorama which was exhibited at Boston while he was 
writing the poem, and which he enthusiastically welcomed as a great help. Yet his nar- 
rative, as such, is better even than Whittier's, whether in the ringing ballads of the 
Northland, from the ' Skeleton in Armor ' to the ' Saga of King Olaf,' or hi the gentler, 
easily flowing tales that are more characteristic of his own mood, from ' Evangeline ' to 
' King Robert of Sicily ' or the ' Birds of Killingworth.' And in ' Hiawatha,' by some won- 
drous alchemy due to the true simplicity of his own mind, he did catch the true local color, 
even in detail as well as in mood, of a life that he had never seen. ' Hiawatha ' has worn 
surprisingly well, and has stood the test of being judged even by the people whose life 
and legends it describes. It stands out, more and more, as Longfellow's most important 
work. This is anything but the fate predicted for it by those intellectual critics who (with 
the exception of Emerson) judged it so severely at its first appearance. In the ' Courtship 
of Miles Standish,' Longfellow was dealing with a life that he knew more intimately, by 
its partial survival and by its traditions living all about him, as well as from books ; though 
he did not take the trouble to visit Plymouth until the poem had been completed. His 
treatment of this theme is entirely happy and true. The ' Golden Legend ' is naturally 
much less so, though it is by far the best part of the ambitious trilogy which he planned, 
under the title of Christus : a Mystery. It has charm and the glamour of mediaeval story, 
but Longfellow was manifestly unfitted for any real dramatic composition, or for the 
broad picturing of a great period like the Middle Ages. 

In 1861 came the tragic break hi Longfellow's life. It was in July. Mrs. Longfellow's 
light summer dress caught fire, and she was so severely burned that she died the next 
morning. Longfellow also was seriously burned in trying to smother the flames, and 
could not leave his room on the day of her funeral, — the anniversary of their wedding 
day. 

The story of his next few years is completely told in the first of the ' Divina Comme- 
dia ' sonnets. That of the later years is suggested in the ' Cross of Snow.' ' I have taken 
refuge in this translation of the Divina Commedia,' he wrote to his friend Freiligrath. 
For a while he wrote little else, except to complete and publish, at the end of 1863, 
the first part of Tales of a Wayside Inn • the second and third parts were published in 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 673 

1872 and 1873. The two New England Tragedies, the first of which had been written in 
1856-57, were published in 1868, the Divine Tragedy was written and published in 1871, 
and the completed Christus in 1872. He wrote ' Morituri Salutamus,' for the fiftieth anni- 
versary of his college class, and this was published in 1875, in the Masque of Pandora 
and Other Poems, together with the ' Hanging of the Crane,' which was written for Thomas 
Bailey Aldrich, and which holds a peculiar place in Longfellow's work, as summing up 
withhi itself so many of the different aspects of home life, of all of which he was the 
poet laureate. 

During this last period of his life, he wrote often in a form which he had hardly more 
than once or twice tried before, except for translations, — the sonnet. In much of the 
work of this period, especially the sonnets, his feeling is deeper and stronger (it could 
not be truer), and his expression richer and more condensed, than before. Longfellow 
was always a true artist and careful of the form of his work, as few of our American 
poets, except Poe, have been. The little lyric 'Sea- Weed,' of an earlier period, shows 
how carefully and well he could fit the form of his idea to a somewhat intricate stanza. 
But his art was never rich or varied, and he lacked most of all that tenseness of expres- 
sion which is the mark of any very strong artistic or imaginative feeling for language. 
In the sonnets, however, his feeling, now deepened and strengthened by the experiences 
of his constantly growing life, and by his communion with Dante, was confined within the 
narrow walls of a form that did not allow it to flow out thin over the marshes of the 
commonplace, as it had so often done before, and as it did still in the ' Hanging of the 
Crane.' There is much of this same strength and condensation hi his noble ' Morituri 
Salutamus.' 

Longfellow's last years were made happier by the devotion of his own children, and 
by the love of all children who knew - him — and it would seem that few in America, or 
even in England or Germany, did not know him. The story of his gift from the Cam- 
bridge schoolchildren on his seventy-second birthday, and of their constant visits to his 
home, is too well known to be repeated. His seventy-fifth birthday was celebrated in the 
schools throughout the United Stat es, and was made memorable also by Whittier's poem, 
' The Poet and the Children.' He died not quite a month later, March 24, 1882. 

Longfellow's life was that of a simple, faithful, true man and gentleman, kindly and 
home-loving. And that is what he has put into his verse. He has been well called ' the 
laureate of the common human heart.' He is first and most of all the poet of the home. 
There is not an aspect of home life that he has not touched and beautified. If much of 
his poetry is mere commonplace, it is always the making beautiful of the commonplace. 
Bryant's poetry often — as in the well-known lines from 'The Battle-Field,' — and 
Emerson's still oftener, are the making noble of the commonplace. Whittier's is the 
simple and true rendering of it. Whitman's is the apotheosis of it. Poe is the only one 
of our chief elder poets who is not commonplace, who detests and despises the common- 
place. 

Next, Longfellow is the only American who has successfidly written poems of any 
considerable length. The long poem is different from the short poem, as the novel is from 
the short story, not only in quantity, but in kind. For those who can conceive only that 
kind or class of poetry which finds fit expression in the short poem, Poe's dictum that 
' there is no such thing as a long poem ' is true ; for the poem which by its nature belongs 
to the short poem class, yet tries to extend itself to greater length, is, as Poe saw, inevi- 
tably a failure. The long poem is an entirely different literary class or genre. It is Long- 
fellow's distinctive glory that he had the patience and the sustained artistic power to 
win success in this difficult form, — a khid of success which is almost the rarest in litera- 
ture, and second only to success in the true dramatic presentation of character and life. 
Without comparing Longfellow's achievement in this field with that of greater foreign 
poets, we may say that it alone would give him an unanswerable claim to the largest: space 
in any fully representative collection of our chief American poets. 



674 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Whittier is the poet of New England country life, almost as truly and fully as Burns 
is of the country life of Scotland.- For this he was fitted by all the circumstances of his 
own life. He was born and bred a farmer's boy, on the same farm which his first American 
ancestor, Thomas Whittier, had taken tip and cleared in 1647, and in the very house which 
this Thomas Whittier had built for himself in 1688. This sturdy pioneer came to New 
England in 1638, when he was eighteen years old, and so was nearly seventy when he 
built the house which was to be Whittier's birthplace. Of his ten children, five were boys, 
and each of the five boys, like bis father, was over six feet tall, and strong correspond- 
ingly. The youngest son, Joseph, Whittier's great-grandfather, had nine children, of 
whom the youngest, Whittier's grandfather, married Sarah Greenleaf, and had eleven 
children, of whom the youngest but one was Whittier's father. There was naturally but 
little property to divide among so many children, and the older sons usually went out and 
made their own way in the world, while the farm was left to the youngest — in the last 
case, to the two youngest, Whittier's father and his uncle, Moses Whittier, who is one of 
the family group in ' Snow-Bound.' 

John Greenleaf Whittier was born December 17, 1807. He lived and worked on the 
farm, but he lacked the sturdy strength of his ancestors, and the hard work, done when 
a mere boy, resulted in physical injury and weakness which lasted for the rest of his life. 
His education was that of a typical country boy in those days ; he attended the district 
school in the outskirts of the town where he lived, and later earned for himself two short 
terms at the neighboring academy. Only once in his boyhood did he go so far away from 
home as to visit Boston. Thus, hi ancestry and training, Whittier differs from the other 
New England poets, who were all college bred, and spent their youth in a city or an 
academic town. One other important point is to be noted, — that Whittier's family were 
devout Quakers. 

Books were naturally scarce in the household, except for the Bible and the lives of 
Quaker worthies. He read all the poetry he could get hold of, from the dry ' Davideis ' 
spoken of in ' Snow-Bound ' to something of Gray and Cowper. He wrote rhymes on 
his slate after the ' nightly chores ' were done. But his real awakening to poetry came 
through Burns, as he has told us so vividly and beautifully in his tribute to the Scotch 
peasant-poet. 

Whittier's first printed verses appeared when he was eighteen years old, in the local 
newspaper, edited by William Lloyd Garrison, then only twenty. Garrison at once sought 
out his new contributor, and urged the necessity of further education and cultivation of 
his talent. *. Sir,' replied Whittier's father, ' poetry will not give him bread.' Whittier, 
however, earned enough by shoemaking to support himself for one term at Haverhill 
Academy in 1827, and by school-teaching enough for another term in 1828. During 
these two years he wrote for the local papers, especially the Haverhill Gazette, something 
like a hundred poems. 

A college education seemed out of the question, but Whittier obtained employment in 
the following winter as hack editor of a Boston trade journal, the American Manufacturer. 
The following summer his father fell seriously ill, and he had to return home and take 
charge of the farm. But here he found an opportunity for continuing his other work, in 
the editorship of the chief local paj>er, the Haverhill Gazette. His father died in June, 
1830. In July he went to Hartford, Conn., to be editor of the New England Review, and 
continued to conduct it until the end of 1831, although he was compelled to spend a good 
deal of that year at home in Haverhill, and ultimately to give up his editorial position, 
on account of serious illness. 

In these excursions into the outside world, at Boston, and particularly at Hartford, 
which was then somewhat of a literary centre, and where he held an important position, 
Whittier's outlook had of course been greatly broadened, and his literary ambition 
strengthened. His letters at the time show a strong desire and even hope of winning 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 675 

fame as a poet. His editorial work had also drawn him into politics, and when he re- 
turned to Haverhill, in spite of his ill health, he took an important practical part in the 
local contests. In September, 1832, he wrote : ' Even if my health was restored, I should 
not leave this place. I have too many friends around me, and my prospects are too good 
to be sacrificed for any uncertainty.' The prospect which he was unwilling to sacrifice 
was that of being elected to Congress in the following year. It appears that he could 
probably have been elected in 1832, but he was not yet of the required age. 

Both his literary and political ambitions, however, seemed to be once for all sacrificed 
when, almost by a sort of religious conversion, he devoted himself to the abolition cause. 
The abolitionists were at that time a small and persecuted baud, despised by all ' respect- 
able ' people in church, state, or university, and generally looked on much as an avowed 
anarchist is now. They were, in fact, setting themselves in opposition to what was then 
the law of the land, and to what seemed, to Northerners as well as Southerners, part of 
the very basis of its social and economic system. Whittier had far more common sense 
and balance than most of the abolitionists in 1833. ' He counted the cost with Quaker 
coolness of judgment,' says Pickard. ' before taking a step that closed to him the gates of 
both political and literary preferment. He realized more fully than did most of the early 
abolitionists that the institution of slavery would not fall at the first blast of their horns. 
When he decided to enter upon this contest, he understood that his cherished ambitions 
must be laid aside, and that an entire change in his plans was involved. He took the step 
deliberately and after serious consideration.' What induced Whittier to take this step, 
even while realizing its cost so clearly, was an intense idealistic belief, a belief amounting 
almost to religious fervor, in the principle of universal liberty aud equality. Late in life, 
giving counsel to a boy of fifteen, Whittier said, ' My lad, if thou wouldest win success, 
join thyself to some unpopular but noble cause.' 

This is not the place to give any extended account of Whittier's work in the abolition 
movement. It has been treated with admirable completeness and fairness in Professor 
Carpenter's Whittier. Strange as this seems to us now, Whittier was, aside from his po- 
etry, one of the most able workers in practical politics on the abolition side. He held 
together a small band of followers in his own congressional district, and kept the balance 
of power in such a way as often to force anti-slavery declarations from any candidate 
who wished to be elected. He had taken no part in founding the New England Anti- 
Slavery Society in 1832; but in 1833 he was a delegate from Massachusetts to the Con- 
vention at Philadelphia which founded the American Anti-Slavery Society. (See note on 
page 260.) He later became somewhat estranged from the purely idealistic faction cf 
the abolitionists, led by Garrison, who refused to have anything to do with a government 
based, as it seemed to them, on false principles, or even to vote under it, and who advocated 
immediate dissolution of the Union in order to break away from the slave power. 
Whittier was elected as representative to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1835, and 
again in 1836, but could not serve his second term on account of ill health, and was 
unable, for the same reason, to take office himself at any subsequent time. He still con- 
tinued to play an active part in politics, however, even to the end of his life. He is de- 
scribed hi a letter quoted by Professor Carpenter, as ' one of the greatest workers, politi- 
cally, even, in all our State. I sometimes wonder how so fine a mind can stoop to such 
drudgery. But Whittier has as much benevolence as he has ideality. He knows the 
drudgery must be done, and, since no one else does it, will do it himself. May Heaven 
bless him.' Whittier was largely instrumental in securing the nomination of Charles 
Sumner to the Senate, and in persuading him to accept the nomination. His correspondence 
with Sumner, from 1840 on, is very important for the history of that period. Toward the 
end of Sumner's life, when he had been censured by the Massachusetts Legislature for 
advocating the proposal that the names of battles fought against fellow-citizens should no 
longer be inscribed on regimental flags, it was Whittier who aroused public opinion to 
compel the repeal of this vote of censure. In 1834 Whittier was instrumental in bringing 
the English abolitionist, George Thompson, to New England, and this caused bitter per- 
gonal opposition. He accompanied Thompson to New Hampshire, and at Concord they 



676 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

were stoned and shot at by a mob, and barely escaped. Whittier went to Philadelphia in 
1838, to edit the Pennsylvania Freeman; Pennsylvania Hall, where he had his office, was 
burned by a mob without interference from the authorities. He took part, from 1835 to 
1850, hi the editing of several anti-slavery papers, and in many anti-slavery conventions. 

During all this time, he was a great influence by his poetry also. The ringing lines of 
' Expostulation,' and of ' Massachusetts to Virginia,' were declaimed again and again 
through the North and West. The anti-slavery movement rapidly grew, and won the 
allegiance of men like Dr. Channing in 1836, and Lowell in 1841. But it was still the 
unpopular cause, and abolitionists were mobbed in Massachusetts as late as 1861. 

Whittier's anti-slavery poems form the larger part of his work for all this period. His 
earliest volumes were almost entirely made up of them, — the Poems, of 1837, the Bal- 
lads, Anti-Slavery Poems, etc., of 1838, and the Voices of Freedom, of 1841. Of course 
little of this verse can survive, except for its historic interest. Sometimes, however, 
though local and temporary in its origin, it expresses something universal and eternal, as 
with the idea of freedom in ' Expostulation,' of truth and honor and the shame of their 
betrayal, in ' Ichabod,' of loathing at the triumph of wrong, in ' The Christian Slave ' 
and ' The Rendition.' ' Massachusetts to Virginia ' is one of the greatest of ' poems of 
places,' making the very rocks arise and speak. 

In the meantime, Whittier was writing other poems, more enduring than the mass of 
his anti-slavery work. The Lays of my Home was published in 1843, the first collected 
edition of his Poems in 1849, Songs of Labor in 1850, the Chapel of the Hermits and Other 
Poems in 1853, the ' blue and gold ' edition of his Poetical Works in 1857. Except for the 
publication of his works, there is little to note in his life-story. He had given up the 
farm, and moved to a little house in the near-by village of Amesbury, where he lived 
until 1876. His income was very small, until after the publication of ' Snow-Bound,' in 
1866, for in the 'earlier years he could necessarily earn but little by his writings. ' For 
twenty years,' he said, ' I was shut out from the favor of booksellers and magazine 
editors; but I was enabled, by rigid economy, to live ha spite of them, and to see the end 
of the institution that proscribed me.' ' Snow-Bound,' and all his later works, brought 
him large profits. 

During the war Whittier wrote little. His feeling is expressed intensely in ' The Wait-. 
ing ' and ' The Watchers,' and he wrote the best ballad of the war in ' Barbara Frietchie.' 
He hailed the coming of emancipation in ' Laus Deo ' and the ' Emancipation Hymn.' 
In 1866 came ' Snow-Bound,' in 1867 the 'Tent on the Beach,' in 1869 ' Among the 
Hills,' hi 1870 the Ballads of New England. These are his most important volumes, and 
mark , his late maturity as a poet, which came only with his freedom from the partisan 
struggle that had filled the best years of his life. 

Hater of din and riot 
He lived in days unquiet ; 
And lover of all beauty, 
Trod the hard ways of duty, 

he says truly of himself in ' An Autograph ; ' while hi his Prelude to the ' Tent on the 
Beach,' he expresses more fully this feeling of what his life had been : — 

And one there was, a dreamer born, 

Who, with a mission to fulfil, 
Had left the Muses' haunts to turn 

The crank of an opinion-mill, 
Making his rustic reed of song 
A weapon in the war with wrong, 
Yoking his fancy to the breaking-plough 
That beam-deep turned the soil for truth to spring and grow. 

Too quiet seemed the man to ride 

The winged Hippogriff Reform ; 
Was his a voice from side to side 

To pierce the tumult of the storm ? 
A silent, shy, peace-loving man, 
He seemed no fiery partisan 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 677 

To hold his way against the public frown, 

The ban of Church and State, the fierce mob's hounding down. 

For while he wrought with strenuous will 

The work his hands had found to do, 
He heard the fitful music still 

Of winds that out of dream-land blew. 
The din about him could not drown 
What the strange voices whispered down ; 
Along his task-field weird processions swept, 
The visionary pomp of stately phantoms stepped. 

The common air was thick with dreams, — 

He told them to the toiling crowd ; 
Such music as the woods and streams 

Sang in his ear he sang aloud ; 
In still, shut bays, on windy capes, 
He heard the call of beckoning shapes, 
And, as the gray old shadows prompted him, 
To homely moulds of rhyme he shaped their legends grim. 

Whittier never married. ' Circumstances,' he wrote, — ' the care of an aged mother, 
and the duty owed to a sister in delicate health for many years, must be my excuse for 
living the lonely life which has called out thy pity. ... I have learned to look into hap- 
piness through the eyes of others.' Still more cogent reasons for not marrying were his 
comparative poverty, his ill health, and especially the strong feeling of the Quakers that 
it was not permissible to marry out of their own sect. There are beautiful memories of his 
school-boy loves in poems like ' My Playmate,' ' Benedicite,' 'A Sea Dream,' ' Memories,' 
and ' In School-Days,' and these poems of dim and delicate reminiscence, untouched by the 
realities of life, sometimes seem more beautiful than any songs of living passion. His 
home, for many years, was made by his younger sister, Elizabeth, until her death, hi 1864 ; 
then by his niece, Elizabeth Whittier, till her marriage, in 1876. After this he lived most 
of the time with three sisters, his cousins, at Oak Knoll, Danvers. His faculties remained 
unimpaired to the last, and he died at the age of eighty-four, September 7, 1892. 

Whittier was primarily the poet of abolition ; but enough has already been said on that 
part of his work. Next, he was the poet of Nature in New England. His poems of the 
Merrimac Valley, of Lake Winnipesaukee and the mountains near it, of Hampton Beach 
and the Marblehead coast, are unsurpassed in simple truth and love. But most of all he 
is the poet of country life in New England. This means more than at first appears, for 
it was from these New England homes that the larger number and the more energetic of 
the young men, like the older brothers of Whittier's father and grandfather, went out to 
take and make the great Northwest and then the greater West ; moreover Whittier, in 
speaking for his own section, often expresses what the whole of America is and means as 
contrasted with the Old World, — in ' The Last Walk in Autumn,' for instance. There are 
two or three other points to be noted in summary. One is the simple beauty, truth, and 
modesty of Whittier's own nature, constantly and unconsciously showing itself in his 
many personal poems, and in his modest estimate of his own work, as in the ' Proem.' 
Another is that he ranks as our truest, though not our greatest, narrative poet. This has 
already been touched on in speaking of Longfellow ; as a writer of ballads, Whittier sur- 
passes Longfellow in everything except that which is after all the first essential, but only 
one essential, — spirited movement. And finally, he is our chief religious poet. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

Holmes was a great believer in ancestry, and very proud of his own. Through his mother 
he was connected with the Phillipses, and was a cousin of Wendell Phillips ; with the 
Bradstreets, and was a direct descendant of Amie Bradstreet, the first American poetess; 
with the Quincys, and was the great-grandson of 'Dorothy Q.;' with the Hancocks, one 
of whom had married the second Dorothy Qumcy, niece of the first; and with the Wen- 



67S BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

dolls, one of the old Dutch families who earns to America about 1646. He was named for his 
maternal grandfather, the Honorable Oliver Wendell. On the other side of the family 
his great-great-grandfather, John Holmes, of Puritan stock, settled in Woodstock, Conn., in 
1686. His grandfather, David Holmes, the ' Deacon ' who built the ' One-Hoss Shay,' was 
a captain in the French and Indian wars, and surgeon in the Revolutionary army. His 
father, Rev. Abiel Holmes, graduated at Yale in 1782, preached in Georgia for six years, 
and then came to settle in Cambridge, Mass., where for forty years he was pastor of the 
First Church. He was also an author and lecturer, and wrote the Annals of America, the 
first important history after the Revolution. He lived in the ' house with the gambrel- 
roof,' which stood near the site of the present Harvard Gymnasium, and which is so often 
alluded to in Holmes's writings and so lovingly described in the Poet at the Breakfast 
Table. Here Holmes was born, almost under the shadow of the elms in the Harvard 
College yard, August 29, 1809. He went to school first in Cambridge, then at Phillips 
Academy, Andover. While at the Academy, he made a translation in heroic couplets of 
the first book of Virgil's ^Eneid. He entered Harvard with the • famous class of '29 ' (see 
notes on 'The Boys,' pages 374, 875). Beside his own classmates who later became illus- 
trious, he knew in college Charles Sumner, of the class of 1830, and Wendell Phillips 
and John Lothrop Motley, of 1831. 

After graduation he spent a year in the Law School, and published during this year 
more than a score of poems, many of them in a college periodical, the Collegian. Most of 
these were humorous skits, but there ring out among them the thrilling lines of ' Old 
Ironsides.' Thus from the beginning, as throughout his life, love of fun and love of 
country were two chief elements in Holmes's poetry. At the end of the year he abandoned 
the law and took up the study of medicine. From 1833 to 1835 he spent a little more 
than two years in study abroad, mostly at Paris, and came back to take his degree at the 
Harvard Medical School in 1830. At the same Commencement be read his Phi Beta 
Kappa poem: 'Poetry; A Metrical Essay.' This was published later in the year, with 
other poems, among them the ' Last Leaf,' which had already appeared in a miscellaneous 
collection, the Harbinger, in 1833. We may say that he ' commenced ' doctor and poet at 
the same time; and his profession and his poetry were to be the two chief interests of his 
lit'e, neither ever crowding out the other. 

During the following years he published or edited a number of important medical 
books, was professor of anatomy at Dartmouth College for a short time, settled in Boston 
in 1840 to the practice of his profession, and was married in that year to Miss Amelia 
Lee Jackson. In 1840 he published his second volume of collected Poems, and in 1847 
was appointed professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, a position which he held as 
an active teacher until 1882, and as professor emeritus until his death, in 1894, in all forty- 
seven years. 

Like the other New England poets, Holmes came rather late to his maturity as a writer. 
It was not until he began the Breakfast Tabic series, on which, even more than on his 
verse, will depend his ultimate fame, that he began also to write his best poetry. • The 
Chambered Nautilus,' the 'One-Hoss Shay,' 'Latter-Day Warnings,' 'Contentment,' 
' Parson Turell's Legacy,' 'The Living Temple,' 'The Voiceless,' all appeared first with 
the Autocrat papers (1857-58). Among these are two of his best humorous narratives, and 
two of his best serious lyrics. In the Professor at the Breakfast Tabic (1859) appeared ' The 
Boys,' ' Under the Violets,' and Holmes's. two best hymns. The Civil War period called 
out some of his strongest verse, notably ' Union and Liberty,' ' The Voyage of the Good 
Ship Union,' and the poem on Bryant's seventieth birthday. Meanwhile he had begun 
that series of poems for his class reunions, in which there is not a break for thirty-nine 
years, and which thus forms one of the largest and most characteristic sections of his work, 
Occasional poetry is usually doomed to sure and quick oblivion. Holmes had the rare fac- 
ulty of giving it a touch of greater vitality, while at the same time fitting it closely to the 
occasion. Class loyalty, and college loyalty, and the lasting reality of men's friendships, 
are not merely local and occasional things. Holmes has expressed these in his class poems, 
and in others like ' At a Meeting of Friends,' and ' At the Saturday Club,' and in his trib- 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 679 

utes to his follow poets. In these and others of his occasional poems (the ' Voyage of the 
Good Ship Union ' is one of the class poems) Iks lias expressed also the broader loyalty of 
patriotism, both local and national. And in his later class poems the charm of mellow, 
genial, and youthful old age lias found unique expression. 

There is little further to he said of the external facts of Holmes's life, or of his work. 
This is not the place to speak of his novels and other prose work, or of how he gave to 
the Atlantic Monthly its name and its character. Lowell was willing to accept the editor- 
ship only on condition that Holmes should be a constant contributor, and later he said: ' You 
see the Doctor is like a bright mountain stream that has been dammed up among the hills, 
and is waiting for an outlet into the Atlantic' His later volumes of verse were published, 
Songs in Many Keys in 1861, Humorous Poems in 18(15, Songs of Many Seasons in 1874, 
Bunker Hill Battle, etc. in 1875, The Iron Gate, etc. in 1880, Before the Curfew in 1888. 
He died October 7, 1894, the oldest, and the ' last survivor,' of our elder poets. 

If Whittier is the poet of a single section, New England, Holmes is the poet of a single 
city, Boston. It is a pity that he, instead of Emerson, did not write the quatrain 

What care though rival cities soar 
Along the stormy coast, 
Penn's town, New York, and Baltimore, 
If Boston knew the most 1 

Holmes would have written it better, and with some peculiar quaint touch of his own humor. 
He makes one of his characters in the Autocrat say: 'Boston State House is the hub of 
the Solar System. You could n't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all 
creation straightened out for a crowbar.' He says it in satire, but he has a subtle feeling 
that it is true. On the whole his verse, however, is to a less degree merely local in flavor 
than his prose. 

Holmes seldom strikes the deeper notes or touches on the higher themes of poetry, 
except that of patriotism. He is one of the chief poets of friendship and loyalty, as we 
have seen, but lie expresses friendship rather in its social aspect, and chooses only to sug- 
gest its deeper feelings. So always, it is his own choice to touch but lightly on the sur- 
face of things. But if he is not among the great poets, he is among the rare. It is even 
one of the rarest, things to make real poetry out of mere wit and humor, as he has so often 
done. In his humorous narratives, from the 'One-Iloss Shay' to the 'Broomstick Train,' 
and perhaps most of all in 'How the Old Horse won the Bet,' his verse sparkles and 
crackles in every line. And he has written two lyrics that are sure to live, the one serious, 
and the other so interwoven of fun and pathos that we shall never know whether it be 
serious or not: the ' Chambered Nautilus,' and the ' Last Leaf.' 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

James Russell Lowell was born February 22, 1819, in Cambridge, at ' Elmwood,' the 
house which he occupied during so large a part of his life. The Lowells were an old New 
England family, going back, in Massachusetts Colony, to 1(539. The poet's father, grand- 
father, and great-grandfather were graduates of Harvard College. It was John Lowell, 
his grandfather, who as a member of the Constitutional Convention of Massachusetts in 
1780 introduced into the Bill of Rights of the State a clause abolishing shivery — 'a good 
sort of grandfather for the author of the Bi.gloio Papers,'' as Dr. Edward Everett Hale 
says. The great-grandfather was a clergyman, the grandfather a Lawyer, and the 
father again a clergyman, pastor of the First Church in Boston. The family had always 
been distinguished for ability and public spirit. An uncle of the poet, Francis Cabot 
Lowell, was one of the first successful manufacturers of New England, and for him the 
city of Lowell was named. Another uncle, John Lowell, Jr., founded the Lowell Insti- 
tute in Boston. 

Lowell's mother was of Orkney descent. Both her father, Keith Spence, and her 
mother's father, Robert Traill, were New England merchants who had come from the 



68o BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

Orkney Islands. Her mother's mother, Mary Whipple, was, however, of New England 
ancestry. Mary Whipple's father, William Whipple, was one of the signers of the 
Declaration of Independence, and her mother belonged to another old New England 
family, the Cutts, going back to the first half of the seventeenth century hi New Eng- 
land. 

James Rnssell Lowell was the youngest of six brothers and sisters. His home train- 
ing, as in the case of Holmes, was that of a scholarly minister's family, illuminated 
in his case by his mother's strong imaginative temperament and skill hi music. As a 
child, he was read to sleep from Spenser's Faerie Queene. He was surrounded by books 
and by nature (Elinwood being then at a considerable distance from other houses, 
among the woods and meadows), and from the first he showed an almost passionate love 
of both. 

After fitting for college in a Cambridge school, he entered Harvard in 1834, and had 
among his teachers there C. C. Felton, professor of Greek and later president of the 
college (celebrated by Longfellow in 'Three Friends of Mine'), Benjamin Peirce, the 
mathematician of Holmes's ' famous Class of '29,' George Ticknor, Longfellow's predeces- 
sor in the Smith professorship of Belles Lettres, and, in the last half of his course, Long- 
fellow himself. Lowell read in college, he tells us, ' almost everything except the 
text-books prescribed by the faculty.' He had already devoured Scott's novels before 
entering college. Now he read Dante, Tasso, Montaigne, the old English dramatists, 
Butler, Cowper, Burns, Landor, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Carlyle, and Milton, and, under 
the impulse of his study of Milton, something of the classics. As Dr. Hale tells us in his 
reminiscences, the college boys of those days were passionately devoted to literature, and 
Lowell's knowledge and ability made him a leader among them. He was an editor of 
Harvardiana, and was elected class poet. During his senior year he became so much 
more devoted to reading than to studying, and so regardless of prescribed exercises, in- 
cluding chapel, that he was suspended ' on account of continued neglect of his college 
duties,' as it was expressed in the vote of the faculty ; and was rusticated at Concord, 
where he lived and studied in the household of the Rev. Barzillai Frost. During this 
rustication he perhaps found models both for the Rev. Homer Wilbur and for Hosea 
BigloAv. 

In any case, he met Emerson, and walked and talked with him, but at first was influ- 
enced more toward opposition than toward discipleship. In his class poem, which he was 
not allowed to deliver, but which he printed for distribution among his classmates, he 
ridiculed the transcendentalists and the abolitionists, and, in a mild way, Emerson him- 
self. He loyally sent a copy of the poem to Emerson, with a note excusing himself for 
these liberties, but stoutly maintaining his own opinions. Emerson's influence gradually 
' struck in,' however, and Lowell became, though not a disciple, an ardent admirer. Late 
in life he signed himself Emerson's ' liegeman,' and said that he for one must ' Obey the 
voice at eve obeyed at prime.' We also find the anti-slavery feeling growing in him during 
this same year, and beginning to dominate his thought at least a year before' he first met 
Miss Maria White, to whose influence it has usually been attributed. ' The abolitionists,' 
he wrote in November, 1838, ' are the only ones with whom I sympathize of the present 
extant parties.' 

He had been allowed to return to Cambridge just hi time to graduate with his class in 
1838. Not knowing what else to do, he, like Holmes, began the study of the law, and 
graduated from the Law School in 1840. During these two years he continued his eager 
reading, and now paid much more attention to the classics than he had done hi college 
when they were prescribed subjects. Ovid, Theocritus, and the Greek dramatists seem to 
have been his favorites. In August, 1840, he graduated from the Law School, and became 
engaged to Miss Maria White, whom he had met late in the previous year. He entered a 
law office hi Boston, but spent most of his time in reading and in writing verse, and seems 
never to have had, on his own account, that ' First Client ' whose imaginary existence 
offered the material of his later humorous sketch. Late in this year (1840) he published 
his first book of verse, A Year's Life, dated 1841 ; and in 1841-1842 he published many 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 681 

poeim and essays in the magazines of the time. Among his poems of this period are the 
heautiful lyrics, ' My Love,' ' Irene,' and the song ' O Moonlight deep and tender ; ' and 
hi many of the sonnets there is a personal sincerity and a fineness of poetic quality to he 
found hi few other American sonnets. These poems express his feeling for Miss White, 
whose influence upon him was strong and always ideal. It was partly through her influ- 
ence, and partly through his own natural development, that Lowell had now openly joined 
forces with the extreme abolitionists, at a time when abolition seemed mere quixotism, 
was despised by almost all conservative people, even in New England, and shut out its 
devotees from the social circles to which Lowell was born, and from many of the most 
important literary magazines and publishing houses. 

At the end of 1842 Lowell entirely gave up the law, and with Robert Carter attempted 
to start a new magazine, The Pioneer. This was not a success financially, and left 
Lowell considerably hi debt by its failure after the third number had been published. 
The list of contributors to the three numbers which did appear included most of the chief 
contemporary writers, — Hawthorne, Whittier, Poe, W. W. Story, Thomas William 
Parsons, and Lowell. Lowell was in New York during the winter of 1842-43, and made 
many acquaintances and friends among the men of letters there. He published a new 
volume of Poems in December, 1843 (dated 1844), which contained ' Rhcecus,' ' An 
Incident in a Railroad Car,' ' The Shepherd of King Admetus,' the ' Stanzas on Freedom,' 
etc. A year later, in December, 1844, he published Conversations on Some of the Old Poets. 
Both these volumes were republished in London, and they brought Lowell considerable 
reputation hi England and in America. 

Lowell was married to Miss White in December, 1844, and for some months after his 
marriage lived in Philadelphia, where he was employed as editorial writer on the Penn- 
sylvania Freeman at the munificent salary of ten dollars a month. In May, 1845, he re- 
turned to Elm wood, where he lived until his first trip to Europe, in 1851. These were the 
busiest and poetically the most productive years of his life, and they were years full of 
both joy and sorrow in his home life, and of growing friendships with his chief contem- 
poraries, most of them, like Holmes and Longfellow, his elders by ten years or more. 
His first child, Blanche, was born December 31, 1845, and died March 19, 1847. The sec- 
ond daughter, Mabel, was born September 9, 1847. Lowell is not so popular a poet of 
the home as Longfellow, but in ' The First Snowfall,' ' The Changeling,' ' She Came and 
Went,' ' I thought our love at full, but I did err,' and later, in ' After the Burial,' ' The 
Dead House,' ' The Wind-Harp,' and ' Auf Wiedersehen,' he has written poems of home 
joys and sorrows that have a deeper and more intimate appeal. 

The year 1848 has been called by Lowell's latest biographer his ' annus mirabilis.' 
Just at the end of 1847 appeared his Poemtg^Second Series (dated 1848), containing the 
noble poem 'Columbus;' the characteristic 'Indian Summer Reverie ;'' The Present 
Crisis,' as strong and as universal in its truth as the very best of Whittier's work; 'To 
the Dandelion;' and other important short poems. In 1848 were published the Biglow 
Papers, First Series, the Fable for Critics, and the Vision of Sir Launfal, besides some 
forty articles and poems in various periodicals. From 184G to 1850 Lowell was a regular 
contributor to the National Anti-Slavery Standard. In July, 1851, he sailed for Europe, 
spent nearly a year in Italy, and returned home through Switzerland, Germany, France, 
and England, having for companions on the return voyage Thackeray and Clough. The 
journey had been undertaken partly on account of Mrs. Lowell's health, but she con- 
tinued to fail, and died October 21, 1853. 

Holmes had given his lectures on the English Poets of the Nineteenth Century at the 
Lowell Institute in 1853. In the vwinter of 1854-55 Lowell gave there a general course 
on poetry, which marked the beginning of his mature criticism, and which seems to have 
impressed its hearers as the best lecture-course ever given at this famous Institute. 
Three weeks after the beginning of the course he was appointed to the Smith Professor- 
ship at Harvard (which Longfellow had just resigned), with a year's leave of absence for 
study and travel abroad. He held this professorship, except for an interval of two years, 
until his appointment as Minister to Spain in 1877. Since Lowell's resignation of it no 



682 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

appointment has been made, and it remains distinguished by the names of its three holders, 
Ticknor, Longfellow, Lowell. 

During his year of preparation Lowell went to Paris (and to Chartres, where he re- 
ceived the impressions out of which grew his poem ' The Cathedral ') ; then to London, 
where he visited Thackeray and Leigh Hunt; then to Dresden for the whiter, where he 
attended lectures at the University. There is something pathetic — or even tragic — 
in the idea of putting the poet to school again after he has reached middle age, to make 
of him a professor ! — even so distinguished a professor as Lowell was. In the spring he 
escaped for another visit to Italy, and returned to America in August. 

He taught regularly from 1856 to 1872, giving courses on Dante, German Literature, 
Spanish Literature (especially Don Quixote), and later on old French; and public lec- 
tures on English Poetry and Belles Lettres. He was not so faithful a routine teacher as 
Longfellow, but many students have borne witness to the inspiration received from him. 
He was not of course a scholar in the narrow modern sense of the word, except to a cer- 
tain extent in old French; but he was an omnivorous reader, and his general knowledge 
of literature was probably not surpassed in breadth or intimacy by that of any teacher in 
his time. 

Lowell was the first editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Monthly from its foundation in 1857 
until 1861. From 1864 to 1872 he was editor, with his close friend, Mr. Charles Eliot 
Norton, of the North American Review. Leaving out of account the second series of the 
Biglow Papers, all of which appeared in the A tlantic Monthly from 1862 to 1866, his con- 
tributions to both of these reviews were much more important in prose than in verse. 
During the first part of the period, his articles dealt particularly with public affairs, and 
were notable for his strong support of Lincoln. (See note on page 490.) In the later part 
of the period appeared some of Lowell's best literary essays, which were collected in Among 
My Books (1870), My Study Windows (1871), and Among My Books, Second Series (1876). 
In 1869 was published Under the Willows and Other Poems, and hi 1870 The Cathedral. 

In 1872, Lowell asked the Harvard authorities for leave of absence with half pay, 
which is now granted to most college professors every seventh year. After his sixteen 
years of continuous teaching, however, this was refused him, and he resigned his position. 
The years 1872-74 he spent in Europe, mostly at Paris, Rome, and Florence. While in 
England he received the degrees of D. C. L. from Oxford and LL. D. from Cambridge. 
On his return in 1874 he again took up his professorship. 

Lowell's poems of the war period, even if we were to leave out of account the second 
series of the Biglow Papers, which stand by themselves and are incomparable, must still 
be considered more important than those of any other poet except Whitman. They in- 
clude ' The Washers of the Shroud ' (1861), tli3 n emorial poem to Robert Gould Shaw 
(1864), ' On Board the '76 ' (1865), and culminate in the ' Commemoration Ode,' which 
seems by almost universal consent to be ranked as the greatest single poem yet written 
in America. Lowell had the right to speak as he did in these poems and in the Biglow 
Papers. He had not, like Longfellow and Holmes, any son of his own to send to the war 
(though it is certain that if there had been a son in Lowell's family, he would have gone), 
but his nephews, ' the hope of our race,' as he calls them, whom he loved almost as if 
they were his own sons, — three as noble young men as fought on either side, — all won 
their death-wounds hi battle. Lowell's ' Commemoration Ode,' the Biglow Papers, and 
the Three Memorial Poems, make him unquestionably our greatest poet of patriotism. 

Yet, when he was aroused to bitter denunciation of the corruption in public life revealed 
under Grant's administration, and in his 'Agassiz ' wrote a few stinging lines about the 
spectacle which ' The land of honest Abraham ' (or, as he first wrote it, the ' land of 
broken promise ') was then offering to the world, he naturally received a storm of abuse 
from the party press of the time. His sufficient answer was the three memorial poems 
of 1875 and 1876. In his Epistle to George William Curtis, written in 1874, but not 
published till 1888, he answered for himself more directly: — 

Was I too bitter ? Who his phrase can choose 
That sees the life-blood of his dearest ooze ? 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 683 

I loved my Country so as only they 

Who love a mother fit to die for may ; 

I loved her old renown, her stainless fame, — 

What better proof than that 1 loathed her shame ? 

Lowell was delegate to the Republican Convention, and presidential elector, in 1876. 
In 1877 he was appointed Minister to Spain, where he at once won the sympathies of the 
Spanish people. His coming was looked on as a revival of the days when Irving was 
minister. Among other honors, he received that of an election to the Spanish Academy. 
In January, 1880, he was transferred to London, the most important post hi the American 
diplomatic service. Here he was equally successful in his larger field. He did more 
than any other minister has done to interpret to England the character and the strength 
of America, and to lay the foundations of that friendship, based on mutual respect, which 
has since been built up between the two chief branches of the English-speaking race. It 
has been said that he was the most popular man in England. Certainly no one was more 
in demand on every public occasion, especially where speech-making was hi order. Lowell's 
speeches were clever, witty, always fitted to the occasion, and, wherever this was appro- 
priate, were weighty and important ; and they were almost as numerous as the days of 
the year. In these speeches he was always, on occasion, strongly American and strongly 
democratic. There is no better exposition of the American idea than his address on 
' Democracy ' at Manchester. And he conducted public affairs with absolute firmness, 
never yielding anything so far as America was in the right. ' With all his grace,' it has 
been well said, ' there was a plainness of purpose that could not be mistaken.' Yet during 
his mission, and after his return to America, he was again bitterly assailed by the parti- 
san press, who blamed him for his very success and for the respect which he had won. 
Because he was a gentleman and a man of the world, and had conducted affairs with 
courtesy as well as firmness, he was accused of being un-American, and of toadying to the 
British nobility. Nothing could be more unjust or farther from the truth. It was pre- 
cisely because he was always and strongly American that he won the respect of the Eng- 
lish. In many other Americans of culture, as for instance Washington Irving and Mr. 
Charles Eliot Norton, they had thought they found simply Englishmen transferred to an 
unfortunate environment and making the best of it. Lowell compelled them to feel that 
he was always, as one of them has expressed it, 'a scrappy Yankee,' and a typical Yankee. 
It was Lowell's great service to prove that a thoroughly typical American could be also 
a thorough gentleman, a man of broad culture, and, in every best sense, a man of the 
world. 

He returned to America in 1885. Shortly before his return the second Mrs. Lowell 
died. He had married, in September, 1857, the sister of a close friend of his first wife, 
who had been chosen by her to care for her only daughter. He came back to find many 
of his best friends gone, — among them Longfellow and Emerson, — but younger friends 
still remained to him, like George William Curtis, Mr. Norton, and Mr. Howells. He 
wrote in the ' Postscript' (1887) of his ' Epistle to George Wdliam Curtis: ' — 

Home am I come : not, as I hoped might be, 

To the old haunts, too full of ghosts for me, 

But to the olden dreams that time endears, 

And the loved books that younger grow with years ; 

To country rambles, timing with my tread 

Some happier verse that carols in my head, 

Tet all with sense of something vainly missed, 

Of something lost, but when I never wist. 

How empty seems to me the populous street, 

One figure gone I daily loved to meet, — 

The clear, sweet singer with the crown of snow 

Not whiter than the thoughts that housed below '. 

And, ah, what absence feel I at my side, 

Like Dante when he missed his laurelled guide, 

What sense of diminution in the air 

Once so inspiring, Emerson not there ! 

But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet 

Lessen like sound of friends' departing feet, 

And Death is beautiful as feet of friend 



684 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

Coming with welcome at our journey's end ; 
For me Fate gave, whate'er she else denied, 
A nature sloping to the southern side ; 
I thank her for it, though when clouds arise 
Such natures double-darken gloomy skies. 

Little I ask of Fate ; will she refuse 

Some days of reconcilement with the Muse ? 

I take my reed again and blow it free 

Of dusty silence, murmuring, ' Sing to me ! ' 

These lines describe his last years. He returned to poetry; he completed his ' En- 
dymion,' which has in it a quality rare in Lowell's work, the poetic suggestion of more than 
is expressed; and he wrote some exquisite lyrics, with a lightness of touch he had not 
possessed before, and some poems full of his best strength, like those on ' Turner's Old 
Te'me'raire ' and on Grant. His last years gave us also important addresses like those on 
• The Independent in Politics,' and ' Our Literature,' and charming essays like that on 
' Izaak Walton.' He died at Elmwood, August 12, 1891. 

Lowell is the largest and best rounded personality that our literature yet possesses. He 
has unquestionably written our best literary essays, and perhaps also our best political 
essays in literary form. In his poetry he has all but surpassed the other poets, each 
in his own field. He is as true a nature poet as Bryant; though he has nothing to 
compare with the higher ranges of Bryant's nature poetry, like the ' Forest Hymn,' yet 
his treatment of Nature in her gentler aspects can well meet the comparison. ' To a 
Dandelion,' for instance, may be set beside ' To the Fringed Gentian.' What is more im- 
portant, he writes of Nature with a happy intimacy which Bryant never had, as in the 
' Indian Summer Reverie ' and ' Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line,' and in many of the essays, 
like 'My Garden Acquaintance' and 'A Good Word for Winter.' There is a personal 
genuineness in his early work, especially the sonnets, which we do not find elsewhere 
except in Longfellow or Whittier, and in them it hardly has Lowell's deeper poetic quality; 
while in his later work, there is a high dignity which we do not mid elsewhere except in 
Bryant. He is a true poet of New England country life, once at least, in ' The Courtin',' 
surpassing Whittier in his own field. He has written poems of sincere thought, though 
without the condensation and the fitness of form of Emerson at his best, in ' Bibliolatres,' 
' The Lesson,' ' Masaccio,' ' The Miner,' ' Turner's Old Te'me'raire,' etc. ; and these poems 
are somewhat more human in quality than Emerson's. He is our greatest humorist; the 
Biglow Papers have far broader and more significant power than the best of Holmes's 
humor, and the ' Fable for Critics ' is almost as sparkling as the best wit of Holmes. 
If he is not a greater poet of occasions than Holmes, he is certainly a poet of greater 
occasions, and adequate to them. He has a lightness of touch in familiar verse that no one 
of our greater poets had (though it is to be found in Thomas Bailey Aldrich and others), 
as in ' Hebe,' ' The Pregnant Comment,' ' An Ember Picture ' and ' Telepathy.' Yet 
there is something lacking in most of his work, something of charm, especially of rhythmic 
charm, something of poetic suggestiveness, something which he seems always striving 
after (see ' L'Envoi to the Muse,' ' Auspex,' and ' The Secret '), and which now and then he 
does almost attain, as in ' In the Twilight.' He lacks, usually, just that last touch of genius, 
that ' St. Elmo's Fire ' playing over all, which he so well describes in his own essay on Keats. 
His life and character possessed something of this charm which did not quite get 
expression in his verse, fie had a genius for friendship; he was one of the best talkers, 
and by far the best letter- writer, we have had; and we feel that uncaptured charm 
hovering near some of his poems of personal moods, like ' My Study Fire,' ' To Charles 
Eliot Norton,' or the ' Envoi to the Muse ' and the others just mentioned. In personality, 
he was the fine flower of American society. Noble and varied as his verse is, he lived 
out his own motto, — 

The Epic of a man rehearse, 

Be something better than thy verse. 

He is our noblest patriot-poet, and our most complete and well-rounded man. 






WALT WHITMAN 6S5 



WALT WHITMAN 

Whitman, like Holmes, was of combined Connecticut and Dutch ancestry. His imme- 
diate ancestors, like Whittier's, were farmers, but more prosperous, his father owning 
five hundred acres of good land on Long Island, which Whitman preferred to call by its 
Indian name of Paumanok. His mother's family were also prosperous farmers. On his 
father's side, the first American ancestor, Rev. Zachariah Whitman, came to this country 
in 1635 and settled at Milford, Conn. In the last part of the seventeenth century Long 
Island was settled, largely from Connecticut, and the son of Rev. Zachariah Whitman 
crossed the Sound with the others. At about the same time Whitman's ancestors on his 
mother's side, a family of Dutch origin, the Van Yelsors, settled in Long Island a little 
further to the west, nearer New York. There was also Quaker blood in Whitman's veins, 
coming from his maternal grandmother. 

Whitman's father, Walter Whitman, was a carpenter and builder as well as a farmer, 
and lived at Huntington, Long Island. There Walt Whitman was born, May 31, 1819, 
the second of nine children. He was christened Walter, but to distinguish him from his 
father was called Walt, and he kept this name throughout his life. When he was four 
years old the family moved to Brooklyn, and there Walt attended the public schools. He 
was still almost as much a country as a city boy, however. He tells of his expeditions 
with his comrades on the ice of the Long Island bays in the winter, and of his own walks 
on the bare shores of Coney Island in summer, which then, he says, ' I had all to myself.' 
These expeditions to deserted Coney Island lasted until he was more than thirty years 
old, and he tells how, in its solitudes, he ' loved after bathing to race up and down the 
hard sand, and declaim Homer and Shakspere to the surf and sea-gulls by the hour.' 
In 1833-34 he was in printing offices in Brooklyn, learning the trade, and until 1837 
worked as compositor in Brooklyn and New York. For the following year or two he 
taught school in country towns on Long Island, and ' boarded round.' ' This,' he says, ' I 
consider one of my best experiences and deepest lessons in human nature behind the 
scenes and in the masses.' In the following year (1839-40), he started and published a 
weekly paper in his native town, probably doing both the writing and the typesetting him- 
self. ' All these years,' he says, ' I was down Long Island more or less every summer, 
now east, now west, sometimes months at a stretch.' For the five years following 1840, 
all the time, and off and on for the next fifteen years, he lived winters in Brooklyn, 
working more or less as a compositor in New York city. He tells how his life was 
' curiously identified with Fulton Ferry ' (see the passage quoted in full in the note on 
' Crossing Brooklyn Ferry '), how he crossed almost daily, often hi the pilot-house, famil- 
iar with all the pilots, as he was in New York with all the omnibus drivers, with whom 
he spent many hours riding the length of Broadway. He passionately loved the great city 
and its sights and its people, and no one has given so vivid a picture of it either in verse 
or in prose. He had a passion for music also, spent night after night at the opera, and 
went much to the theatre. In 1848-49 he was editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. He had 
written more or less since 1839 for newspapers and magazines, among others the Demo- 
cratic Review. A few specimens of this early writing, both in prose and verse, are pre- 
served in his Complete Prose Works (pages 334-374). The 'Dough-Face Song' is good 
ordinary rhyme, and hi both substance and form reminds us a little of the first series of 
the Biglow Papers, though it is dated earlier. His prose, so far as preserved, consists of 
story-sketches, which hold the reader's interest but are in no way remarkable. Among 
other things he wrote at this time a temperance tract, Franklin Evans. 

In 1849 he broke away from all regular employment, and started off on a leisurely and 
apparently purposeless excursion, which was to be of great importance in forming the char- 
acter of his later work. He calls it ' a leisurely journey and working expedition.' It 
must be described in his own words of brief summary. He went, he says, with his brother 
Jeff, ' through all the Middle States, and down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Lived 
awhile hi New Orleans, and work'd there on the editorial staff of " daily Crescent " news- 



686 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

paper. After a time plodded back northward, up the Mississippi, and around to and by 
way of the Great Lakes, Michigan, Huron, and Erie, to Niagara falls and lower Canada, 
finally returning through central New York and down the Hudson ; traveling altogether 
probably 8,000 miles this trip, to and fro.' From what we know of his life in New York 
and Brooklyn, we can infer what this expedition was to him. Speaking of the origin of 
Leaves of Grass, he once said, ' Remember, the book arose out of my life in Brooklyn and 
New York from 1838 to 1853, absorbing a million people, for fifteen years, with an in- 
timacy, an eagerness, an abandon, probably never equalled.' With the same passion he 
must have absorbed the sights and the life of the country he passed through — almost the 
whole of the United States at that time — on this 8,000 mile excursion, making his own 
way, working here and there at his trade, living the life of the people. There are vivid 
reminiscences of the South constantly recurring hi his later writing, as in the poem of the 
live-oak; and there is everywhere present the feeling of bigness, freedom, and heartiness, 
of the life of the West. 

On his return, he took up for a little while his former occupations, editing and printing 
a daily and weekly paper, the Freeman, and engaging, with his father, as he had done 
before going away, in the business of building and selling houses in Brooklyn. But he 
had now conceived the work which he was to do, to chant the songs of democracy as he 
understood it, to ' Compose a march for these States.' According to his first biographer, 
Dr. Bucke, he experienced a sort of conversion, and, like other mystics, felt his life-work 
given him as a mission. At any rate, he lost interest in other occupations, except so far 
as was necessary for simple self-support, gave up the successful house-building business, 
and devoted himself to the composition of his Leaves of Grass. This was issued without 
any publisher, the typesetting and printing having been done partly by Whitman himself, 
ha 1855. 

Apparently the last specimen we possess of Whitman's earlier style is the poem ' Sail- 
ing the Mississippi at Midnight,' probably written in 1849, and given, as by a rather 
pleasant irony are all the specimens which we have of his regular verse, in the Prose 
Works. I quote from what seems to be its original form, in the Notes and Fragments : — 

How solemn ! sweeping this dense black tide ! 

No friendly lights i' the heaven o'er us ; 
A murky darkness on either side, 

And kindred darkness all before us ! 

Now, drawn nearer the shelving rim, 

Weird-like shadows suddenly rise ; 
Shapes of mist and phantoms dim 

Baffle the gazer's straining eyes. 



Then, by the trick of our own swift motion, 

Straight, tall giants, au army vast, 
Rank by rank, like the waves of ocean, 

On the shore march stilly past. 

How solemn 1 the river a trailing pall, 
Which takes, but never again gives back ; 

And moonless and starless the heaven's arch'd wall, 
Responding an equal black ! 

O, tireless waters ! like Life's quick dream, 
Onward and onward ever hurrying — 

Like death in this midnight hour you seem, 
Life in your chill drops greedily burying ! 



Unlike time you begin and end, 
Unlike life you 've a pathway steady, 

Unlike earth's are your numberless graves 
Ever undug, yet ever ready. 



The change from this style to that of the first edition of Leaves of Grass is so great that 
it seems as though some connecting links must be found in his newspaper writing of the 
time. Yet this is doubtful. The first edition of Leaves of Grass, he says, was printed 
' after many MS. doings and undoings,' and possibly all the transition stages were lost m t 



WALT WHITMAN 687 



this repeated revision. The section of ' First Drafts and Rejected Lines and Passages ' 
given in the Notes and Fragments does not show this transition, but is entirely in the style 
of Leaves of Grass itself. All that we know of the development of Whitman's peculiar 
style is what he tells us in one brief sentence: 'I had great trouble in leaving out the 
stock " poetical " touches, but succeeded at last.' 

The first edition of Leaves of Grass had practically no sale. Some copies were sent out 
for review, which received little attention, and some were given away. Only one copy, so 
far as we know, won a real response, and that was the one sent to Emerson. His letter 
to Whitman must be quoted in full : — 

' I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of " Leaves of Grass." I find it the 
most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am 
very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am 
always making of what seems the sterile and stingy Nature, as if too much handiwork or 
too much lymph in the temperament were making our western wits fat and mean. I 
give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable 
things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which 
so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire. 

' I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long f ore- 
ground somewhere for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little to see if tins sunbeam were 
no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, 
namely of fortifying and encouraging. 

' I did not know until I, last night, saw the book advertised in a newspaper, that I could 
trust the name as real and available for a post-office. I wish to see my benefactor, and 
have felt much like striking my tasks and visiting New York to pay you my respects.' 

Whitman published this letter, together with his own long reply to it, in the second edition 
of Leaves of Grass, which appeared in 1856. On the back of this edition was printed, over 
Emerson's name, ' I greet you at the beginning of a great career.' All this was at least 
in somewhat doubtful taste, but Emerson was above resenting it or retracting anything 
he had said, though naturally in a private letter, acknowledging the gift of a book from 
its author, he perhaps expressed himself somewhat otherwise than he would have done 
in writhig for public print. In 1856 he wrote to Carlyle, ' One book last summer came out 
in New York, a non-descript monster which yet had terrible eyes and buffalo strength, 
and was indisputably American.' (See the whole letter in the Carlyle-Emerson Corre- 
spondence, volume ii, page 283.) He visited Whitman in New York, as he had spoken of 
dohig, and friendly relations were kept up between the two till the end of Emerson's 
life. In 1856 Thoreau also visited Whitman, and wrote of him soon after: 'That Walt 
Whitman ... is the most interesting fact to me at present. I have just read his second 
edition (which he gave me), and it has done me more good than any reading for a long 
time. . . . There are two or three pieces in the book which are disagreeable, to say the 

least; simply sensual On the whole it sounds to me very brave and American, 

after whatever deductions. I do not believe that all the sermons, so called, that have been 
preached in this land, put together, are equal to it for preaching. We ought to rejoice 
greatly hi him. . . . Though rude and sometimes ineffectual, it is a great primitive poem, 
an alarum or trumpet-note ringing through the American camp. . . . Since I have 
seen him, I find that I am not disturbed by any brag or egotism in his book. He may 
turn out the least of a braggart of all, having a better right to be confident. He is a great 
fellow.' 

The personal impression Whitman made upon all who ever saw him seems to have been 
such as to counteract any previous notions they may have had of his work as being either 
'egotistic' or 'sensual.' Howells, not a judge prejudiced in his favor, met him in New 
York in 1860, and speaks of ' the spiritual purity which I felt in him, no less than the 
dignity.' Howells had previously conceived him as 'the apostle of the rough, the 
uncouth.' Now he found him to be 'the gentlest person; his barbaric yawp, translated 
into terms of social encounter, was an address of singular quiet, delivered in a voice of 
winning and endearing friendliness.' 



688 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

There are in Whitman's work passages which, though Thoreau's word ' sensual ' is by 
no means the right one to describe them, are anything but fit reading for young ladies' 
seminaries. Such passages he has in common with nearly all the greatest writers. But 
naturally at their first appearance they aroused bitter opposition to him, and from 
time to time this opposition took serious practical form. When the third edition of Leaves 
of Grass was being printed at Boston hi 1860, Emerson tried to persuade Whitman to 
omit these parts of his work. Whitman owns that ' each point of Emerson's statement was 
unanswerable,' but his own ' unmistakable conviction ' that he must leave his work com- 
plete, as he understood completeness, was unshaken. 

The 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass contained more than twice as many poems as the 
edition of 1855. The edition of 1860 was still further augmented, especially by the im- 
portant collection of poems on men's friendship entitled Calamus. Neither of these edi- 
tions, however, had much sale, and the firm which published the Boston edition failed at 
the beginning of the war. 

Whitman's younger brother, George, enlisted in the Union army, and served through- 
out the war, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He was in most of the important 
battles in Virginia. In 1862 he was wounded at the first battle of Fredericksburg. The 
wound was thought to be serious (though it did not prove so), and Whitman at an hour's 
notice started for the army. He spent a considerable part of that winter with the Army of 
the Potomac, and began the attendance on wounded soldiers which he did not give up 
until the last hospitals at Washington were closed. ■ 

These were the central years of Whitman's life. He gave them almost wholly to 
his work for the soldiers, living as simply and cheaply as he could, and working in the 
hospitals almost daily till the end of the war. He assisted constantly in dressing the sol- 
diers' wounds, but he did far more by ministering to their wants in many other ways, and 
most of all by the health and strength and courage of his own perscnality. ' A surgeon who 
throughout the war had charge of one of the largest army hospitals hi Washington,' says 
Dr. Bucke, in his Life of Whitman, ' has told the present writer that (without personal 
acquaintance or any other than professional interest), he watched for many months Walt 
Whitman's ministermgs to the sick and wounded, and was satisfied that he saved many 
lives.' There are few records, even in those years, of such simple and unselfish devotion 
as can be found in Whitman's Specimen Days, and in his unpremeditated letters, which 
have now been collected under the title The Wound^Dresser. At least one passage must 
be quoted from an eye-witness, Mr. John Swinton, telling of his hospital visits : ' I first 
heard of him among the sufferers on the Peninsula after a battle there. Subsequently I 
saw him, time and again, in the Washington hospitals, or wending his way there with 
basket or haversack on his arm, and the strength of beneficence suffusing his face. His 
devotion surpassed the devotion of woman. It would take a volume to tell of his kind- 
ness, tenderness, and thoughtfulness. 

' Never shall I forget one night when I accompanied him on his rounds through a hos- 
pital, filled with those wounded young Americans whose heroism he has sung in deathless 
numbers. There were three rows of cots, and each cot bore its man. When he appeared, 
in passing along, there was a smile of affection and welcome on every face, however wan, 
and his presence seemed to light up the place as it might be lit by the presence 6*0 the Son 
of Love. From cot to cot they called him, often in tremulous tones or hi whispers ; they 
embraced him, they touched his hand, they gazed at him. To one he gave a few words of 
cheer, for another he wrote a letter home, to others he gave an orange, a few comfits, a 
cigar, a pipe and tobacco, a sheet of paper or a postage stamp, all of which and many 
other things were in his capacious haversack. From another he would receive a dying 
message for mother, wife, or sweetheart ; for another he would promise to go on an 
errand ; to another, some special friend, very low, he would give a manly farewell kiss. 
He did the things for them which no nurse or doctor could do, and he seemed todeave a 
benediction at every cot as he passed along. The lights had gleamed for hours in the hos- 
pital that night before he left it, and as he took his way towards the door, you could hear 
the voice of many a stricken hero calling, " Walt, Walt, Walt, come again ! come again ! " ' 



WALT WHITMAN 689 



Drum Taps, Whitman's poems of the war, was published in 1865, and the Sequel to 
Drum Taps, containing his memorial poems on Lincoln, and a few more war poems, later 
in the year. It is surprising that these attracted so little attention as they did. Yet we 
must remember that it has always taken at least a generation for the general public to 
accept any original form of rhythmic expression, especially a form so different from ac- 
cepted standards, and apparently so uncouth, as Whitman's. Of the substance of the 
poems, their vividness and truth, it is unnecessary to speak here. But it may be noted in 
passing, that, while there is more of the war in his work than in that of any other poet, 
there is nowhere any touch of bitterness or even of hostility. 

Toward the end of the war Whitman obtained a position as clerk in the Department of 
the Interior. Not long afterward the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, came across 
Whitman's copy of Leaves of Grass (the 1860 edition) which he was revising for republi- 
cation, and at once discharged Whitman as ' the author of an indecent book.' Whitman 
soon obtained an equally good position in the office of the Attorney-General, but the inci- 
dent called out a famous defence of Whitman and arraignment of Harlan, in W. D. 
O'Connor's pamphlet The Good Gray Poet. This defence and arraignment are so exag- 
gerated in tone that they have probably done Whitman's reputation more harm than 
good, and have made people feel that anything written by a disciple of his must be taken 
with very large allowances. Yet the pamphlet is admirable at least for its intense loyalty, 
and for its title, which was a creation of genius. Whitman has been called ever since, and 
deservedly, ' The Good Gray Poet.' 

The new and revised edition (the f ourth) of Leaves of Grass, with Drum Taps added, 
was published hi 1867. In 1871 was published the fifth edition, with ' Passage to Lidia ' 
and other important additions. In 1872 Whitman was asked to give the Commencement 
poem at Dartmouth College, and he delivered ' As a strong bird on pinions free ' (now 
' Thou mother with thy equal brood'). In ' Passage to India ' and in the later poems that 
group themselves with it, we have Whitman's work under a somewhat new aspect. From 
the beginning he had said, ' I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,' and 
had insisted always on the unity of the two and on their equal claims. But both by tem- 
perament and by fixed intention he had expressed primarily the material side of things 
and of man (as he said, the side most neglected by other poets), glorying in the triumphs 
of modern industrialism and in the joys of physical health. Now (see the passages quoted 
in notes on pages 546 and 590, and the whole of his own note on ' Passage to India ' in 
the Complete Prose Works, pages 272-274, as well as the poem itself and those that fol- 
low), he insists most on the other aspect of the dual unity, on the spirit that ' laughs at 
what you call dissolution,' and knows it has the best of time and space. The changes 
which he made in the brief poem 'Assurances ' (page 553) from one edition to another, 
until it found its final form as given in the 1871 edition with ' Passage to India,' are 
typical of this development. 

Whitman was one of the healthiest of men. Those who have described his work in the 
hospitals say that health and strength seemed to radiate from his presence. All his life 
he had lived a great deal in the open air, and in the hospital years he depended on his 
long walks about Washington as his chief delight and relief. But by 1864 his health be- 
gan to be broken down. He had the first illness of his life, called at first ' hospital ma- 
laria,' in the hot summer of that year. Dr. Piatt, in his life of Whitman, says also that 
through a scratch in his hand he was infected with septic poisoning from a wound he was 
helping to dress. This seemed to have only a temporary effect, but he was never entirely 
well afterward. In January, 1873, he had a paralytic stroke, which for a while disabled 
his left side completely. After a time he recovered somewhat, but could never move 
freely. For the first two years he suff ered severely, and he was an invalid for the nineteen 
years that followed. His work at Washington was of course ended, and he had no source 
of income but his books, which hardly brought him anything. 

During these years he lived at Camden, N. J., the home of George Whitman. Almost 
in poverty, until 1881, when the sale of his works began to bring him a small income, 
— which enabled him to live with some slight degree of comfort in a home of his own, — 



690 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

and in constant weakness and much of the time helplessness, he underwent a test such as 
few men have been subjected to, and one which was particularly severe for him, the lover 
of all physical joys and especially of free movement in the open air. He met this test 
with complete triumph. All who saw him at Camden — and his home became to some 
degree a goal of pilgrimage, especially in the last ten years of his life — bear witness 
to the sweetness and strength of the character that revealed itself in him. 

The so-called ' Centennial Edition ' of Leaves of Grass was issued in 1876, with a second 
volume, composed partly of prose and partly of verse. By 1879 Whitman had partially 
recovered from his paralysis, and was able to take a journey through the Western States 
in that year, and in the following year to Canada. In 1881 the seventh edition of Leaves 
of Grass was published by James R. Osgood & Co. of Boston, but six months after its 
publication, when some two thousand copies had been sold, the firm was threatened with 
prosecution by the Massachusetts District Attorney, and declined to continue the sale of 
the book. It was immediately after published at Philadelphia. In 1888 was added the 
collection called November Boughs, in 1891 were published Good-bye My Fancy and the 
tenth edition of Leaves of Grass, including these last two additions. Whitman's health had 
been steadily declining again since 1885 ; he suffered a second shock of paralysis in 1888, 
but lived on, still cheerful and mentally active, and happy in a few devoted friends, until 
1892, when he died, March 26. The small collection, Old Age Echoes, was added to his 
Leaves of Grass in the 1897 edition, Calamus (letters to his friend Peter Doyle) was pub- 
lished in 1897, The Wound Dresser in 1898, An American Primer and the Diary in Canada 
in 1904. 

The question whether Walt Whitman's work is properly to be called poetry at all or 
not still exists only in a few academic circles. It has always been largely a question of 
academic definitions. And while we must have some definiteness of conception, in order 
that our ideas may not become entirely vague and our words meaningless, it would be 
well in this case to imitate Whitman's own modesty when he says : ' Let me not dare, here 
or anywhere, for my own purposes, or any purposes, to attempt the definition of Poetry, 
nor answer the question what it is. Like Religion, Love, Nature, while those terms are 
indispensable, and we all give a sufficiently accurate meaning to them, in my opinion no 
definition that has ever been made sufficiently encloses the name Poetry.' It may be added 
that one of the chief functions of any strongly original poet — or thinker — is to compel 
us to enlarge our definitions. 

But even without departing greatly from the traditional conceptions of poetry, and 
certainly without abandoning the idea that material for poetry, however noble or beauti- 
ful, does not truly become poetry until it has been put into rhythmic form, we are now 
beginning frankly to accept Whitman's work as poetry. We no longer need the excellent 
authority of John Addington Symonds, a critic competent above most others and espe- 
cially devoted to beauty of form in verse, to tell us that Whitman's verse is wonderfully 
rhythmical, and that his rhythms are truly and often delicately fitted to what he has to 
express. It is only needful really to read Whitman, a thing which is often at first diffi- 
cult to do and which people in general have not even yet learned to do — to read him in 
the mass — and above all to read him aloud, which is the final test of poetry — in order 
to feel the strength and fitness of his rhythms, and to realize that they are not the 
rhythms of prose, nor of that bastard form called poetic prose, but are distinctly metrical 
rhythms, that is, the rhythms of verse. For the most part, they hold among verse- 
rhythms somewhat the same place as the recitative and the chant (names which he often 
gives to his poems) hold in music. He has also, when he chooses, the lyric note. The 
distinction between his recitative and his lyric, when he uses them together, as in ' Out 
of the cradle endlessly rocking,' or ' When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,' is just 
the same and just as clearly marked as that between regular lyrics and regular blank 
verse. 

It has taken people so long, however, to settle for themselves, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, this preliminary question of whether Whitman's work was poetry at all or not, 
that they have only just begun to appreciate his power and to give him his true rank. 



SIDNEY LANIER 691 



Professor Trent, in his recent History of American Literature (1903), calls him 'too large 
a man and poet for adequate comprehension at present.' Moreover, Americans have been 
somewhat alienated from Whitman by the attitude of the best foreign critics, who have 
found in him the one and only poet truly characteristic of America. Not really having 
taken the trouble to know Whitman, but having conceived of him and bis work as some- 
thing rough, rowdyish, uncultured and altogether materialistic and sensual, Americans 
were naturally offended that he, rather than men like Longfellow, Lowell, and Emerson, 
should be taken as typical of America. We felt that all the chief American poets (except 
Poe, the only one whose work could have been written elsewhere than in America) were 
typical; and that the breadth of culture in such men as Longfellow and Lowell made 
them only the more completely typical. We naturally sought in the typical American 
poet an expression of our whole life and character, including (as Whitman himself has 
said somewhere) our inheritance of all the best from past ages and foreign lands; while 
the foreign critic, as naturally, sought in him the expression of only that part of our life 
which is entirely new and strange — and if uncouth and rude, so much the better. We 
have now come to know Whitman more truly; to know that he was anything but the 
rowdy and materialist of our first conceptions; to know that while he did not lack culture 
in the narrower sense (having read and thoroughly digested Emerson, having understood 
Carlyle and in his own thought refuted and gone beyond him, having won some genuine 
knowledge of Fichte's thought and Hegel's, if not directly of Plato's, and having nourished 
himself on the few greatest writers, Shakespeare, the Bible, and Homer — even though in 
translation, some genuine knowledge of which is better than our usual pretence at know- 
ledge of the original) he also had that broader and better first-hand culture which comes 
from true human relations with many living men and women, forming out of them a 
character which stood some of the hardest tests of life. We have also become more ready 
to admit that those material aspects of our life which primarily, though by no means 
exclusively, he tried to express, are in their crudeness and power truly characteristic 
of America. And now, knowing him better, we see that he has expressed not only some 
material aspects, but also some essential ideals of America, as no other poet has: among 
them, our sense of freedom and independence (his work is the logical outcome of 
Emerson's address on 'The American Scholar'), our conception of real democratic 
equality, our intense individualism yet sense of imion one with another in a great whole. 

SIDNEY LANIER 

Sidney Lanier was born at Macon, Ga., February 3, 1842. He came of a family of 
musicians, the earliest known ancestor having been attached to the court of Queen Eliza- 
beth, and his son and grandson having been directors of music under Charles I and 
Charles II. The grandson was one of the incorporators and the first Marshal of the 
Society of Musicians under Charles II, and there were four others of the name of Lanier 
among the incorporators. Thomas Lanier came to America in 1716, and settled in Vir- 
ginia. Lanier's father was a lawyer, living at Macon, Ga., and his mother was a Virgin- 
ian of Scotch descent, of a family distinguished in politics and also skilled in music. 

Sidney Lanier had from his childhood a strong ambition, and we may even say genius, 
for music. As a boy he seemed able to learn any instrument without instruction, and could 
play the flute, violin, organ, piano, and guitar before he could fairly read. His greatest 
passion was for the violin, but his father persuaded him to abandon it. His sensitive 
nature was hardly able to bear the exaltation produced in him by its notes. In deference 
to his father's wishes, he devoted himself chiefly to the flute. 

When he was fourteen years old, he entered Oglethorpe College (or ' University,' as it 
called itself), in the sophomore class. After losing a year by outside work, he graduated at 
the age of eighteen, sharing the highest honors for scholarship with one of his classmates, 
and was immediately appointed tutor in the college. This was in 1860. In 1861 he gave up 
his position to volunteer as a private in the Confederate army. He was in the battles of 



692 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

Seven Pines, Malvern Hill, and others. The following year his younger brother, Clifford, 
joined him, and both served as privates (though promotion was offered to each at differ- 
ent times, and to (Sidney Lanier three times), in order not to be separated from each 
other. They were transferred to the Signal Service in 1862, and in 1863 their company 
was mounted and served in Virginia and North Carolina. Finally they were appointed 
signal officers on blockade-runners, and thus necessarily separated. Sidney Lanier was 
captured, with his vessel, and imprisoned for five months at Point Lookout. In February, 
1865, he was released, and returned home to Georgia on foot, with his flute, from which 
he had never been separated. His strength was seriously impaired, and though he recov- 
ered from a dangerous illness of six weeks, the beginning of consumption, from which his 
mother had just died, was already upon him. The rest of his life was a struggle against 
the disease. -^ 

He was still only twenty -three years old, and had not found his vocation in life, though 
strong musical and literary ambitions were already awake in him. But he was led to 
think that music was not a serious career, not worth devoting his life to. While working 
as clerk in a hotel, he took up and completed in three weeks of April, 1867, his novel, 
Tiger Lilies (begun at Bur well's Bay in 1863, and continued in 1865), and in May took 
the story to New. York to be published. It is a picture of the war, hastUy drawn, 
and of course somewhat crude. It expresses strongly, however, the horror of war which 
had constantly grown in him during the progress of that struggle which he would not 
abandon until it was ended. He describes war as ' that strange, terrible flower of which 
the most wonderful specimen yet produced was grown by two wealthy planters of North 
America.' ' It is supposed by some,' he goes on (the passage is quoted in Dr. Ward's 
Memorial), ' that the seed of this American specimen (now dead) yet remains in the land ; 
but as for this author (who, with many friends, suffered from the unhealthy odors of the 
plant), he could find it in his heart to wish fervently that this seed, if there be verily any, 
might perish in the germ, utterly out of sight and life and memory, and out of the remote 
hope of resurrection, forever and ever, no matter in whose granary they are cherished ! ' 
The novel was published, but had little success. He returned to the South, and taught 
school for a year. In 1867 he was married to Miss Mary Day, of Macon. For five years 
following, he studied and practised law with his father. 

During this time he had written but little in verse, yet some of that little was of exqui- 
site quality. The first poems we have are those of 1865, ' The Dying Words of Stonewall 
Jackson' and 'The Tournament,' the second of which he used with some alterations in 
his ' Psalm of the West,' eleven years later. The lyric ' Night and Day ' belongs to 1866, 
and in 1868 the ' Jacquerie ' was planned and partly written. In 1868 he wrote also a lyric, 
' Life and Song,' the last two lines of which have been often quoted in speaking of his 
life and of the poetry which was as yet hardly begun : — 

His song was only living aloud, 
His work, a singing with his hand. 

There was little written in the following years, until 1874, except three dialect poems of 
Georgia life. 

He could not remain devoted to the law, however. He felt more and more that his life 
was to be brief, and that he must do something in art, which is lasting. 

' Were it not for some considerations which make such a proposition seem absurd in 
the highest degree,' he wrote to his wife early in 1873, ' I would think that I am shortly 
to die, and that my spirit hath been singing its swan-song before dissolution: All day 
my soul hath been cutting swiftly into the great space of the subtle, unspeakable deep, 
driven by wind after wind of heavenly melody.' He determined to devote himself for what 
was left of his life to music and literature. He tried New York, but finally settled in 
Baltimore, in December of this year, 1873, having obtained an engagement there as first 
flute in the Peabody Symphony Orchestra. He wrote to his father, who had protested 
against his purpose as unwise : ' My dear father, think how, for twenty years, through 
poverty, through pain, through weariness, through sickness, through the uncongenial 



SIDNEY LANIER 693 



atmosphere of a farcical college and of a bare army and then of an exacting business life, 
through all the discouragement of being wholly unacquainted with literary people and 
literary ways, — I say, think how, in spite of all these depressing circumstances, and of a 
thousand more which I could enumerate, these two figures of music and of poetry have 
steadily kept in my heart so that I could not banish them. Does it not seem to you as to me, 
that I begin to have the right to enroll myself among the devotees of these two sublime 
arts, after having followed them so long and so humbly, and through so much bitterness ? ' 
His father felt the force of this appeal, and generously helped Lanier, so far as he could, 
to carry out his ambitions. 

At Baltimore he found what he had craved for, the opportunity to hear good music, 
and access to extensive libraries. In the comparative freedom and exhilaration of this 
new life were written the first poems really characteristic of his mature work, among 
them the beautiful tributes to Mrs. Lanier, ' My Springs,' ' In Absence,' ' Acknowledg- 
ment,' and ' Laus Mariae.' It was in the summer of 1874, in August, that he wrote his 
first poem which attracted atttention, ' Corn.' This poem opens with stanzas almost as 
beautiful as anything in Lanier's work, describing the full richness of summer in the 
South. As a whole, however, it is not entirely successful. The symphonic structure is not 
sustained to the end, and much of the last part of the poem is given to a description of 
tbe effect on Southern farmers of cotton speculation, and especially of borrowing money 
at ruinous rates to plant cotton instead of corn. That subject was quite hi place in Lanier's 
dialect poems, ' Jones's Private Argyment,' and ' Thar 's more in the man than thar is in 
the land,' but here, in a poem of the quality of ' Corn,' it jars, and in both substance and 
expression is quite out of harmony with the rest of the poem. ' Corn,' though it is 
interesting historically as having won for Lanier his first recognition when it appeared 
in Lippineott's Magazine for February, 1875, and also for its attempt to express fitly 
in poetry tbe beauty of waving fields of our chief American grain, must, in final criti- 
cal judgment, be accounted a failure. This is the less to be regretted because Lanier 
immediately after succeeded, with ' The Symphony,' in the chief things which he had 
failed to do in ' Corn.' In ' The Symphony,' published only four months later in the 
same magazine, he created a poem of real harmonic and symphonic structure through- 
out, and of far greater musical beauty than he had even attempted in ' Corn ; ' and he 
achieved the amazing tour de force of making real poetry out of the money question. A 
little later, in a brief lyric, ' The Waving of the Corn,' he expresses the full beauty of the 
cornfield. 

' The Symphony ' won him the friendship of Bayard Taylor, — a friendship which grew 
as the two men came to know each other better, and which is recorded in the letters tbat 
passed between them. His letters to another firm friend, Mr. Gibson Peacock, are also 
preserved, and are of great interest. He was devoted to a serious study of his two arts, 
and especially of tbe relations between them. Often he was compelled to interrupt his 
work either to go in search of health to Florida or Pennsylvania or the mountains of 
North Carolina, or to do hack writing for a mere living. But he persisted, with help 
and encouragement from his father and brother, from his friends, and most of all from 
his wife. To her he wrote : ' " Que mon nom soit fle'tri, que la France soit libre ! " quoth 
Danton ; which is to say, interpreted by my environment : Let my name perish — the 
poetry is good poetry and the music is good music, and beauty dieth not, and the heart 
that needs it will find it.' He was chosen in 1876, at the instance of Bayard Taylor, to 
write the words of the Centennial Cantata, for which the music was composed by Dudley 
Buck. In this year he wrote also the beautiful 'Evening Song,' possibly his finest lyric; 
the poem ' Clover,' which ranks between ' Corn ' and ' The Symphony,' and has something 
of the qualities of both ; ' The Waving of the Corn,' just spoken of; and our finest Cen- 
tennial poem (not forgetting Lowell's and Whitman's), the ' Psalm of the West.' 

Meanwhile he was lecturing for schools and for private classes, writing descriptive ar- 
ticles in prose for Lippineott's Magazine, making a book on Florida for a railroad com- 
pany (published by the Lippincotts in 1876), and cheerfully doing whatever he could to 
earn himself a living and win some leisure for original writing. In 1877 was published the 



694 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES 

first collection of. his Poems, and this year was the one most productive of new pieces, 
though of brief ones. Such a condensed bit of lyric as ' The Stirrup-Cup,' however, is worth 
many a long poem. To this year belong also the ' Song of the Chattahoochee ' (one of his 
most popular lyrics, though perhaps not ultimately to be counted among the few of his 
very best), two of his best brief nature poems, ' Tampa Robins ' and ' From the Flats ' (the 
last is bound to haunt forever all true lovers of the hills), ' The Mocking-Bird,' ' The Bee,' 
' Florida Sunday,' and the poems ' To Wagner ' and ' To Beethoven.' 

His two best ballads, ' The Revenge of Hamish ' and ' How Love looked for Hell,' be- 
long to 1878-79. The first seems to me unsurpassed in narrative technique. Objectivity 
can no farther go. It is a masterpiece of absolute detachment, yet of wonderful vivid- 
ness. The second is also remarkable for the way in which it clothes abstractions with 
life, and makes vivid the vague idea that where Love comes, there Hell cannot be. These, 
each unique in its kind, and, belonging to the same year, his chief masterpiece in still 
another kind which is peculiarly his own, being a new creation, — ' The Marshes of 
Glynn,' — show the many possibilities of that talent which was not to reach its full 
development. 

Bayard Taylor died in December, 1878, and Lanier wrote the poem ' To Bayard Tay- 
lor,' with its beautiful picture of the Elysium of the poets, its touches of Elizabethan 
phrasing, and, toward the end, its strong, condensed expression of the hard conditions and 
the struggle which were bearing heavily upon Lanier himself, but from which he was soon 
to escape into that open sun-lit land of the last two stanzas. 

He had work still to do, however. Early in 1879 he was appointed Lecturer on English 
Literature in the Johns Hopkins University. This brought him the happy certainty of a 
fixed though small income. For his courses of 1879-80 and 1880-81 he prepared the 
lectures which, in revised form, now constitute his two most important prose volumes, 
The Science of English Verse and The English Novel and its Development. He made an 
engagement with the Scribners to complete a series of books for boys, of which four were 
published, two after his death: The Boy's Froissart (1878), The Boy's King Arthur (1880), 
The Boy's Madinogion (1881), and The Boy's Percy (1882). In the winter of 1880-81 he was 
barely able to get through with twelve lectures at the University. The poem ' Sunrise ' 
was written with a fever temperature of 104, when, says Mrs. Lanier, ' the hand which 
first pencilled its lines had not strength to carry nourishment to the lips.' A last attempt 
to prolong his life was made by trying tent life in the mountains of North Carolina, 
but it was unsuccessful, and he died September 7, 1881. 

Though younger by almost a generation than our chief elder poets, Lanier seems to be 
taking his rank almost without question among them. He did not complete his work. To 
his poet friend, Paul H. Hayne, he wrote: 'How I long to sing a thousand songs that 
oppress me, unsung, — is inexpressible. Yet the mere work that brings bread gives me 
no time.' When he died, his talent was growing. Unlike Poe, if he had lived he would 
probably have given us greater poems than he did. It is therefore hard to say what 
would have proved really characteristic of him had he completed any large mass of work. 
As it is, he has given us some beautiful and haunting lyrics, sometimes with touches of 
strange fancies like those in ' Night and Day ' and the ' Ballad of Trees and the Master ; ' 
he has written two of our finest ballads, both unique hi kind; hi the ' Psalm of the West ' 
he has written a poem of America that for range and beauty and historical completeness, 
and for the sweep of the whole from its superb opening up to just near the close, where 
it fails a little, deserves to stand beside or even above Lowell's ' Commemoration Ode ' 
and Whitman's ' Thou mother with thy equal brood.' And finally, there is one thing 
which, even in the small amount of his work, we may call distinctively characteristic, — 
the way of writing found in two poems so different in substance as ' The Symphony ' and 
' The Marshes of Glynn.' ' Whatever turn I have for art,' he wrote to Paul H. flayne, 
' is purely musical, poetry being with me a mere tangent into which I shoot sometimes. 
. . . The very deepest of my life has been filled with music, which I have studied and 
cultivated far more than poetry.' Something of this music-passion has woven itself into 
his poetry. His theory that English verse has for its essential basis not accent, but strict 



SIDNEY LANIER 695 



musical quantity, is almost certainly a mistaken one. But the book he wrote to prove 
this mistaken theory is by far the most suggestive and inspiring that has ever dealt with 
the technique of verse. And in his own work he has written poetry more rich in music 
than we had before. He has learned all that there was to be learned from his predeces- 
sors, among them Swinburne, and then he has found for himself new melodies, and has 
taught something of them to the poets of a younger generation, — notably Bliss Carman 
and Richard Hovey. 



INDEXES 



INDEX OF POETS 



BRYANT 

Poems 1 

Biographical Sketch 655 

List of References 635 



LONGFELLOW 

Poems 102 

Biographical Sketch 667 

List of References 641 



EMERSON 



Poems 

Biographical Sketch 
List of References . 



638 



LOWELL 

Poems 410 

Biographical Sketch 679 

List of References ' 646 



HOLMES 

Poems 355 

Biographical Sketch 677 

List of References 645 



POE 

Poems 36 

Biographical Sketch 658 

List of References 636 



LANIER 

Poems 611 

Biographical Sketch 691 

List of References 650 



WHITMAN 

Poems 532 

Biographical Sketch 685 

List of References 647 



WHITTIER 

Poems 259 

Biographical Sketch 674 

List of References 643 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



A batter'd, wreck'd old man, 601. 
A beautiful and happy girl, 265. 
Aboard at a ship's helm, 586. 
A carol closing sixty-nine — a resume' — a repeti- 
tion, 607. 
A child said What is the grass ? fetching it to me 

with fuU hands, 533. 
A Christian ! going, gone ! 272. 
A cloud, like that the old-time Hebrew saw, 349. 
A crazy bookcase, placed before, 387. 
A dull uncertain brain, 93. 
A fleet with flags arrayed, 254. 
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, 

547. 
After an interval, reading, here in the midnight, 

604. 
After surmounting three-score and ten, 608. 
A gold fringe on the purpling hem, 344. 
Ah, broken is the golden bowl ! the spirit flown 

forever ! 43. 
Ah, Clemence ! when I saw thee last, 358. 
A hundred years ! they 're quickly fled, 467. 
A line in long array where they wind betwixt 

green islands, 572. 
All are architects of Fate, 149. 
All as God wills, who wisely heeds, 302. 
Alone in Rome. Why, Rome is lonely too, 60. 
Along a river-side, I know not where, 469. 
Along the roadside, like the flowers of gold, 330. 
Am I a king, that I should call my own, 255. 
A mighty Hand, from an exhaustless Urn, 33. 
A mist was driving down the British Channel, 156. 
Among the thousands who with hail and cheer, 

353. 
And as the light divides the dark, 93. 
And Ellen, when the gray-beard years, 59. 
And how could you dream of meeting ? 528. 
And I behold once more, 58. 
And now gentlemen, 589. 
Andrew Rykman 's dead and gone, 307. 
And what is so rare as a day in June ? 453. 
And who art thou? said I to the soft-falling 

shower, 607. 
'A new commandment,' said the smiling Muse, 

95. 
Annie and Rhoda, sisters twain, 339. 
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 72. 
A noiseless patient spider, 590. 
An old man bending I come among new faces, 

575. 
An old man in a lodge within a park, 245. 
Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching, 

441. 



Arm'd year — year of the struggle, 571. 

A ruddy drop of manly blood, 73. 

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, 252. 

As a strong bird on pinions free, 599. 

As a twig trembles, which a bird, 429. 

A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim, 

574. 
As I lay with my head in your lap canierado, 

586. ' 

As life runs on, the road grows strange, 524. 
As one who long hath fled with panting breath, 

253. 
As sings the pine-tree in the wind, 95. 
As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills, 508. 
As sunbeams stream through liberal space, 67. 
As the birds come in the spring, 257. 
As the Greek's signal flame, by antique records 

told, 607. 
As toilsome I wander'd Virginia's woods, 574. 
A subtle chain of countless rings, 87. 
At anchor in Hampton Roads we lay, 235. 
At midnight, in the month of June, 43. 
At morn — at noon — at twilight dim, 45. 
Atom from atom yawns as far, 91. 
A train of gay and clouded days, 91. 
At the last, tenderly, 595. 
A vision as of crowded streets, 245. 
A wind came up out of the sea, 212. 
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! 355. 
Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath! 

14. 

Bathed in war's perfume — delicate flag! 581. 

Beat! beat! drums! — blow! bugles! blow! 572. 

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above, 55. 

Because I was content with these poor fields, 86. 

Behold the rocky wall, 376. 

Beloved! amid the earnest woes, 46. 

Beloved, in the noisy city here, 412. 

Beneath the low-hung night cloud, 340. 

Beneath the moonlight and the snow, 338. 

Be of good cheer, brave spirit ; steadfastly, 91. 

Beside a stricken field I stood, 306. 

Beside that milestone where the level sun, 346. 

Beside the ungathered rice he lay, 113. 

Between the dark and the daylight, 232. 

Blessings on thee, little man, 291. 

Blooms the laurel which belongs, 100. 

Boon Nature yields each day a brag which we now 

first behold, 94. 
Bowing thyself in dust before a Book, 458. 
Bring me my broken harp, he said, 396. 
Build me straight, O worthy Master! 151. 



700 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint, 

83. 
Burly, dozing humble-bee, 63. 
But Nature whistled with all her winds, 91. 
But never yet the man was found, 90. 
By a route obscure and lonely, 48. 
By his evening fire the artist, 150. 
By the bivouac's fitful flame, 572. 
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 63. 

Champion of those who groan beneath, 260. 

Coin the day-dawn into lines, 94. 

Columbus stands in the night alone, and, passing 

grave, 617. 
Come, dear old comrade, you and I, 385. 
Come forth! my catbird calls to me, 497. 
Come, I will make the continent indissoluble, 561. 
Come, let us plant the apple-tree, 22. 
Come my tan-faced children, 569. 
Come, said my soul, 602. 

Come, spread your wings, as I spread mine, 363. 
Come to me, O ye children ! 150. 
Come up from the fields, father, here 's a letter 

from our Pete, 573. 
Conductor Bradley, always may his name, 340. 

Daily the bending skies solicit man, 90. 
Darest thou now O soul, 595. 
Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, 87. 
Day by day for her darlings to her much she added 

more, 91. 
Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the 

way, 417. 
Dear friends, who read the world aright, 283. 
Dear Sir, — Your letter come to han', 486. 
Dear Wendell, why need count the years, 523. 
Death, thou'rt a cordial old and rare, 621. 
Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life! 589. 
Did you ask dulcet rhymes from'me? 579. 
Down 'mid the tangled roots of things, 496. 
Down swept the chill wind from the mountain 

peak, 455. 

Ef I a song or two could make, 484. 
Entranced I saw a vision in the cloud, 518. 
Ere, in the northern gale, 11. 
Ere pales in Heaven the morning star, 523. 
Ere we Gomera cleared, a coward cried, 618. 
Ever the poet from the land, 94. 

Facing west from California's shores, 560. 

Facts respecting an old arm-chair, 372. 

Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers, 46. 

Father of Mercies, Heavenly Friend, 379. 

Flag of stars, thick-sprinkled bunting, 580. 

Flag of the heroes who left us their glory, 379. 

Flood- tide below me! I see you face to face T 553. 

Flood-tide of the river, flow on, 553. 

For Fancy's gift, 93. 

Forgive, O Lord, our severing ways, 351. 

For Nature, true and like in every place, 90. 

For this true nobleness I seek in vain, 410. 

For thought, and not praise, 93. 

For weeks the clouds had raked the hills, 332. 



For what need I of book or priest, 94. 

Freedom all winged expands, 99. 

From all the rest I single out you, having a mes- 
sage for you, 564. 

From east and west across the horizon's edge, 608. 

From fall to spring, the russet acorn, 73. 

From Paumanok starting I fly like a bird, 571. 

From purest wells of English undented, 353. 

From the hills of home forth looking, far beneath 
the tent-like span, 297. 

From this fair home behold on either side, 404. 

Full of life now, compact, visible, 564. 

Gaily bedight, 57. 

Give all to love, 85. 

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams 

full-dazzling, 577. 
Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and 

woven, 622. 
God makes sech nights, all white an' still, 472. 
God sends his teachers unto every age, 415. 
God's love and peace be with thee, where, 283. 
Gone, gone, — sold and gone, 263. 
Good-bye my Fancy ! 609. 
Good-bye, proud world! I 'm going home, 58. 
Go, speed the stars of Thought, 93. 
Go thou to thy learned task, 94. 
Grandmother's mother: her age, I guess, 386. 
Great men in the Senate sate, 99. 
Great soul, thou sittest with me in my room, 411. 
Great Truths are portions of the Soul of man, 411. 
Guvener B. is a sensible man, 433. 

Half of my life is gone, and I have let, 113. 

Hark, some wild trumpeter, some strange musi- 
cian, 596. 

Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? 
374. 

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? 73. 

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
369. 

Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard! 280. 

Hear the sledges with the bells, 53. 

He came to Florence long ago, 465. 

He cometh not a king to reign, 325. 

He is dead, the beautiful youth, 241. 

He is dead, the sweet musician ! 193. 

Helen, thy beauty is to me, 41. 

Here are old trees, tall oaks, and gnarled pines, 20. 

Here, ' Forgive me, Apollo,' I cried, ' while I 
pour,' 450. 

Here is the place ; right over the hill, 300. 

Here lies the gentle humorist, who died, 252. 

Here once my step was quickened, 466. 

Here 's Cooper, who 's written six volumes to 
show, 447. 

Her fingers shame the ivory keys, 304. 

Her hands are cold; her face is white, 377. 

Her passions the shy violet, 95. 

Hers all that earth could promise or bestow, 523. 

He spoke of Burns : men rude and rough, 413. 

He stood upon the world's broad threshold ; wide, 
414. 

Him strong Genius urged to roam, 29. 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



701 



His birthday. — Nay, we need not speak, 374. 

His instant thought a poet spoke, 94. 

His laurels fresh from song and lay, 347. 

How beautiful it was, that one bright day, 239. 

How cold are thy baths, Apollo! 256. 

How dare one say it ? 609. 

How long will this harp which you once loved to 

hear, 383. 
How many have gone ? was the question of old, 

398. 
How many lives, made beautiful and sweet, 242. 
Ho! workers of the old time styled, 273. 
How solemn ! sweeping this dense black tide, 686. 
How strange are the freaks of memory ! 498. 
How s*trange the sculptures that adorn these 

towers! 240. 
Hush'd be the camps to-day, 585. 
Hushed with broad sunlight lies the hill, 458. 

I am not poor, but I am proud, 58. 

I am not wiser for my age, 95. 

I am owner of the sphere, 73. 

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of 

the Soul, 537. 
I ask not for those thoughts, that sudden leap, 

411. 
I believe that the copies of verses I 've spun, 394. 
I celebrate myself, and sing myself, 533. 
I do not count the hours I spend, 90. 
I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible, 563. 
I du believe in Freedom's cause, 435. 
I dwelt alone, 51. 

I enter, and I see thee in the gloom, 240. 
If he be a nobler lover, take him! 528. 
If I could put my woods in song, 100. 
I framed his tongue to music, 93. 
If the red slayer think he slays, 88. 
If thought unlock her mysteries, 95. 
I gazed upon the glorious sky, 14. 
I had a little daughter, 429. 
I have a fancy : how shall I bring it, 528. 
I have read, in some old, marvellous tale, 106. 
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, 

560. 
I heard or seemed to hear the chiding Sea, 89. 
I heard that you asked for something to prove 

this puzzle the New World, 604. 
I heard the trailing garments of the Night, 105. 
I heard the train's shrill whistle call, 290. 
I hear it was charged against me that I sought 

to destroy institutions, 562. 
I heed not that my earthly lot, 41. 
I know not what the future hath, 314. 
I left my dreary page and sallied forth, 91. 
I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze, 241. 
I like a church; I like a cowl, 64. 
Ill fits the, abstemious Muse a crown to weave, 61. 
I love the old melodious lays, 280. 
I love to bear thine earnest voice, 356. 
I love to start out arter night 's begun, 473. 
I marvel how mine eye, ranging the Night, 619. 
Immortal Love, forever full, 325. 
I mourn no more my vanished years, 301. 
I myself, myself ! behold me! 194. 



In a far-away northern county in the placid pas- 
toral region, 603. 

In an age of fops and toys, 99. 

In broad daylight, and at noon, 156. 

In calm and cool and silence, once again, 285. 

In clouds descending, in midnight sleep, 586. 

I need no assurances, I am a man who is pre- 
occupied of his own soul, 553. 

I need not praise the sweetness of his song, 496. 

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell, 41. 

In many forms we try, 96. 

In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, 61. 

In midnight sleep of many a face of anguish, 586. 

In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain, 
629. 

In o'er-strict calyx lingering, 619. 

Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound, 
560. 

In the ancient town of Bruges, 118. 

In the deep heart of man a poet dwells, 96. 

In the greenest of our valleys, 4G. 

In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know, 612. 

In the long, sleepless watches of the night, 257. 

In the Old Colony days, in Plymouth the land of 
the Pilgrims, 213. 

In the old days — a custom laid aside, 323. 

In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad 
meadow-lands, 116. 

Into the darkness and hush of night, 257. 

In vain we call old notions fudge, 524. 

In youth's spring it was my lot, 659. 

I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold, 246. 

I reached the middle of the mount, 665. 

I remember — why, yes! God bless me! and was 
it so long ago ? 375. 

I said I stood upon thy grave, 291. 

I saw him once before, 358. 

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing, 562. 

I saw old General at bay, 573. 

I saw thee once — once only — years ago, 52. 

I saw thee on thy bridal day, 39. 

I saw the twinkle of white feet, 428. 

I see all human wits, 95. 

I see amid the fields of Ayr, 256. 

I see before me now a traveling army halting, 572. 

I shot an arrow into the air, 120. 

I sit in the early twilight, 31. 

I sposeyou wonder ware I be; I can't tell, fer the 
soul o' me, 436. 

Is thy name Mary, maiden fair ? 357. 

I stood on the bridge at midnight, 119. 

It don't seem hardly right, John, 478. 

It fell in the ancient periods, 64. 

I thought our love at full, but I did err, 430. 

It is done! 312. 

It is not what we say or sing, 384. 

It is time to be old, 101. 

It mounts athwart the windy hill, 499. 

I treasure in secret-some long, fine hair, 462. 

It was a tall young oysterman lived by the river- 
side, 355. 

It was fifty years ago, 211. 

It was late in mild October, and the long au- 
tumnal rain, 278. 



702 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



It was many and many a year ago, 56. 

It was the schooner Hesperus, 107. 

It was the season, when through all the land, 235. 

It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the 

bracken lay, 623. 
I understand the large hearts of heroes, 541. 
I wait and watch ; before my eyes, 305. 
I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made, 

347. 
I was asking for something specific and perfect 

for my city, 565. 
I would the gift I offer here, 282. 
I write my name as one, 350. 
I wrote some lines once on a time, 356. 

John Brown of Ossawatomie spake on his dying 

day, 302. 
Joy, shipmate, joy! 596. 

Kind solace in a dying hour! 36. 

Lay down the axe ; fling by the spade, 24. 

Let greener lands and bluer skies, 359. 

Let me go where'er I will, 96. 

Lift again the stately emblem on the Bay State's 

rusted shield, 275. 
Ligeia! Ligeia! 40. 

Listen, my children, and you shall hear, 233. 
Little I ask; my wants are few, 371. 
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, 

61. 
Long I followed happy guides, 84. 
Long, too long America, 578. 
Look off, dear Love, across the sallow sands, 616. 
Look out! Look out, boys! Clear the track! 405. 
Lord of all being ! throned afar, 377. 
Lo! 'tis a gala night, 47. 
Love, 91. 
Low and mournful be the strain, 99. 

Maiden! with the meek, brown eyes, 112. 

Maud Muller on a summer's day, 289. 

Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature, 560. 

Men say the sullen instrument, 498. 

Men! whose boast it is that ye, 414. 

Merrily swinging on brier and weed, 23. 

Mine and yours, 84. 

My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt! 357. 

My coachman, in the moonlight there, 461. 

My Dawn ? my Dawn ? How if it never break ? 

618. 
My day began not till the twilight fell, 524. 
My heart, I cannot still it, 527. 
My heart was heavy, for its trust had been, 275. 
My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die, 

411. . 
Myself and mine gymnastic ever, 567. 

Nay, blame me not; I might have spared, 380. 
Nay, do not dream, designer dark, 609. 
'Neath blue-bell or streamer, 39. 
Next drive we o'er the slimy-weeded sea, 618. 
New England's poet, rich in love as years, 523. 
Night on the prairies, 564. 



No Berserk thirst of blood had they, 345. 

No fate, save by the victim's fault, is low, 91. 

No more these simple flowers belong, 287. 

Not as all other women are, 410. 

Not in the solitude, 17. 

Not in the world of light alone, 369. 

Not the pilot has charged himself, 587. 

Not to exclude or demarcate, or pick out evils, 
609. 

Not unto us who did but seek, 313. 

Not without envy Wealth at times must look, 346. 

Now speaks mine other heart with cheerier seem- 
ing, 618. 

Now Time throws off his cloak again, 103. 

O Caesar, we who are about to die, 248. 

O Captain! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done, 

581. 
O'er all the hill-tops, 149. 
O'er the bare woods, whose outstretched hands, 

292. 
O even-handed Nature! we confess, 382. 
O fairest of the rural maids! 9. 
Of all the rides since the birth of time, 296. 
O Friends! with whom my feet have trod, 314. 
Often I think of the beautiful town, 210. 
Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak 

and blank, 606. 
Oft have I seen at some cathedral door, 240. 
Oh! could I hope the wise and pure in heart, 7. 
Oh for one hour of youthful joy! 3C6. 
Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare, 31. 
Oh what is Heaven but the fellowship, 92. 
O lady fair, these silks of mine are beautiful and 

rare, 259. 
O little feet! that such long years, 239. 
O lonely bay of Trinity, 301. 
O Love Divine, that stooped to share, 377. 
O Love! OLife! Our faith and sight, 326. 
O magnet-South! O glistening perfumed South! 

my South! 565. 
O moonlight deep and tender, 412. 
O Mother Earth! upon thy lap, 260. 
O mother of a mighty race, 21. 
Onaway! Awake, beloved! 184. 
On bravely through the sunshine and the show- 
ers! 92. 
Once git a smell o' musk into a draw, 480. 
Once it smiled a silent dell, 44. 
Once more, O all-adjusting Death! 352. 
Once more on yonder laurelled height, 304. 
Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands, 20. 
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, 

weak and weary, 48. 
One broad, white sail in Spezzia's treacherous 

bay, 364. 
One of your old-world stories, Uncle John, 24. 
One's-self I sing, a simple separate person, 587. 
On prince or bride no diamond stone, 95. 
On sunny slope and beechen swell, 103. 
On the beach at night, 590. 
On the isle of Penikese, 342. 
On woodlands ruddy with autumn, 30. 
Opening one day a book of mine, 528. 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



7°3 



O poet rare and old! 285. 

Or, haply, how if this contrarious "West, 618. 

O sight of pity, shame and dole ! 5S8. 

O star of France, 596. 

O star of morning and of liberty! 241. 

O tenderly the haughty day, 88. 

Others may praise what they like, 581. 

O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead! 612. 

Our band is few but true and tried, 17. 

Our fathers' God ! from out whose hand, 346. 

Our fellow-countrymen in chains ! 262. 

Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, 327. 

Our Lord and Master of us all, 326. 

Our love is not a fading, earthly flower, 412. 

Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea, 489. 

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, 557. 

Out of the hills of Habersham, 621. 

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop 

gently to me, 578. 
Over his head were the maple buds, 94. 
Over his keys the musing organist, 453. 
Over our manhood bend the skies, 453. 
Over sea, hither from Xiphon, 567. 
Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice, 578. 
Over the monstrous shambling sea, 628. 
Over the Western sea hither from Kiphon come, 

567. 
O, well for the fortunate soul, 100. 
O what are heroes, prophets, men, 96. 
O ye dead Poets, who are living still, 252. 

Pale genius roves alone, 93. 

Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade, 

430. 
Pipes of the misty moorlands, 299. 
Ploughman, whose gnarly hand yet kindly 

wheeled, 617. 
Poet and friend of poets, if thy glass, 355. 
Poet! I come to touch thy lance with mine, 253. 
Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to 

come ! 560. 
Poor and inadequate the shadow-play, 347. 

Quicksand years that whirl me I know not 
whither, 580. 

Reader — gentle — if so be, 388. 
Recorders ages hence, 561. 
Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see, 310. 
Romance, who loves to nod and sing, 40. 
Roomy Eternity, 91. 

Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, 155. 

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! 40. 

Set not thy foot on graves, 80. 

She gathered at her slender waist, 402. 

She gave me all that woman can, 528. 

She has gone, — she has left us in passion and 

pride, 378. 
She paints with white and red the moors, 91. 
Shines the last age, the next with hope is seen, 95. 
Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, 

emerald, fawn, 608. 
Should you ask me, whence these stories? 158. 



Shun passion, fold the hands of thrift, 92. 

Shut not your doors to me proud libraries, 579. 

Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close 
emerging, 607. 

Singing my days, 590. 

Six thankful weeks, — and let it be, 65. 

Slow toiling upward from the misty vale, 386. 

Small is the theme of the following Chant, 587. 

Small the theme of my chant, 587. 

So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn, 282. 

Solemnly, mournfully, 121. 

Some die too late and some too soon, 348. 

Some of your hurts you have cured, 94. 

Somewhat back from the village street, 120. 

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 99. 

So when there came a mighty cry of Land .' 619. 

Speak and tell us, our Ximena, looking north- 
ward far away, 277. 

Speak! speak! thou fearful guest! 108. 

Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou, 15. 

Spirit that form'd this scene, 605. 

Stars of the summer night! 111. 

States! 561. 

Statesman, I thank thee! and, if yet dissent, 303. 

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest, 255. 

Still sits the school-house by the road, 337. 

Still thirteen years : 't is autumn now, 462. 

Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which 
needs, 3. 

Stream of my fathers ! sweetly still, 264. 

Strong, simple, silent are the [steadfast] laws, 
530. 

Summer's last sun nigh unto setting shines, 353. 

Superb and sole, upon a plumed spray, 620. 

Sweetest of all childlike dreams, 311. 

Take this Mss upon the brow! 41. 

Teach me your mood, O patient stars ! 91. 

Tears! tears! tears! 587. 

Tell me, maiden, dost thou use, 59. 

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 104. 

Tell men what they knew before, 92. 

Test of the poet is knowledge of love, 95. 

Thank Heaven ! the crisis, 55. 

Thanks in old age — thanks ere I go, 608. 

Thanks to the morning light, 82. 

That book is good, 93. 

That each should in his house abide, 92. 

That 's a rather bold speech, my Lord Bacon, 529. 

The Ages come and go, 242. 

The autumn-Lime has come, 337. 

The bard and mystic held me for their own, 92. 

The blast from Freedom's Northern hills, upon 

its Southern way, 270. 
The bowers whereat, in dreams, I see, 41. 
The commonplace I sing, 608. 
The cordage creaks and rattles in the wind, 418. 
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary, 111. 
The day is done, and the darkness, 115. 
The Dervish whined to Said, 92. 
Thee for my recitative, 604. 
The elder folks shook hands at last, 327. 
The electric nerve, whose instantaneous thrill, 50. 
The free winds told him what they knew, 93. 



7°4 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 






The friends that are, and friends that were, 380. 

The gale that wrecked you on the sand, 94. 

The gods talk in the breath of the woods, 92. 

The green grass is bowing, 59. 

The groves were God's first temples, 12. 

The harp at Nature's advent strung, 327. 

The hound was cuffed, the hound was kicked, 

611. 
The innocent, sweet Day is dead, 611. 
The land, that, from the rule of kings, 352. 
The lights are out, and gone are all the guests, 

243. 
The little gate was reached at last, 461. 
The lords of life, the lords of life, 77. 
The minstrel of the classic lay, 403. 
The mountain and the squirrel, 73. 
The mountains glitter in the snow, 367. 
The night is 1 come, but not too soon, 104. 
The noble sire fallen on evil days, 598. 
The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 303. 
The piping of our slender, peaceful reeds, 378. 
The Play is over. While the light, 404. 
The prairie-grass dividing, its special odor breath- 
ing, 563. 
The proudest now is but my peer, 285, 
There are some qualities — some incorporate 

things, 47. 
There are truths you Americans need to be told, 

448. 
There came a youth upon the earth, 412. 
There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, 

every one, 442. 
There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby 

Pudge, 449. 
There is a quiet spirit in these woods, 102. 
There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as digni- 
fied, 444. 
There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking 

and rare, 446. 
There is Lowell, who 's striving Parnassus to 

climb, 452. 
There is no flock, however watched and tended, 

149. 
There is no great and no small, 73. 
There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement 

heart, 445. 
There 's Holmes, who is matchless among you for 

wit, 452. 
There was a child went forth every day, 532. 
There was a young man in Boston town, 360. 
There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 456. 
The rising moon has hid the stars, 111. 
The river hemmed with leaning trees, 341. 
The robin laughed in the orange-tree, 620. 
The robins sang in the orchard, the buds into 

blossoms grew, 336. 
The rounded world is fair to see, 77. 
The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep, 246. 
The sea is the road of the bold, 94. 
These are the gardens of the Desert, these, 18. 
The seed that wasteful autumn cast, 365. 
These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were 

bred, 529. 
The shades of night were falling fast, 112. 



The shadows round the inland sea, 281. 

The skies they were ashen and sober, 51. 

The snow had begun in the gloaming, 459. 

The South-land boasts its teeming cane, 281. 

The South-wind brings, 77. 

The Sphinx is drowsy, 71. 

The Star of Fame shines down upon the river, 

246, note. 
The stars of Night contain the glittering Day, 

611. 
The storm and peril overpast, 348. 
The subtle power in perfume found, 351. 
The sun athwart the cloud thought it no sin, 91. 
The sunlight glitters keen and bright, 266. 
The sun set, but set not his hope, 92. 
The sun that brief December day, 315. 
The tide rises, the tide falls, 256. 
The time has been that these wild solitudes, 5. 
The wind is roistering out of doors, 500. 
The work of the Lord by night, 98. 
The works of human artifice soon tire, 104. 
The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep, 

246. 
They put their finger on their lip, 96. 
Thick-sprinkled bunting! flag of stars! 580. 
Thine eyes still shined for me, though far, 60. 
Think me not unkind and rude, 62. 
This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good 

old times, 359. 
This is our place of meeting; opposite, 399. 
This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, 114. 
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring 

pines and the hemlocks, 121. 
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 368. 
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the 

wordless, 606. 
This is your month, the month of ' perfect days,' 

402. 
This shining moment is an edifice, 91. 
Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, 16. 
Thou foolish Hafiz! Say, do churls, 95. 
Though loath to grieve, 80. 
Though love repine, and reason chafe, 95. 
Though old the thought and oft exprest, 499. 
Thou Mother with thy equal brood, 598. 
Thou shouldst have sung the swan-song for the 

choir, 407. 
Thou that from the heavens art, 149. 
Thou, too, hast left us. While with heads bowed 

low, 408. 
Thou unrelenting Past! 15. 
Thou wast all that to me, love, 45. 
Thou wast the fairest of all man-made things, 530. 
Thou who hast slept all night upon the storm, 603. 
Thou who wouldst see the lovely and the wild, 9. 
Thou, who wouldst wear the name, 29. 
Thou wouldst be loved ? — then let thy heart, 46. 
Thrash away, you '11 hev to rattle, 431. 
Three Silences there are : the first of speech, 253. 
Thy love thou sentest oft to me, 423. 
Thy summer voice, Musketaquit, 87. 
Thy trivial harp will never please, 81. 
'T is like stirring living embers when, at eighty, 

one remembers, 389. 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES 



705 



'T is midnight : through my troubled dream, 381. 
'Tis the noon of the spring-time, yet never ahird, 

284. 
To clothe the fiery thought, 94. 
To heal his heart of long-time pain, 626. 
To him who in the love of Nature holds, 1. 
Too young for love ? 404. 
To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height, 

627. 
To the God of all sure mercies let my blessing 

rise to-day, 267. 
To those who died for her on land and sea, 524. 
To those who 've fail'd, in aspiration vast, 607. 
Trees in groves, 74. 

True Brahmin, in the morning meadows wet, 94. 
Truth : So the frontlet's older legend ran, 396. 
Try the might the Muse affords, 93. 
Tuscan, that wanderest through the realms of 

gloom, 118. 
'T was a vision of childhood that came with its 

dawn, 365. 
'T was on the famous trotting-ground, 392. 
'Twixt this and dawn, three hours my soul will 

smite, 617. 
Two angels, one of Life and one of Death, 157. 
Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary, 45. 

Unhar the door, since thou the Opener art, 95. 
Under a spreading chestnut-tree, 108. 
Up from the meadows rich with corn, 309. 
Up the streets of Aberdeen, 275. 

Vex not the Muse with idle prayers, 407. 
Vigil strange I kept on the field one night, 573. 

Warm and still is the summer night, 251. 

Weak-winged is song, 490. 

We are what we are made ; each following day, 

60. 
We count the broken lyres that rest, 373. 
We may not climb the heavenly steeps, 325. 
We praise not now the poet's art, 312. 
We saw the slow tides go and come, 343. 
What best I see in thee, 605. 
What care I, so they stand the same, 86. 
What fairings will ye that I bring ? 459. 
What flecks the outer gray beyond, 324. 
What heartache — ne'er a hill! 621. 
What is so rare as a day in June ? 453. 
What say the Bells of San Bias, 258. 
What visionary tints the year puts on, 424. 
When a deed is done for Freedom, through the 

broad earth's aching breast, 421. 
When beechen buds begin to swell, 2. 



When breezes are soft and skies are fair, 4. 
When descends on the Atlantic, 116. 
Whene'er a noble deed is wrought, 212. 
When I heard at the close of the day, 562. 
When I heard the learn'd astronomer, 579. 
When I peruse the conquer'd fame of heroes, 563. 
When I remember them, those friends of mine, 

246. 
When I think of my beloved, 188. 
When I was a beggarly boy, 500. 
When I was born, 85. 
When legislators keep the law, 368. 
When life hath run its largest round, 366. 
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloorn'd, 581. 
When the full-grown poet came, 603. 
When the hours of Day are numbered, 105. 
When tbe pine tosses its cones, 66. 
When wise Minerva still was young, 465. 
Where are the Poets, unto whom belong, 257. 
Where in its old historic splendor stands, 365, 

note. 
Where is this patriarch you are kindly greeting ? 

397. 
Whether is better, the gift or the donor ? 67. 
Whispers of heavenly death murmur'd I hear, 588. 
White clouds, whose shadows haunt the deep, 

286. 
White swan of cities, slumbering in thy nest, 253. 
Whither? Albeit I follow fast, 463. 
Whither, midst falling dew, 3. 
Who are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly hu- 
man, 589. 
Who cometh over the hills, 509. 
Who gave thee, O Beauty, 76. 
Who of all statesmen is his country's pride, 362. 
Why, who makes much of a miracle ? 552. 
With a glory of winter sunshine, 350. 
With husky-haughty lips, O Sea! 606. 
With snow-white veil and garments as of flame, 

241. 
Word over all, beautiful as the sky, 586. 
Words pass as wind, but where great deeds were 

done, 512. 
Would you hear of an old-time sea-fight ? 542. 

Yes, faith is a goodly anchor, 463. 
Yes, sometimes to the sorrow-stricken, 92. 
Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 314. 
Yon mountain's side is black with night, 286. 
You bards of ages hence! when you refer to me, 

561. 
You shall not be overbold, 96. 
Youth, large, lusty, loving — youth full of grace, 

force, fascination, 606. 



\ 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Aboard at a ship's helm (Whitman), 586. 
Abraham Davenport (Whittier), 323. 

'A&axpvv vefj.ovTO.1. aluiva. (Emerson), 95. 

After a Lecture on Shelley (Holmes), 364. 

After a Lecture on Wordsworth (Holmes), 363. 

After an Interval (Whitman), 604. 

After the Burial (Lowell), 463. 

After the Curfew (Holmes), 404. 

Agassiz (Lowell), 501. 

Agassiz, The Fiftieth Birthday of (Longfellow), 
211. 

Agassiz, The Prayer of (Whittier), 342. 

Al Aaraaf , Song from (Poe), 39. 

Aladdin (Lowell), 500. 

All Here (Holmes), 384. 

America singing, I hear (Whitman), 560. 

Among the Hills (Whittier), 330. 

Amy Wentworth (Whittier), 304. 

Anacreon, The Lyre of (Holmes), 403. 

Andrew Bykman's Prayer (Whittier), 307. 

Angels, Footsteps of (Longfellow), 105. 

Angels of Buena Vista, The (Whittier), 277. 

Annabel Lee (Poe), 56. 

Annie, For (Poe), 55. 

Annie and Rhoda, see The Sisters (Whittier), 339. 

Antiquity of Freedom, The (Bryant), 20. 

Apology, The (Emerson), 62. 

April (Whittier), 284. 

Arisen at Last (Whittier), 291. 

Arrow and the Song, The (Longfellow), 120. 

Arsenal at Springfield, The (Longfellow), 114. 

Art and Nature (Longfellow), 104. 

As a strong Bird on Pinions free, see Thou Mother 
with thy equal brood (Whitman), 598. 

As I lay with my head in your lap camerado 
(Whitman), 586. 

Assurances (Whitman), 553. 

As the Greek's Signal Flame (Whitman), 607. 

As toilsome I wander'd Virginia's woods (Whit- 
man), 574. 

Astrsea (Whittier), 285. 

At a Meeting of Friends (Holmes), 375. 

At Eventide (Whittier), 347. 

At the Burns Centenniai (Lowell), 467. 

At the Saturday Club (Holmes), 399. 

Auf Wiedersehen (Lowell), 461. 

Aunt, My (Holmes), 357. 

Auspex (Lowell), 527. 

Autocrat, Our (Whittier), 347. 

Autograph, An (Whittier), 350. 

Autograph, For an (Lowell), 499. 

Autumn Walk, My (Bryant), 30. 

Autumn Woods (Bryant), 11. 

Ave Maria (Poe), 45. 



Ballad of the French Fleet, A (Longfellow), 254. 

Ballad of the OySterman, The (Holmes), 355. 

Barbara Frietchie (Whittier), 309. 

Barclay of Ury (Whittier), 275. 

Barefoot Boy, The (Whittier), 291. 

Bartholdi Statue, The (Whittier), 352. 

Base of all Metaphysics, The (Whitman), 589. 

Bathed in War's perfume (Whitman), 581, 

Battle-Field, The (Bryant), 20. 

Bayard Taylor, To (Lanier), 627. 

Beach at Night, On the (Whitman), 590. 

Beat ! Beat ! Drums ! (Whitman), 572. 

Beauty, Ode to (Emerson), 76. 

Beaver Brook (Lowell), 458. 

Beethoven, To (Lanier), 619. 

Beleaguered City, The (Longfellow), 106. 

Belfry of Bruges, The : Carillon (Longfellow), 118. 

Bells, The (Poe), 53. 

Bells of San Bias, The (Longfellow), 258. 

' Beloved, in the noisy city here ' (Lowell), 412. 

Benedicite (Whittier), 283. 

Bibliolatres (Lowell), 458. 

Biglow Papers, The : First Series (Lowell), 430. 

Biglow Papers, The: Second Series (Lowell), 472. 

Bill and Joe (Holmes), 385. 

Birds of Killingworth, The (Longfellow), 235. 

Birthday of Agassiz, The Fiftieth (Longfellow), 

211, 
Birthday of Daniel Webster (Holmes), 366. 
Bivouac oh a Mountain Side (Whitman), 572. 
Bohemian Hymn, The (Emerson), 96. 
Borrowing (Emerson), 94. 
Boston Hymn (Emerson), 98. 
Botanist (Emerson), 94. 
Boys, The (Holmes), 374. 
Brahma (Emerson), 88. 
Breakfast-Table Series, Epilogue to the (Holmes), 

387. 
Bridge, The (Longfellow), 119. 
Broadway Pageant, A (Whitman), 567. 
Brooklyn Ferry, Crossing (Whitman), 553. 
Broomstick Train, The (Holmes), 405. 
Brother Jonathan's Lament for Sister Caroline 

(Holmes), 378. 
Brown of Ossawatomie (Whittier), 302. 
Bryant on his Birthday (Whittier), 312. 
Bryant's Seventieth Birthday (Holmes), 382. 
B. Sawin, Esq., A Second Letter from (Lowell), 

436. 
Buena Vista, The Angels of (Whittier), 277. 
Builders, The (Longfellow), 149. 
Building of the Ship, The (Longfellow), 151. 
Bunker-Hill Battle, Grandmother's Story of 

(Holmes), 389. 



INDEX OF TITLES 



707 



Burial of the Minnisink (Longfellow), 103. 

Burns (Whittier), 287. 

Burns, see Incident in a Railroad Car (Lowell), 

413. 
Burns, Robert (Longfellow), 256. 
Burns Centennial, At the (Lowell), 467. 
Burns Centennial Celebration, For the (Holmes), 

374. 
Burns Club, For the Meeting of the (Holmes), 367. 
Bust of General Grant, On a (Lowell), 530. 
By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame (Whitman), 572. 
By the Lakeside, Summer (Whittier), 286. 

Cable Hymn, The (Whittier), 301. 

California's shores, Facing west from (Whitman), 

560. 
Captain ! my Captain ! (Whitman), 581. 
Carillon, The Belfry of Bruges : (Longfellow), 1 18. 
Carol closing Sixty-nine, A (Whitman), 607. 
Casella (Emerson), 95. 
Cassandra Southwick (Whittier), 267. 
Cavalry crossing a Ford (Whitman), 572. 
Centennial Hymn (Whittier), 346. 
Centennial Ode, see Ode for the Fourth of July 

(Lowell), 518. 
Certain Civilian, To a (Whitman), 579. 
Chambered Nautilus, The (Holmes), 368. 
Changeling, The (Lowell), 429. 
Channing (W. H.), Ode inscribed to (Emerson), 

80. 
Charles Eliot Norton, To (Lowell), 500. 
Chattahoochee, Song of the (Lanier), 621. 
Chaucer (Longfellow), 245. 
Children (Longfellow), 150. 
Children's Hour, The (Longfellow), 232. 
Child's Reminiscence, A, see Out of the cradle 

endlessly rocking (Whitman), 557. 
Christian Slave, The (Whittier), 272. 
Churchyard at Tarrytown, In the (Longfellow), 

252. 
City in the Sea, The (Poe), 42. 
Clear Midnight, A (Whitman), 606. 
Climacteric (Emerson), 95. 
Clock on the Stairs, The Old (Longfellow), 120. 
Coliseum, The (Poe), 45. 
Columbus (Lowell), 418. 
Columbus, Prayer of (Whitman), 601. 
Columbus, Sonnets on (Lanier), 617. 
Come, said my Soul (Whitman), 602. 
Come up from the fields, father (Whitman), 573. 
Commemoration, Ode Recited at the Harvard 

(Lowell), 490. 
Commonplace, The (Whitman), 608. 
Concord Bridge, Ode read at the One Hundredth 

Anniversary of the Fight at (Lowell), 509. 
Concord Hymn (Emerson), 63. 
Concord Ode (Emerson), 88. 
Conductor Bradley (Whittier), 340. 
Conqueror Worm, The (Poe), 47. 
Contentment (Holmes), 371. 
Contrast, A (Lowell), 423. 
Copyright, International (Lowell), 524. 
Corn, The Waving of the (Lanier), 617. 
Corn Song, The (Whittier), 280. 



Courtin', The (Lowell), 472. 

Courtship of Miles Standish, The (Longfellow), 

213. 
Cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the (Whitman), 

557. 
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (Whitman), 553. 
Cross of Snow, The (Longfellow), 257. 
Cumberland, The (Longfellow), 235. 
Curfew (Longfellow), 121. 
Curfew, After the (Holmes), 404. 

Dandelion, To the (Lowell), 417. 
Daniel Webster, Birthday of (Holmes), 366. 
Dante (Longfellow), 118, 240. 
Darest Thou now O Soul (Whitman), 595. 
Davenport, Abraham (Whittier), 323. 
Daybreak (Longfellow), 212. 
Day is Done, The (Longfellow), 115. 
Daylight and Moonlight (Longfellow), 156. 
Days (Emerson), 87. 
Day's Ration, The (Emerson), 85. 
Deacon's Masterpiece, The (Holmes), 369. 
Dead House, The (Lowell), 466. 
Dead Ship of Harpswell, The (Whittier), 324. 
Death, Hymn to (Bryant), 7. 
Death of Lincoln, The (Bryant), 31. 
Death of Queen Mercedes (Lowell), 522. 
Death's Valley (Whitman), 609. 
Dedication, Songs of Labor (Whittier), 282. 
Delicate Cluster (Whitman), 589. 
Dirge (Emerson), quoted, 62 note, and 665. 
Divina Commedia (Longfellow), 240. 
Dorothy Q. (Holmes), 386. 
Dream-Land (Poe), 48. 
Dream within a Dream, A (Poe), 41. 
Dying Words of Stonewall Jackson, The (Lanier). 
611. 

Each and all (Emerson), 61. 

Earth-Song (Emerson), 84. 

E. C. S., To (Whittier), 352. 

Eldorado (Poe), 57. 

Ellen, Lines to (Emerson), 59. 

Ellen, To (Emerson), 59. 

Ellen at the South, To (Emerson), 59. 

Elmwood, The Herons of (Longfellow), 251. 

Ember Picture, An (Lowell), 498. 

Enchanter, The (Emerson), 96. 

Endymion (Longfellow), 111. 

Endymion (Lowell), 524. 

English Friend, To an (Holmes), 365. 

Entrance to a Wood, Inscription for the (Bryant), 

3. 
Envoi : The Poet and his Songs (Longfellow), 257 
Envoi : To the Muse (Lowell), 463. 
Epilogue to the Breakfast-Table Series (Holmes) 

387. 
Eros (Emerson), 96. 
Eternal Goodness, The (Whittier), 314. 
Ethiopia saluting the Colors (Whitman), 589. 
Eulalie — A Song (Poe), 51. 
Evangeline (Longfellow), 121. 
Evening, see Summer by the Lakeside (Whittier) 

286. 



708 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Evening Song (Lanier), 616. 
Evening Wind, The (Bryant), 15. 
Eventide, At (Whittier), 347. 
Excelsior (Emerson), 94. 
Excelsior (Longfellow), 112. 
Experience (Emerson), 77. 
Expostulation (Whittier), 262. 

Fable (Emerson), 73. 

Fable for Critics, A (Lowell), 440. 

Facing west from- California's shores (Whitman), 
560. 

Fairest of the Rural Maids (Bryant), 9. 

Faith Poem, see Assurances (Whitman), 553. 

Farewell of a Virginia Slave-Mother, The (Whit- 
tier), 263. 

Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz, The (Longfellow) , 
211. 

Finale of Christus (Longfellow), 242. 

First Dandelion, The ^Whitman), 607. 

First-Day Thoughts (Whittier), 2S5. 

First Snow-fall, The (Lowell), 459. 

Flag of Stars, thick-sprinkled bunting (Whit- 
man), 580. 

Flood of Years, The (Bryant), 33. 

Follen, see Expostulation (Whittier), 262. 

Foot-Path, The (Lowell), 499. 

Footsteps of Angels (Longfellow), 105. 

For an Autograph (Lowell), 499. 

For Annie (Poe), 55. 

Forbearance (Emerson), 73. 

Foreign Lands, To (Whitman), 604. 

Forerunners (Emerson), 84. 

Forest Hymn, A (Bryant), 12. 

Forgiveness (Whittier), 275. 

For the Bums Centennial Celebration (Holmes), 
374. 

For the Meeting of the Burns Club (Holmes), 
367. 

' For this true nobleness I seek in vain ' (Low- 
ell), 410. 

For Whittier's Seventieth Birthday (Holmes), 
394. 

For you. O Democracy (Whitman), 561. 

Fourth of July, An Ode for the (Lowell), 518. 

Fragments on Nature and Life (Emerson), 90. 

Fragments on the Poet and the Poetic Gift (Emer- 
son), 92. 

Franciscus de Verulamio sic cogitavit (Lowell), 
529. 

Freedom, Stanzas on (Lowell), 414. 

Friendship (Emerson), 73, 95. 

Friendship, The Girdle of (Holmes), 402. 

Fringed Gentian, To the (Bryant), 16. 

From ' A Fable for Critics ' (Lowell), 440. 

From Alcuin (Emerson), 94. 

From My Arm-Chair (Longfellow), 255. 

From Paumanok starting I fly like a bird (Whit- 
man), 571. 

From the Flats (Lanier), 621. 

From the ' Psalm of the West ' (Lanier), 617. 

From the ' Song of Myself ' (Whitman), 533. 

F s S. O d, To (Poe), 46. 

Full of life now (Whitman), 564. 



Gardener (Emerson), 94. 

Garrison (Whittier), 348. 

Garrison, To William Lloyd (Whittier), 260. 

Garrison of Cape Ann, The (.Whittier), 297. 

Gaspar Becerra (Longfellow), 150. 

General Grant, On a Bust of (Lowell), 530. 

Giotto's Tower (Longfellow), 242. 

Girdle of Friendship, The (Holmes), 402. 

Give All to Love (Emerson), S5. 

Give me the splendid silent sun (Whitman), 577 

Goethe, Written in a Volume of (Emerson) 65. 

Good-bye (Emerson), 5S. 

Good-bye my Fancy (Whitman), 609. 

Good Ship Union, Voyage of the (Holmes), 381. 

Grandmother's Story of Bunker-Hill Battle 

(Holmes), 3S9. 
Grant (Whitman), 605. 
Grant, On a Bust of General (Lowell), 530. 
'Great truths are portions of the soul of man' 

(Lowell), 411. 
Greek's Signal Flame, As the (Whitman), 607. 
Green Kiver (Bryant), 4. 
Grisette, La (Holmes), 358. 

Hafiz (Emerson), 95. 

Hamatreya (Emerson), S3. 

Hamish, The Revenge of (Lanier), 623. 

Hampton Beach (Whittier), 266. 

Hanging of the Crane, The (Longfellow), 243. 

Harvard Commemoration, Ode recited at the 
(Lowell), 490. 

Haunted Palace, The (Poe). 46. 

Hawthorne (Longfellow), 239. 

Heavenly Death Whispers of (Whitman'), 588. 

Hebe (Lowell), 428. 

Height of the Ridiculous, The (Holmes), 356. 

Helen, To (Poe), 41, 52. 

Heri, Cras, Hodie (Emerson), 95. 

Heroes, see, in the Song of Myself (Whitman), 541. 

Herons of Elmwood, The (Longfellow), 251. 

Hesperus, The Wreck of the (Longfellow), 107. 

Hiawatha T The Song of (Longfellow), 158. 

Hills, Among the (Whittier), 330. 

History, Motto to the Essay on, see The Informing 
Spirit (Emerson), 73. 

Holidays (Emerson), 73. 

Holmes, To Oliver Wendell (Whittier), 353. 

Holmes, on his Seventy-fifth Birthday, To (Low- 
ell), 523. 

Hound, The (Lanier), 611. 

How Love looked for Hell (Lanier), 626. 

How the Old Horse won the Bet (Holmes), 392. 

Hudson, The (Holmes), 365. 

Hudson, To the (Hellman), 365, note. 

Humble-Bee, The (Emerson), 63. 

Hushed be the camps to-day (Whitman), 585. 

Huskers, The (Whittier), 278. 

H. W. L, To (Lowell), 496. 

Hymn (Poe), 45. 

Hymn, A Sun-Day (Holmes), 377. 

Hymn, The Bohemian (Emerson), 96. 

Hymn for the Celebration of Emancipation 
(Whittier), 313. 

Hymn of the City (Bryant), 17. 



INDEX OF TITLES 



709 



■ Hymn of Trust (Holmes), 377. 
Hymns of the Marshes (Lanier), 622, 628, 629. 
Hymn to Death (Bryant), 7. 
Hymn to the Night (Longfellow), 105. 

' I ask not for those thoughts, that sudden leap ' 

(Lowell), 411. 
Ichabod (Whittier), 282. 
I ilream'd in a dream (Whitman), 563. 
I hear America singing (Whitman), 560. 
I hear it was charged against me (Whitman), 562. 
In a copy of Omar Khayyam (Lowell), 529. 
Incident in a Railroad Car, An (Lowell), 413. 
In clouds descending, in midnight sleep, see Old 

War Dreams (Whitman), 586. 
Inconnue, L' (Holmes), 357. 
India, Passage to (Whitman), 590. 
Indian-Summer Reverie, An (Lowell), 424. 
Informing Spirit, The (Emerson), 73. 
In Memory of John Greenleaf Whittier (Holmes), 

408. 
In School-Days (Whittier), 337. 
Inscription, see One's-self I sing (Whitman), 587. 
Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood (Bryant), 

3. 
Inscription proposed for a Soldiers' and Sailors' 

Monument (Lowell), 524. 
International Copyright (Lowell), 524. 
In the Churchyard at Tarrytown (Longfellow), 

252. 
In the Twilight (Lowell), 498. 
In vita Minerva (Holmes), 407. 
Iron Gate, The (Holmes), 397. 
Ironsides, Old (Holmes), 355. 
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing (Whitman) 

562. 
I saw Old General at Bay (Whitman), 573. 
Israfel (Poe), 41. 

« I thought our love at full, but I did err ' (Low- 
ell), 430. 

Jacquerie, Song for the (Lanier), 611. 

James Russell Lowell (Whittier), 353. 

James Russell Lowell, 1819-1891 (Holmes), 407. 

James Russell Lowell, To (Holmes), 402. 

J. D. R. (Holmes), 380. 

John Greenleaf Whittier, In Memory of (Holmes), 

408. 
Jonathan to John (Lowell), 478. 
Joy, Shipmate, Joy ! (Whitman), 596. 
Jugurtha (Longfellow), 256. 
June (Bryant), 14. - 
J. W., To (Emerson). 80. 

Keats (Longfellow), 246. 

Keats (Spingam), 246, note. 

Keats, To the Spirit of (Lowell), 411. 

Killed at the Ford (Longfellow), 241. 

Killingworth, The Birds of (Longfellow), 235. 

Ladder of Saint Augustine, The (Longfellow), 

155. 
La Grisette (Holmes), 358. 
Lake, The (Poe), 659 



Lakeside, The (Whittier), 281. 

Lakeside, Summer by the (Whittier), 286. 

La Maison d'Or (Holmes;, 404. 

Lament for Sister Caroline, Brother Jonathan's 
(Holmes), 378. 

Last Eve of Summer, The (Whittier), 353. 

Last Invocation, The (Whitman;, 595. 

Last Leaf, The (Holmes), 358. 

Last Walk in Autumn, The (Whittier), 292. 

Latest Views of Mr. Biglow (Lowell), 484. 

Latter-Day Warnings (Holmes), 368. 

Laus Deo ! (Whittier), 312. 

Lending a Punch-Bowl, On (Holmes), 359. 

Lenore (Foe;, 43. 

L'Envoi: The Poet and his Songs (Longfellow), 
257. 

L'Envoi : To the Muse (Lowell;, 463. 

Letter from Mr. Ezekiel Biglow of Jaalam to the 
Hon. J. T. Buckingham, A (Lowell), 430. 

Lexington (Whittier), 345. 

Life, Fragments on (Emerson), 91. 

Lifetime, A (Bryant), 31. 

Ligeia, Song to (Poe), 40. 

Light of Stars, The (Longfellow), 104. 

Lincoln, The Death of (Bryant), 31. 

L'Inconnue (Holmes), 357. 

Lines to Ellen (Emerson), 59. 

Little People of the Snow, The (Bryant), 24. 

Living Temple, The (Holmes), 369. 

Locomotive in Winter, To a (Whitman), 604. 

L. of G.'s Purport (Whitman), 609. 

Longings for Homa, see O Magnet-South (Whit- 
man), 565. 

Long, too long America (Whitman), 578. 

Lords of Life, The, see Experience, (Emerson), 
77. 

Lost Occasion, The (Whittier), 348. 

Lost Youth, My (Longfellow), 210. 

Love (Emerson), 91. 

Lowell, James Russell (Whittier), 353. 

Lowell, James Russell, 1819-1891 (Holmes), 407. 

Lowell, To James Russell (Holmes), 402. 

Lyre of Anacreon, The (Holmes), 403. 

Magne1>South (Whitman), 565. 
Maidenhood (Longfellow), 112. 
Maison d'Or, La (Holmes), 404. 
Mannahatta (Whitman), 565. 
Marguerite (Whittier), 336. 
Marion's Men, Song of (Bryant), 17. 
Marshes of Glynn, The (Lanier), 622. 
Marsh Song — at Sunset (Lanier), 628. 
Masaccio (Lowell), 465. 
Mason and Slidell (Lowell), 473. 
Massachusetts to Virginia (Whittier), 270. 
Master, Our (Whittier), 325. 
Maud Muller (Whittier), 289. 
Meeting, The (Whittier), 327. 
Me Imperturbe (Whitman), 560. 
Memorial Poems, Three (Lowell) , 509. 
Memories (Whittier), 265. 
Merlin (Emerson), 81. 
Merops (Emerson), 80. 
Merrimac, The (Whittier), 264. 



710 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Mezzo Cammin (Longfellow), 113. 

Miles Standish, The Courtship of (Longfellow), 

213. 
Milton (Longfellow), 246. 
Miner, The (Lowell), 496. 
Minnisink, Burial of the (Longfellow), 103. 
Miracles (Whitman), 552. 
Mississippi at Midnight, Sailing the (Whitman), 

686. 
Mocking Bird, The (Lanier), 620. 
Molinos, The Three Silences of (Longfellow), 253. 
Monna Lisa (Lowell), 528. 
Monument Mountain (Bryant), 9. 
Morituri Salutamus (Longfellow), 248. 
Mother of a Mighty Race (Bryant), 21. 
Mother with thy equal brood, Thou (Whitman), 

598. 
Mountain and the Squirrel, The (Emerson), 73. 
Mr. Hosea Biglow to the Editor of the ' Atlantic 

Monthly ' (Lowell), 486. 
Muse, To the (Lowell), 463. 
Music (Emerson), 96. 
Musketaquid (Emerson), 86. 
My Annual (Holmes), 383. 
My Aunt (Holmes), 357. 
My Autumn Walk (Bryant), 30. 
My Birthday (Whittier), 338. 
My Captain ! (Whitman), 581. 
My Garden (Emerson), 100. 
My Lost Youth (Longfellow), 210. 
My Love (Lowell), 410. 
' My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die ' 

(Lowell), 411. 
My Mother, To (Poe), 55. 
My Playmate (Whittier), 303. 
My Psalm (Whittier), 301. 
Myself and Mine (Whitman), 567. 
My 71st Year (Whitman), 608. 
My Springs (Lanier), 612. 
Mystery, A (Whittier), 341. 
Mystic Trumpeter, The (Whitman), 
My Triumph (Whittier), 337. 

Nature (Emerson), 77, 87, 90, 94. 

Nature (Longfellow), 252. 

Nature, Art and (Longfellow), 104. 

Nature, The Worship of (Whittier), 327. 

Nature and Life, Fragments on (Emerson), 90. 

Nature in Leasts (Emerson), 95. 

Nautilus, The Chambered (Holmes), 368. 

Nearing the Snow-Line (Holmes), 386. 

Night (Longfellow), 257. 

Night, Hymn to the (Longfellow), 105. 

Night and Day (Lanier), 611. 

Nightingale in the Study, The (Lowell), 497. 

Night in June (Emerson), 91. 

Night on the Prairies (Whitman), 564. 

Night-Songs, Wanderer's (Longfellow), 149. 

Nobler Lover, The (Lowell), 528. 

Noiseless patient spider, A (Whitman), 590. 

Noon, see Summer by the Lakeside (Whittier), 

286. 
Northman (Emerson), 94. 
Norton, To Charles Eliot (Lowell), 500. 



Not the Pilot (Whitman), 587. 
Nuremberg (Longfellow), 116. 

O Captain! my Captain! (Whitman), 581. 
October (Bryant), 14. 

Ode for the Fourth of July, An (Lowell), 518. 
Ode, inscribed to W. H. Channing (Emerson), 80. 
Ode read at the One Hundredth Anniversary of 

the Fight at Concord Bridge (Lowell), 509. 
Ode recited at the Harvard Commemoration 

(Lowell), 490. 
Ode sung in the Town Hall, Concord (Emerson), 

88. 
Ode to Beauty (Emerson), 76. 
' O fairest of the rural maids ' (Bryant), 9. 
Of that blithe throat of thine (Whitman), 606. 
Old Age's Ship and Crafty Death's (Whitman), 

608. 
Old Age, Thanks in (Whitman), 608. 
Old Clock on the Stairs, The (Longfellow), 120. 
Old General at Bay (Whitman), 573. 
Old Ironsides (Holmes), 355. 
Old Man Dreams, The (Holmes), 366. 
Old Tem^raire, Turner's (Lowell), 530. 
Old-time Sea-tight, An, see, in the Song of Myself 

(Whitman), 542. 
Old War-Dreams (Whitman), 586. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, To (Whittier), 353. 

Magnet-South (Whitman), 565. 
Omar Khayyam, In a Copy of (Lowell), 529. 

1 O moonlight deep and tender ' (Lowell), 412. 
' O mother of a mighty race ' (Bryant), 21. 
On a Bust of General Grant (Lowell), 530. 
On Board the '76 (Lowell), 489. 
' One-Hoss Shay,' The Wonderful (Holmes), 369. 
One's-self I sing (Whitman), 587. 
On Lending a Punch-Bowl (Holmes), 359. 
On the Beach at Night (Whitman), 590. 
Open Road, Song of the (Whitman), 547. 
Origin of Didactic Poetry, The (Lowell), 465. 
O Star of France (Whitman), 596. 
Others may praise what they like (Whitman), 

580. 

Our Autocrat (Whittier), 347. 

Our Country's Call (Bryant), 24. 

' Our love is not a fading, earthly flower ' (Lowell), 
412. 

Our Master (Whittier), 325. 

Our River (Whittier), 304. 

Our State (Whittier), 281. 

Our Yankee Girls (Holmes), 359. 

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking (Whitman), 
557. 

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd (Whitman), 
578. 

Over the carnage rose prophetic a voice (Whit- 
man), 578. 

Ox-Tamer, The (Whitman), 603. 

Oysterman, The Ballad of the (Holmes), 355. 

Palinode (Lowell), 462. 

Pan (Emerson), 96. 

Parson Turell's Legacy (Holmes), 372. 

Parting Hymn (Holmes), 379. 



INDEX OF TITLES 



711 



Passage to India (Whitman), 590. 

Past, The (Bryant), 15. 

Paul Revere's Ride (Longfellow), 233. 

Paumanok starting I fly like a bird, From (Whit- 
man), 571. 

Phillips, Wendell (Lowell), 414. 

Phoebe (Lowell), 522. 

Pine-tree, The (Whittier), 275. 

Pioneers ! O Pioneers ! (Whitman), 569. 

Pious Editor's Creed, The (Lowell), 435. 

Pipes at Lucknow, The (Whittier), 299. 

Planting of the Apple-tree, The (Bryant), 22. 

Playmate, My (Whittier), 303. 

Poem of perfect miracles, see Miracles (Whit- 
man), 552. 

Poem of the Road, see Song of the Open Road 
(Whitman), 547. 

Poem of Walt Whitman, see Song of Myself (Whit- 
man), 523. 

Poet (Emerson), 94. 

Poet, The (Bryant), 29. 

Poet and his Songs, The (Longfellow), 257. 

Poet and the Children, The (Whittier), 350. 

Poet and the Poetic Gift, Fragments on the (Em- 
erson), 92. 

Poetry, The Spirit of (Longfellow), 102. 

Poets, The (Longfellow), 252. 

Poets to come (Whitman), 560. 

Poor Voter on Election Day, The (Whittier), 285. 

Possibilities (Longfellow), 257. 

Prairie-grass dividing, The (Whitman), 563. 

Prairies, The (Bryant), 18. 

Prairies, Night on the (Whitman), 564. 

Prairie Sunset, A (Whitman), 608. 

Prayer, Andrew Rykman's (Whittier), 307. 

Prayer of Agassiz, The (Whittier), 342. 

Prayer of Columbus (Whitman), 601. 

Pregnant Comment, The (Lowell), 528. 

Present Crisis, The (Lowell), 421. 

Problem, The (Emerson), 64. 

Problem, The (Whittier), 346. 

Proem (Whittier), 280. 

Programme (Holmes), 388. 

Prologue, Songs in Many Keys (Holmes), 378. 

Psalm, My (Whittier), 301. 

Psalm of Life, A (Longfellow), 104. 

Psalm of the West, From the (Lanier), 617. 

Punch-Bowl, On Lending a (Holmes), 359. 

Purport, L. of G.'s (Whitman), 609. 

Quatrains and Translations (Emerson), 94. 
Queen Mercedes, Death of (Lowell), 522. 
Quicksand Years (Whitman), 580. 

Rain, The Voice of the (Whitman), 607. 
Rainy Day, The (Longfellow), 111. 
Randolph of Roanoke (Whittier), 260. 
Raven, The (Poe), 48. 
Reconciliation (Whitman), 586. 
Recorders ages hence (Whitman), 561. 
Rendition, The (Whittier), 290. 
Resignation (Longfellow), 149. 
Response (Whittier), 346/ 
Return of Spring, The (Longfellow), 103. 



Return of the Witches, The (Holmes), 405. 

Revenge of Hamish, The (Lanier), 623. 

Rex (Emerson), 92. 

Rhodora, The (Emerson), 61. 

Rhoecus (Lowell), 415. 

River, The (Emerson), 58. 

Rivermouth, The Wreck of (Whittier), 310. 

Robert Burns (Longfellow), 256. 

Robert of Lincoln (Bryant), 23. 

Romance (Poe), 40. 

Rounded World, The, see Nature (Emerson), 77. 

Rykman's Prayer, Andrew (Whittier), 307. 

Saadi (Emerson), 74. 

Sacrifice (Emerson), 95. 

Sailing the Mississippi at Midnight (Whitman), 

686. 
Saint Augustine, The Ladder of (Longfellow), 155. 
Samuel J. Tilden (Whittier), 352. 
San Bias, The Bells of (Longfellow), 258. 
Santa Filomena (Longfellow), 212. 
Saturday Club, At the (Holmes), 399. 
School-Days, In (Whittier), 337. 
Science, Sonnet to (Poe), 40. 
Scottish Border (Lowell), 508. 
Sea Dream, A (Whittier), 343. 
Seashore (Emerson), 89. 
Seaweed (Longfellow), 116. 
Second Letter from B. Sawin, Esq., A (Lowell), 

436. 
Secret, The (Lowell), 528. 

Serenade, from The Spanish Student (Longfel- 
low), 111. 
Seventieth Birthday, Bryant's (Holmes), 382. 
Seventieth Birthday, For Whittier 's (Holmes), 

394. 
Seventy-fifth Birthday, To Holmes, on his 

(Lowell), 523. 
Seventy-fifth Birthday, To Whittier, on his 

(Lowell), 523. 
71st Year, My (Whitman), 608. 
Seward, To William H. (Whittier), 303. 
Shadows, The (Holmes), 398. 
Shakespeare (Emerson), 95. 
Shakespeare (Longfellow), 245. 
She came and went (Lowell), 429. 
Shelley, After a Lecture on (Holmes), 364. 
Shepherd of King Admetus, The (Lowell), 412. 
Shoemakers, The (Whittier), 273. 
Shut not your doors (Whitman), 579. 
Sight in Camp in the Daybreak, A (Whitman), 574. 
Silence, Sonnet (Poe), 47. 
Silent Melody, The (Holmes), 396. 
Singer in the Prison, The (Whitman), 5S8. 
Singing Leaves, The (Lowell), 459. 
Sisters, The (Whittier), 339. 
Sixty-eighth Birthday (Lowell), 524. 
Skeleton in Armor, The (Longfellow), 108. 
Skipper Ireson's Ride (Whittier), 296. 
Slave's Dream, The (Longfellow), 113. 
Sleeper, The (Poe), 43. 
Small the theme of my chant, see One's-self I 

sing (Whitman), 587. 
Snow-Bound (Whittier), 315. 



712 



INDEX OF TITLES 



Snow-Line, Nearing the (Holmes), 386. 

Snow-Storm, The (Emerson), 72. 

Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, Inscription 

proposed for a (Lowell), 524. 
Song — at Sunset (Lanier), 628. 
Song for ' The Jacquerie ' (Lanier), 611. 
Song from Al Aaraaf (Poe), 39. 
Song of Hiawatha, The (Longfellow), 158. 
Song of Marion's Men (Bryant), 17. 
Song of Myself, From the (Whitman), 523. 
Song of the Chattahoochee (Lanier), 621. 
Song of the Open Road (Whitman), 547. 
Song: ' O moonlight deep and tender' (Lowell), 

412. 
Songs in Many Keys, Prologue (Holmes), 378. 
Songs of Labor, Dedication (Whittier), 282. 
Song: ' Stay, stay at home' (Longfellow), 255. 
Sonnet— Scottish Border (Lowell), 508. 
Sonnet — Silence (Poe), 47. 
Sonnets on Columbus (Lanier), 617. 
Sonnet — To Science (Poe), 40. 
Sonnet to Zante (Poe), 46. 
Sound of the Sea, The (Longfellow), 246. 
Spanish Student, Serenade from the (Longfellow), 

111. 
Sphinx, The (Emerson), 71. 
Spider, A noiseless patient (Whitman), 590. 
Spirit of Poetry, The (Longfellow), 102. 
Spirit that formed this scene (Whitman), 605. 
Spring, The Return of (Longfellow), 103. 
Stanzas, see Expostulation (Whittier), 262. 
Stanzas on Freedom (Lowell), 414. 
Star of France (Whitman), 596. 
Statesman's Secret, The (Holmes), 362. 
Stedman, see To E. C. S. (Whittier), 352. 
Stethoscope Song, The (Holmes), 360. 
Stirrup-Cup, The (Lanier), 621. 
Stonewall Jackson, The Dying Words of (Lanier), 

611. 
Storm on Lake Asquam (Whittier), 349. 
Summer by the Lakeside (Whittier), 286. 
Sun-Day Hymn, A (Holmes), 377. 
Sun-down Poem, see Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 

(Whitman), 553. 
Sunrise (Lanier), 629. 
Sunset (Lanier), 628. 
Sunset on the Bearcamp (Whittier), 344. 
Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line (Lowell), 480. 
Sweet Fern (Whittier), 351. 
Symphony, The (Lanier), 612. 

Tamerlane (Poe), 36. 

Tampa Robins (Lanier), 620. 

Tarrytown, In the Churchyard at (Longfellow), 
252. 

Taylor, To Bayard (Lanier), 627. 

Tears (Whitman), 587. 

Telepathy (Lowell), 528. 

Telling the Bees (Whittier), 300. 

Terminus (Emerson), 101. 

Thanatopsis (Bryant), 1. 

Thanks in Old Age (Whitman), 608. 

' There is no great and no small,' see The Inform- 
ing Spirit (Emerson), 73. 



There was a child went forth (Whitman), 532. 

Thick-sprinkled Bunting (Whitman), 580. 

Thine Eyes still shined (Emerson), 60. 

Thought (Emerson), 58. 

Thou Mother with thy equal brood (Whitman), 
598. 

Three Bells, The (Whittier), 340. 

Three Friends of Mine (Longfellow), 246. 

Three Memorial Poems (Lowell), 509. 

Three Silences of Molinos, The (Longfellow), 253. 

Threnody (Emerson), 77. 

Tide Rises, the Tide Falls, The (Longfellow), 256. 

Tilden, Samuel J. (Whittier), 352. 

Titmouse, The (Emerson), 96. 

To (Poe), 41. 

To (Poe), 39. 

To (Whittier), 293, note. 

To a Certain Civilian (Whitman), 579. 

To a Locomotive in Winter (Whitman), 604. 

To an English Friend (Holmes), 365. 

To an Insect (Holmes), 356. 

To a Waterfowl (Bryant), 3. 

To Bayard Taylor (Lanier), 627. 

To Beethoven (Lanier), 619. 

To Charles Eliot Norton (Lowell), 500. 

To E. C. S. (Whittier), 352. 

To Ellen (Emerson), 59. 

To Ellen, Lines (Emerson), 59. 

To Ellen at the South (Emerson), 59. 

To F (Poe), 46. 

To F s S. O d (Poe), 46. 

To Foreign Lands (Whitman), 604. 

To Helen (Poe), 41, 52. 

To Holmes on his Seventy-fifth Birthday (Lowell), 
523. 

To H. W. L. (Lowell), 496. 

To James Russell Lowell (Holmes), 402. 

To J. W. (Emerson), 80. 

To Mary, see To F (Poe), 46. 

To My Mother (Poe), 55. 

To My Readers (Holmes), 380. 

To Oliver Wendell Holmes (Whittier), 353. 

To One Departed, see To F (Poe), 46. 

To One in Paradise (Poe), 45. 

To One shortly to die (Whitman), 564. 

Too Young for Love (Holmes), 404. 

To Science, Sonnet (Poe), 40. 

To the Dandelion (Lowell), 417. 

To the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly, Mr. Hosea 
Biglow (Lowell), 486. 

To the Fringed Gentian (Bryant), 16. 

To the Man-of-War-Bird (Whitman), 603. 

To the Muse (Lowell), 463. 

To the Spirit of Keats (Lowell), 411. 

To those who 've fail'd (Whitman), 607. 

To W. H. Channing, Ode (Emerson), 80. 

To Whittier, on his Seventy-fifth Birthday (Low- 
ell), 523. 

To William H. Seward (Whittier), 303. 

To William Lloyd Garrison (Whittier), 260. 

To Zante, Sonnet (Poe), 46. 

Trailing Arbutus, The (Whittier), 347. 

Translations, Quatrains and (Emerson), 94. 

Triumph, My (Whittier), 337. 






INDEX OF TITLES 



7*3 



Turell's Legacy, Parson (Holmes), 372. 
Turner's Old Temeraire (Lowell), 530. 
Twilight, In the (Lowell), 498. 
Two Angels, The (Longfellow), 157. 
Two Rivers (Emerson), 87. 
Two Streams, The (Holmes), 376. 

Ulalume (Poe), 51. 

Under the Old Elm (Lowell), 512. 

Under the Violets (Holmes), 377. 

Unexpress'd, The (Whitman), 609. 

Union and Liberty (Holmes) , 379. 

Unity (Whittier), 351. 

Uriel (Emerson), 64. 

Valley of Unrest, The (Poe), 44. 

Vanishers, The (Whittier), 311. 

Vaudois Teacher, The (Whittier), 259. 

Venice (Longfellow), 253. 

Veritas (Holmes), 396. 

Victor and Vanquished (Longfellow), 253. 

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night (Whit- 
man), 573. 

Village Blacksmith, The (Longfellow), 108. 

Virginia Slave-Mother, The Farewell of a (Whit- 
tier), 263. 

Virginia— The West (Whitman), 598. 

Vision of Sir Launfal, The (Lowell), 453. 

Voiceless, The (Holmes), 373. 

Voice of the Rain, The (Whitman), 607. 

Voluntaries (Emerson), 99. 

Voyage of the Good Ship Union (Holmes), 381. 

Waiting, The (Whittier), 305. 

Waldeinsamkeit (Emerson), 90. 

Walt Whitman, see Song of Myself (Whitman), 

623. 
Wanderer's Night-Songs (Longfellow), 149. 
Wapentake (Longfellow), 253. 
Warden of the Cinque Ports, The (Longfellow), 

156. 
War-Dreams, Old (Whitman), 586. 
Washers of the Shroud, The (Lowell), 469. 
Watchers, The (Whittier), 306. 
Waterfowl, To a (Bryant), 3. 
Waving of the Corn, The (Lanier), 617. 
Weariness (Longfellow), 239. 
Webster (Emerson), 61. 



Webster, Birthday of Daniel (Holmes), 366. 

Wendell Phillips (Lowell), 414. 

Wentworth, Amy (Whittier), 304. 

What best I see in thee (Whitman), 605. 

What Mr. Robinson thinks (Lowell), 433. 

When I heard at the close of the day (Whitman), 
562. 

When I heard thelearn'd astronomer (Whitman), 
579. 

When I peruse the conquered Fame (Whitman), 
563. 

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd (Whit- 
man), 581. 

When the full-grown poet came (Whitman), 603. 

Whispers of Heavenly Death (Whitman), 588. 

Whittier, In Memory of John Greenleaf (Holmes), 
408. 

Whittier, on his Seventy-fifth Birthday, To 
(Lowell), 523. 

Whittier's Seventieth Birthday, For (Holmes), 
394. 

William H. Seward, To (Whittier), 303. 

William Lloyd Garrison, To (Whittier), 260. 

Wind-Harp, The (Lowell), 462. 

Winter Piece, A (Bryant), 5. 

With husky-haughty lips, O Sea (Whitman), 606. 

Without and Within (Lowell), 461. 

Wonderful ' One-Hoss Shay,' The (Holmes), 369. 

Woodnotes I (Emerson), 66. 

Woodnotes II (Emerson), 67. 

Word out of the sea, A, see Out of the cradle end- 
lessly rocking (Whitman), 557. 

Wordsworth (Whittier), 283. 

Wordsworth, After a Lecture on (Holmes), 363. 

World-Soul, The (Emerson), 82. 

Worship of Nature, The (Whittier), 327. 

Wound-Dresser, The (Whitman), 575. 

Wreck of Rivermouth, The (Whittier), 310. 

Wreck of the Hesperus, The (Longfellow), 107. 

Written at Rome (Emerson), 60. 

Written in a Volume of Goethe (Emerson), 65. 

Written in Naples (Emerson), 60. 

Yankee Girls, Our (Holmes), 359. 

Yellow Violet, The (Bryant), 2. 

Youth, Day, Old Age and Night (Whitman), 606. 

Zante, Sonnet to (Poe), 46. 



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